NYC Feb '09

I am in New York prepping for an NYU thesis short film shooting near Boston. I'm staying in Brooklyn and working on logistics and planning for the film with Rob and the Director, Sara Colangelo. Most of our actual prep will happen in Boston itself once we're up there with the equipment, so for now it's mainly been planning. I am excited because I get to bring Fred Young, my Best Boy, out from Boston and I always love working with Fred. He became my Best Boy for the first thing I ever gaffed(was also in Boston, an NYU Thesis named Aquarium and was the first time I worked with Rob- http://phillm.blogspot.com/2006/08/boston-saga-continues.html)


Rob and my friend Pam and I went out to Coney Island to take pictures with Pam's pin-hole film camera(a camera that uses a tiny hole the sine of a pin instead of using a lens to collect light and expose an image). Rob and I are really excited to see how the pictures come out; I'll post them once we get them developed. I've decided to shoot more film any chance I can get to help promote the Film Re-Revolution as well as hone my skills with the medium. We walked along the pier and then after we took our pictures we went to the Worlds Famous Nathan's Hotdogs of Coney Island while we were out there- yum! The line was long but worth it for my first time out there. We also celebrated Rob's 30th birthday on Valentine's day at this restaurant bar at the Tribeca Grand Hotel. It was fun, I got to meet a lot of Rob's old friends including his good friend Topaz who is a director he worked with a few times. Rob and I both dressed up a bit- got lots of compliments about how dapper we looked. The hotel actually reminded us of a hotel we saw in Shanghai that was open air in the middle and all the hallways of the floor above looked down at the ground floor and bar. I have noticed that every bar or restaurant in New York seems to have candles on the table, the lights dimmed down so they are orange and $4 cokes. it was expensive but I guess you are paying for the atmosphere, too.


Pam's birthday was the 16th so I went to the movies with her to see "He's Just Not That Into You"... which was surprising good. I convinced her to spend the rest of the day hanging out with me shooting film. So we went to Kodak and bought a few little daylight spools of black and white film, borrowed a Bolex 16mm camera and went out and exposed film! Then we went to a bar in her neighborhood called the Pencil Factory to get drinks with all her friends and fellow NYU classmates. I saw a lot of people that I worked with in Louisiana, which was exciting. Hopefully Joe and I can get some work from this, a lot of the directors seemed excited that Joe and I were twin Gaffer and Grip team.

Tomorrow we are heading up to Boston for a quick tech scout and then we prepare for equipment pick ups on the 23rd at NYU and then we get the gear from High Output in Boston on the 24th and start shooting!

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Even though fire light is hard light, sometimes I'll take a few artistic liberties and use a few 1K zip softlites dimmed down on flicker boxes to create my fire effect. The softlites are still very directional but are soft enough to smooth the light out and wrap around the face a bit to create a prettier light. I also end up gelling the lights with overlapping colored gels(oranges, straws, ambers, reds, etc) and put the units close together to create multiple shadows.

Adam

I worked on a short USC thesis, title Adam last May as soon as I got back from China. I was nervous because I was so rusty after being away from LA and off set for three months. Luckily I was very excited about this film and the approach we took with it. Jon Miller, the Cinematographer, had told me that we didn't have a ton of money for lights and we couldn't do much lighting anyway, which I was very excited about because I wanted to use this opportunity to apply some of the things I had heard abut from Jim Plannete(one of my gaffing heros) about Domgma 95 and the "Cinema Minema" approach to lighting a scene.

Here are two clips from the film:
Clip 1:



Clip 2:



This film would not have been possible without the understanding and cooperation from the Director, Kyle Burns, the camera, grip, lighting and sound crews, all the actors and the entire production staff. We all collaborated to make sure that we created the images, sounds and performances that we were happy with to tell the story. I am very proud of this film and hope you all get a chance to see it sometime in the near future.

PhillM tip-of-the-day:
Good lighting should be invisible. If you can make it look like it wasn't lit then you're on the right track. Instead of working against the existing light, try to merely augment and add to the lighting that is already there in your location. It saves you time and headache to make the is already there wrk for you and not against you.