Friday’s trip down to Marlborough was the same as usual – driving in the pouring rain. But once we got into town, the gray skies parted a bit and we were offered some good filming conditions. Shooting the RHAM High School, Class of ’09 graduation was the main reason for being in Connecticut on Friday. There was a chance it was going to be rained out, but the weather held through until the evening.
Crew for the shoot: Jackson as Camera #2, Spencer as 1st AC, and Greg as Photographer. I was on the SR1 with a 240mm zoom lens while Jackson was using the Bolex to get some wide coverage. To cover the event, we drew out a little map and planned to keep shifting angles. My goal was to get the ending silly-string, air-horn celebration and I think we were successful.
The sunset over Hebron was really pretty, so we decided to head over to Buck Road to shoot a bit at a field that I used to visit a lot while I was in high school. The field looks west and sometimes you can see Hartford. I shot the sunset with the remaining film I had left, and then we all packed up the car and drove back to Boston.
I’ve been away from this blog for a bit, so I wanted to make an update about my next shoot taking place at the end of June. I’ll be covering RHAM High School’s graduation ceremonies on Friday the 19th! I’ll probably have two cameras running to capture the best moments. Looking back on my own graduation in 2006, I’m only now realizing how fast it has gone by. I definitely feel like the same person, but I understand that I look very different than I did in high school.
The last time I was in Marlborough, I spoke with a lot of adults who knew me as a kid. They all said that they barely recognized me. Has my body changed that much? Is it my face? My hair? I still think I speak the same way and carry the same mannerisms, which are probably my most recognizable qualities. A lot of my old teachers were happy to see me. My video production teacher mentioned that I’ve become an adult, a fact that I’ll deny for now. At this moment I don’t feel much older than I did when I graduated from high school in 2006. I just know more about certain things, and dress differently. I like more foods now, specifically onions, mushrooms and peppers.
I don’t really know where I’m going with this post, but maybe it’s the fact that I’ve recently hit a particular mile marker in a person’s life where they are thought of as an adult. But if I’m supposed to be an adult at this point, why do I feel such a longing for childhood? Is it the fear of responsibility? The desire for a simple life? I think so. But anyway, filming HINDSIGHT will allow me to remember these moments once again. I’m excited to see the class of 2009 graduate and I’m sure I’ll get some good footage.
Please check back to see production stills from that shoot as they are posted.
I just got back from my 4 day shoot in Connecticut and I’m very tired. I don’t feel like cleaning up everything yet, so I thought I would make a quick post. I’ll do a recap of my whole Memorial Day shoot in another post sometime soon. For now, enjoy these pictures of Spencer and I shooting at my old high school. We were given a lot of access so I’d like to thank everyone who help out on that Friday.
Last weekend was my sister’s college graduation, so with my parents in town, we headed down to CT to shoot some scenes behind the elementary school.
My sister and I used to play on this big boulder behind the school. For a few years I believed it to be haunted. I still have my suspicions.
This photograph is from my trip to New York City back in March. Due to some problem with my 35mm camera, the frames didn’t advance all the way and some exposures were split between images. The failure of the mechanism resulted in the perfect cropping of my friend Jon into a grocery scene with my friend Jackson. I think this is pretty neat.
The footage from the Easter weekend in Marlborough should come back from the lab tomorrow! Right now I have some production stills to share. These were taken by my good friend Devan Brancard, who was also a Producer and Dolly Grip for the weekend.
Jackson and I getting the Bolex ready to shoot the sunrise service at Lake Terramuggus.
Shooting with the Aaton at the lake service.
Shooting inside the Marlborough Congregational Church. Tucker doing sound.
Trying to get a moving shot of the exterior of the Church.
We all squished into my Honda Accord for a post-shoot crew photo.
This past week has been on the busiest of recent memory. Along with growing work at my internship, and end of the semester projects, I worked hard at coordinating a multi-camera shoot in Marlborough on Easter Sunday. I’m back in Boston after waking up at 5:30 a.m. to shoot this morning and my body/mind is very tired. But I wanted to take the time to thank everyone who made this weekend possible for me. To Pastor Faulhaber and the members of the Marlborough Congregational Church, thank you for allowing a 16mm film camera and doorway dolly into your Easter service. Also, I wouldn’t have the dolly if it weren’t for the help of Jon Minard of Hebron.
To my friends Amy Nocton and Jason Courtmanche, thank you for letting me stay with you, and thank you for also welcoming Jackson Adams into your home. To Devan Brancard and Tucker Ives, thanks for helping with yet again, another one of my out of the ordinary film shoots.
I’m too tired right now to think of anything else to say besides the shoot went well. I made a little video the night before Easter that documents the trip down to Connecticut.
I’ll post production stills in the next few days. Now I have to write a paper about Be Kind Rewind…
Well it’s a rainy friday here in Boston. You know, the usual April showers. I spent most of the afternoon putting together the winter teaser trailer and working with my roommate Greg on font and media design. I got the footage that I shot over President’s Day weekend back from the lab and it looks really good. It’s a simple, one-light transfer so the quality isn’t as good as it could be, but for the sake of previewing it I’m happy with how it came out. It feels good to know that pretty much everything was properly exposed and dust/light leak free.
This 3-minute preview shows some of the stuff I show around Blish Park in Marlborough plus VHS home movie footage that my parents sent me a while ago. The footage is from 1989 and shows my father pulling my sister and I on a sled while he skates around Lake Terramuggus. The music is a song called “Taken” by a wonderful artist named Eluvium.
This is probably the longest of the teasers that I’m going to make. I wanted to include a lot of the footage because honestly, I wanted to show my parents.
If you want to check out more videos from the production, subscribe to the Vimeo Channel.
I’m entering the world of social media marketing! The production of Hindsight can now, in addition to this blog, be followed on Twitter and through the official Facebook group. I’ll be tweeting while on location in Connecticut and the Facebook group will be another place to post teaser trailers and behind the scenes clips. Both accounts are public, so feel free to check them out. I’m already making some tweets here and there, and the Facebook group should get some more content once I have a teaser ready.
I was DPing a shoot all weekend, so I took today off work in order to get some pre-production done. It felt good to sleep in for once, and then wake up to a hot cup of tea. It’s surprisingly still cold in Boston for being the middle of March.
My goals today were as follows:
Finish my fiscal sponsorship proposal to the Marlborough Arts Center and get some feedback
Finish my working shot list and location/contact list
Write a proposal letter to the family that lives in my old house
Update this website
I did about 50% of those four, but the night is still young. I got some good feedback on my fiscal sponsorship proposal, but I found that becoming sponsored is more complicated than I imagined. I need to consider things like ownership, liability, and other IRS legal stuff. It’s tough to think about the creative aspect of the project, while at the same time thinking about the non-creative stuff. I feel like my mind can only focus on one thing at a time. Both are very stressful, so when I try to multi-task (like I did today) I end up becoming frustrated with myself.
But I decided to take a break and watch a film that I had been wanting to see for a while, but just never had time. It’s a German documentary called, “Our Daily Bread” and I actually found it very inspiring. The film is essentially wordless. There are a few scenes where we scene people in conversation, but there are no subtitles for us non-German speaking Americans. Ultimately the conversations don’t matter because the point of the film is the images. For 90 minutes, I was engulfed in the utter weirdness/beauty/horror of modern food production. Because the film has no narration, and no interviews, the images let the audience develop their own reaction.
I’m glad I watched Our Daily Bread today because it provided needed inspiration for what I want to do with Hindsight. My original idea was to make Hindsight a wordless film, but I was nervous about whether or not I could produce enough images to complete a story or render a theme. I changed my original idea after seeing some films by Ross McElwee in which narration was paramount to the theme. Working off that thought, I decided to try and include some interviews with my family. I think Hindsight will end up being a mixture of two very different approaches to documentary filmmaking. I can only hope I know how to find the right balance.
