 |
 |
| At Padres, getting a very low cutaway. | Merri shooting a shuffleboard match. |
7 hours of filming today at Padres, covering the first day of the Marfa shuffleboard competition. The day started a little bumpy, first with some debate on how to best simplify our multi-camera shoot, followed by some team friction that caused us to crack under the stress of shooting on a tight schedule, and learning under pressure. Once we took a time out and regrouped though, things got back on track and we managed to crank through a lot of material we needed to cover.
 |
 |
| Jacob’s shuffle puck sitting on a bed of silicone. | Jacob and David playing singles. |
We covered Jacob’s singles and doubles matches, interviewed Avery, a returning doubles champion and one of Jacob’s competitors, and filmed a lot of b-roll. The footage looks good, but I foresee an editing nightmare ahead for us…between 2 cameras and 4 wireless lavaliers that kept getting swapped to different people throughout the day, we will have a big chore organizing our video and audio media, as well as syncing some of our clips. Fortunately, we have filmed a majority of our doc already, so we should be able to get a head start on the editing process. It was a good shoot, although challenging to find elegant ways to cover the matches. We learned a few ways today, but with the finals coming up tomorrow (Sunday), we plan to strategize in the morning how to best cover Jacob’s remaining matches.
 |
 |
| Interviewing Avery, a.k.a. “The Dragon” | Jacob keeping his eye on the competition |
After dinner, Merri, Laura, and I relaxed and did a little sightseeing near Mando’s, a local dining hang out offering good TexMex, before heading back to Hotel Paisano to log and capture our memory cards, and develop a shot list for our “last” day of shooting. Merri had to end her night early in order to get some rest, so Laura and I spent some time getting a game plan in place for tomorrow morning. After tomorrow’s shoot, it’s on to defining an editing workflow, transcribing interviews, organizing media, structuring our story on notecards, editing string outs, etc.
 |
 |
| Landscape behind Mandos, near the Marfa cemetery | Crushed flower next to the Marfa train tracks |
Speaking of story, I heard the second group of the workshop made some tremendous headway “finding” their story today. They spent nearly 11 hours straight developing their film’s story, arc, interview questions, and visuals. It seems to have been a little tougher for them to get at the core of the story they wish to tell, but from talking to Russell and Kari tonight, they’ve landed in a good spot, and have some back-up plans in place to make sure they stay on schedule for Friday’s delivery date! Wish us all luck on our shoot tomorrow!!
