end of Vamperifica.

shooting in a tunnel at Snug Harbor, Staten Island

Vamperifica takes over Wall Street!

me with the star of the Radio City Christmas Show :: Little Girl

well, everything has to come to an end.

Vamperifica came to a glorious one. The last week we spent a lot of time at Poly Prep, a fancy private school, out in Brooklyn. There we shot some of the flashback footage as well as the play sequence, which included a singing and dancing sequence. The choreography was done by none other than the director's wife and it was pretty good. 

Me and my boss, James Madrid, had been watching a lot of So You Think You Can Dance, because he is really into it.. and I will tell you that its a show with Emmy winning dancing and amazing work done by the league of choreographers. Therefore during this scene I had a little expertise watching and critiquing dance. ha! as if. But it was fun to see the choreography with trained dancers and the way we covered it for the film. We basically did four masters from every corner of the stage with the SuperScottieScoptic crane, being careful not to hit any of the extras in the audience or the dancers on the stage. Apparently in a context like this there is no line to worry about crossing, or at least that is what DP Dan told me, so the coverage would cut from every angle. The crane had a geared head. One gear was tilt and one was pan.. It was interesting to see Dan wrangle them and communicate with Scottie through the head set how he wanted the crane to telescope or what direction he wanted it to fly. So much to think about and know about camera movement.. The years he has worked in the industry and that experience really became evident.

It was truly an amazing experience and opportunity to be on this film and I really really can't wait to see it. We also did some more steadicam work at a park on Staten Island. The park was originally a retiree township for people of the navy called Snug Harbor. The whole place was dripping with ancient greek and victorian motifs. Very beautiful and haunting. Personally the most impressive shot to me was in the forest. I was tired and beat to a pulp because of working 6pm to 6am days. The forest in the dead of night take forever to light and it takes an incredible amount of light to accomplish. I ended up lounging and dozing on one of the crash mats that was used for stunts. When the forest was done though, the light raked the trees in a haunting and tangled mess. The branches loomed over us intimidating.. and fitting for the scene. One of the main characters come across our Vamperifica lead character Carmen, chomping down on a victim. The amount and variation of foggers that the art department had for different scenes blew my mind. For this scene he used a lamp type fogger that used butane to heat and disperse the fog and it smelled like the oaky burning embers. I loved it. The light bursted through the trees revealing the pattern in the smoky air. All Dan had to do was light her face softly with a portable china lantern and the image was mysteriously gorgeous. 

This week also will bring me home to Chattanooga for a while until I start my new blog topic!! 

My brother and I are driving cross continental to Seattle! It is going to be epic and amazing! I can't wait to share it with you and all the amazing-ness that will happen in between. I miss home, I miss family.. and most of all, I miss adventuring. I miss it with all my heart. 

One more thing I will miss is Ben. We are good friends, and I will miss every good friend from Southern, but we have been a rambling pair for the last weeks and it has been really fun. I have learned so much from him. Good-bye NYC good-bye at least for now. Who knows what the future will bring..

workin the Broadway crane moves!!

bruce ornstein, our director, entertaining the extras as our 2nd 2nd AD watches on..

Vamperifica WEEK 3 & 4

((our flashback scene))

((superscottiescopic))

((me with the Lambda head)) allows you to hang the camera above and close to objects or hang and tilt it upside down or do a complete 360 //

This the end of week 4 on Vamperifica and I never told you about week 3.. These last weeks have been crazy and so completely varied. We have worked with the Lambda head to get the camera within inches of a table.. we have worked with a crane called the superscottiescope that a man named Scottie built from the ground up! We have shot two epic fight scenes and a flashback scene with adorable children doubling as the leads.. We have been to the beach, we have been in studio and we have been in an amazing gothic synagogue turned art studio. Its been crazy.. and I can't help but find that I am interested to see it all put together.. Its hard to tell when you are painting each puzzle piece at a time, what the painting will turn out to be, but this could be really funny.

Filmmaking is the hardest work that I have EVER done. Good thing I like it. Yesterday was only a twelve hour day.. thank God, but we were shooting in a dark alley a bunch of night stuff.. so our hours went from 5pm to 5am. The alley way was also down some stairs from a hill that ran up from an downtown intersection. We left our camera carts below but a lot of tools had to be taken to the top of the hill, where video village would be and where the camera would be. Camera department is also in charge of monitor.. that is CONSTANTLY moving to accommodate where the director needs to be to see the same angle as the action. So I have to disassemble the monitor and the stand and get it to the top of the hill, then set up the stand and put the monitor on it. Sandbag the stand and run the cable. We need to have fresh batteries standing by for the RED at all times.. that means if we swap our backup batteries, its on me to run down to production and make sure to replenish the back up. We have two mat boxes. One for handheld that is a clip on and is constantly falling off.. and one that is standard and slides on to the camera rods. Yesterday, I had to keep track of them both because we kept switching setups from handheld to sticks. We haven't used the sticks, or tripod, barely at all this gig. Thank God because they are a beast to set up. We did this day and I had to lift both the baby sticks and the standard sticks into position.. most of the time with the fluid head that at least added 20 lbs. With us shooting down below and up above the alley, the bnc video village cable had to be run all over the place and from all different vantage points. Each time the set up changed the cable had to go with it. And on this glorious occasion we were using water towers so all the camera gear and camera itself had to be safetied for rain. The slate as well cannot get wet so for each take I ran down or across the alley to slate and then up and out of the rain. In between all of this is when I get to write the reports for each take and the notes of which lens, aperture, and ISO we were using for each shot. Then we have lens changes. For the martini, or last shot of the night, we used the zoon lens on the camera.. 18-100 zoom Cooke lens. The box is a beast.. I lugged it across the forest to the edge of the alley and deep chasm that they were shooting down into. The zoom lens takes a decent amount of time to set up because the camera rods have to be replaced to support the much longer lens and the zoom motor has to be attached to allow the camera operator, or in this case the fearless DP, to zoom the lens easily.

Now imagine this mess that we needed to get the camera up and running.. and now imagine me having to pack all of it up at the end of the night.. ((with James' help, of course)) Long day. Demanding day.

((me with the slate at the ready!!))