Exhausting work and upcoming projects

It's been two months since my last post, but it seems like a lifetime ago, so much has happened. I'm more than halfway done with the school semester, a fourth of the way through my last school year.

I've worked most of the semester non-stop on short films of varying lengths and difficulties. Some have been more successful and/or fun than others. But I wouldn't trade the experience of any of them for anything. Well, maybe I would trade them for getting paid. On the last post, I laid out the work I had already done in the semester and what was coming up at the time. That amount of film work is about half of what I've ended up working on up to this point, and I have another two short shoots to go. Overall, it's been by far the busiest film semester I've had in my school career. It's been exhausting but it's been a blast.

When I say it's been exhausting, I mean exhausting. There have been a total of about seven different 12 (or more) hour days. Some went all night until the sun came up the next day. They took everything I had to keep my energy up and my work at a high level, but I think we pulled off some great work. We'll see once final cuts are up. Among those films I worked on, I got my first bit of experience as a 1st AD (Assistant Director). For those outside of filmmaking, it's the person that's in charge of making sure the film keeps on schedule. That includes making things happen in a timely fashion, and keeping cast and crew motivated so the film is always moving forward. I've worked with some great ADs (shout-out to Jen W. and Stephanie F.) so I was hoping I wouldn't have a hard time rising to the task. I think I did fairly well since we were only ridiculously late one of the three days. However, my hat goes off to anybody that is trying to be a full time AD. The job is probably one of the most stressful on a set. I much rather prefer to handle lights and cameras.

Well, the next few months I am going to be delving full force into a few projects that will be filming next semester. The work I do on these projects can make or break my career as they will be a large part of the final demo reel that I will compile and turn in in order to graduate. I will be working with three great filmmakers who I trust and respect and I think we're going to make some amazing work. I hope that I live up to the trust they are putting in me to be able to make their visions come true. I'll try to make a few posts as we progress in these projects so there's a record of the improvement of work from day to day.

Finally, this might be my last update on this blog. I'm considering making a switch over to Tumblr. It lends itself really well to A)customization, and B)short posts. I think I can be more motivated to make shorter posts more often than longer posts on here every two months. I'll make another post when I get that one up and running with a link to the new blog. Until then, à tout à l’heure.