Day 5 - Principle Photography

originally posted by Craig on May 28, 2007

Oh boy…what a day! I knew this day was gonna be tough, but several unexpected events took place. Allow me to elaborate on the joys of guerilla filmmaking…

First, I set up the crane to get my opening shot. I then realized that the angle I wanted didn’t have anything in the foreground, which made the crane shot worthless. So, we moved around to get a small tree in the foreground. Problem sorta solved. Then, the jib arm developed a weird glitch. It would “pop” at two locations in the move, which causes a small, yet very noticeable, camera shake. So, I didn’t get the exact shot I wanted. Oh well, the jib arm was free.

The next few shots went very well. My lead male actor got to run around numerous times while I fumbled around with getting decent shots. And my lead actress delivered a blood-curdling scream that nearly freaked me out. It was perfect!!! We were getting into a groove!

Then tragedy struck. We were about to set up for another shot that required repositioning the lights. Like a big dummy, I walked over to the light (which was still on), and tried to free some slack from the power cables. Unfortunately, I didn’t realize there was no available slack on the cable (it was pitch dark). As you can imagine, when I pulled on the cable, the 500-watt light came crashing down…right on my head! A flash of blue, sparkling light burst out around my head as the bulb gave in to the force of impact. The metal frame that holds a glass protective shield hit me square on the top of my head, shattering the glass all over my head. The crew frantically tried to catch it, but my idiot self was in such a hurry, I gave no warning to anyone about what I was about to do. I should receive a Darwin Award for this utter stupidity. *sigh*

So, after about an hour of Val and my sister moping the blood from my head and trying to decide if putting a Band-Aid on my head would actually work, we finally started shooting again. Surprisingly, I didn’t even get a headache from this. Just a bleeding wound that I’m sure will leave a permanent scar on my head. Yay! A war wound!

Well, after all that, I really couldn’t concentrate as well on my shooting. Some of the shots suffered from that, but overall, I think we got decent footage. I know of only 1 shot I missed getting. Not bad since we shot almost 70 shots in the span of about 7 hours. Robert Rodriquez would be proud!

So, there is my tale of wounds and wayward cranes. Some of my cast and crew may exaggerate this tale. But I assure you, I am fine! Now, lets go shoot some more!

Sincerely,
Craig “Is there glass in my hair?” Morris