These days are getting longer and more (in)tense…it’s 3 am, and my team just wrapped up for the night, having outlined our game plan for tomorrow’s weekend shoot where we’ll be covering Marfa’s very own shuffleboard tournament. I spent half an hour giving Laura a crash course on how to shoot in a car, what kind of coverage to get, and how to avoid catching yourself in reflections, while Merri got a demonstration of how to shoot walking backwards and hiding the ND filter being turned on in the middle of a long take. All this for an important car arrival and bar entrance scene we’re shooting early tomorrow morning. But all that’s tomorrow…
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Today, after getting a refresher on natural lighting and interviewing techniques in the morning, Laura, Merri, and I had a very loooong and somewhat tense session flushing out our interview questions for Jacob, the protagonist for our doc. We weren’t all on the same page about what themes we wanted our doc to focus on, we had different styles for working through this, Alison stepped in offering guidance to make sure we developed a strong story supported by strong interview questions, all while working against some hard constraints of needing to interview Jacob that very afternoon while there was still daylight.
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The upside to all this, Alison’s guidance and our willingness to work through stuff resulted in some awesome footage. Jacob gave us an honest, heartfelt, and insightful interview, and we managed to squeeze in a late night interview with Dave, the owner of Padres where the shuffleboard tournament is being held. These are 2 significant interviews in the can, with a lot of supporting b-roll to go along with it.
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Tomorrow will be a challenge as we are planning to have a 3 camera shoot (2 Canon XF305 and the 5D) to cover key shuffleboard players. It’ll be a bit crazy.
