I am glad that I am getting some experience. Even if it's just a little and it doesn't really seem like I am doing much. At least I am meeting people.
So, I did finally get a hold of Mikel. I had to call him, as he never sent the e-mail, and he just told me the cross streets of where to meet in downtown Houston and to be there by 6:30 pm. I left plenty early and after getting lost I made it there and got to meet him. He is a cool guy and was very willing to help me. Sort of.
I helped him move some stuff around and he told me what shots we were getting. It was going to be really cool shoot. They arranged for a steady cam operator to come in and lead Paul Wall around the streets of Houston. It would be a really cool effect and I was excited because I had never seen a steady cam before and I wanted to learn how it worked. Well, the guy was running late with the steady cam, so we decided to get some static shots with Paul Wall in the mean time.
It was all going fine and we were getting some good stuff, but the steady cam still had not arrived. We just made due with what we had. Then, as we were about to go a new location, the steady cam guy arrived. Apparently he got held later than he thought on an earlier shoot. But when he got to where we were, all the stuff was pretty much moved and they didn't want to carry the steady cam all the way to the new location. So they told me to stay with it and pretty much "babysit" it until they could get back. Well, about an hour later, all our sunlight was gone and the shoot was wrapped for the day. I had been sitting on the street of Houston with a boxed up steady cam the whole time and did not get to see majority of the shooting and I did not get to see how the steady cam worked. Pretty much a bust.
But not all was completely lost. It turns out that the next day Mikel was also re-shooting some scenes from a short film that he had been working on and invited me to come out. He said that the film was going to festivals and I would be able to get an IMDb credit, so I hopped on the opportunity. It was also another item to put on my resume. So, the next day, I left my house early in the morning to make it to the other side of Houston by 9:00 am. Half way there Mikel called me and asked if I could stop along the way and pick up his wife at the airport. She is a flight attendant, got the day off, had no other way home, as he was on the shoot, and it was on my way so I agreed to get her. Besides, if I hadn't, how would it be working with him all day?
So, I got his wife and eventually made my way to where the short film was being re-shot. It was fine enough and I got a chance to do some work. They were re-shooting a pretty funny scene where one of the main characters has his shit explode through his pants and splatter all over a garage door. We ended up doing the scene at least five times because they could not get the mixture of beans, cream of mushroom soup and other random stuff together to make a realistic looking shit explosion all over the garage. And in between takes, guess who got to clean up the bean splatter on the garage door. Yep, me. It was so hot that the beans dried and crusted to the garage with in minutes. But it wasn't too bad and they helped me out. And it was cool to see the little cannon they used to shoot out the concoction.
Hopefully more work will find its way to me. I am going to make a new resume dedicated to production and update my Texas Production Directory profile. I am also going to make a profile for the Houston and Austin and Louisiana Production Directories. Gotta put yourself out there!
No comments:
Post a Comment