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.