Wow... I Feel Special

Hahaha, so I just needed to share this. I feel so special because I got a call from Larry to check in with me over the weekend about the upcoming shoot and I told him that we are picking up on Thursday the 3rd and he said that we was gonna go over to rental on the 2nd and help the guys pull the gear for me! The VP of Mole is going to help pull gear for me! He said he wants the best gear they have, so he's going to inspect it himself! hahaha I promised him that for my first big movie with a real budget I will have Mole charge me double the normal weekly rental rate because they already cut me an incredible deal with the lights and genny and everything.

I love Mole.


PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Try to avoid the term "Inky". A lot of people missuse this word... they usually mean a small Mole light like a Mini Mole or the Midget. But Inky means different things to different people so I would jus stick to the manufactures names like Mini Mole, midget, Tweenie, Betweenie, Teenie, etc. yes, it's more work to memorize the list of names, but you aren't making movies because it's easy, are you!?

Oh yeah...and Sundance

Oh yeah, and that film that I went to Boson for with Rob Hauer, Aquarium, yeah... it got into Sundance this year. I was gonna go but decidied to wait until next year when Heart of the Argos gets in.

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
This is a good quote from the crest of Bazmark, Baz Luhrmann's production company. It says: "A life lived in fear is a life half lived." I find it fitting because I am very nervous about this feature in Morocco... but having all my friends as the crew, knowing they will work as hard as they can for me is keeping me at ease.

New York, LA, SF and Morocco

Wow, things have been crazy! I hope everyone had a good Christmas, I know mine was very eventful. So, let's see... what is there to get caught up on...

I was just in New York again, working with Rob Hauer, my cinematographer and Brian, our Key Grip, and Fred, my Best Boy. We were working on an NYU 2nd year project called The Boundary and we were working with an actor named Alexander Siddig, who played the prince in the movie Syriana. He was amazing to work with! New York was sooooooo cold- we arrived just as that huge snow storm hit the midwest. There was snow on the ground at JFK and it snowed the first 2 days we were there. It was really cool because we had about 5 days of prep before filming so we got everything together and finalized the crew and equipment.


If you want to see pictures from the shoot you can see them here:
http://www.flickr.com/gp/15005161@N06/q57X91

Then Joe and I got back and started on a USC thesis film called The Harvest for our friend Andrew Russo who was the cinematographer. Man, it was a hard shoot because the miscommunication among the producers and also the lack of support and appreciation for her crew displayed by the director. But a good thing did come out of it.

As we were on our way out of LA we got a call from the lead actor from the film asking us if he could pass our names along for a film he is doing. I said yes and he handed his phone to the producer... it turns out it is a feature shooting 1 week in LA and 4 weeks in Morocco on the west coast of Africa! Joe and I were not expecting to get it at all... but we eneded up meeting with the producer and we met the cinematographer and now the producer is writing up the contacts! So I am Gaffing and Joe is Key Gripping a feature that is taking us to Morocco!

The director is the 2nd unit director/cinematographer for Roland Emmerich who directed...well, just take a look: http://imdb.com/name/nm0000386/ Skywalker Ranch invited her up there to finish all the post sound up there FOR FREE because they know that her next film with be a $100 Million film with Roland Emmerich! The production designer did the production design for 21 Grams and Moulin Rouge! So big names...

Anyway, i need to head down to LA now to finalize the equipment and stuff. Lots of work ahead and I am nervous but very excited at the same time!

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
A good rule of thumb I just learned is to have 1 lunchbox for every distro box you have on set.