Day 3 - Principle Photography

originally posted by Craig on May 19, 2007

Finally! Got to shoot some of the actual story elements last night. The was the first of at least 3 nights of shooting we’ll be doing. Got the opening montage shots that go under the credits and about 3/4 of the phone conversation before we ran out of time. It was 11:30 p.m., and every one, including myself, was getting tired. My real job drained me, thanks to a last minute project that forced me to work late.

My lead actress, Stacey Peterson, did a spectacular job! Even though she’s not a professional actress, she followed my direction perfectly. It really made the shoot go smoothly. I’ve actually shot worse performances from trained actors before! We are very lucky to have such a gifted person in our film. She’s doing a better job than I am with directing.

I’ve edited part of the opening sequence and the beginning of the 2nd sequence. Even though my lighting wasn’t very good for some of it, it will be good enough (thank the maker of the color correction filter in Final Cut!). I quickly learned that I can’t trust the monitor I was using, even though it was calibrated. Doh!

Tonight, we’re off to shoot the other half of the phone conversation. Hopefully, I’ll do a decent job with lighting the interior of a truck.