Sunday, March 13, 2011

Pro bono cave dives, concern for the world and a new director

Right, so....I finally thought I'd get a few days off to go chill in Bali and shoot a small doc. Yet, as all good things in life, this too got cut short. I spent less than 40hrs in Kuta Island. Landed, shot, ate a feast, cave dived, got a massage and got back on a plane back to the homeland. Wish I had some pics, but was too busy freakin shooting to do anything else. I did get some snaps with the ol iPhone. Tryin out the Hipstamatic app.....hey, a camera app thats actually cool.




Now moving on to the business side of things. My friend Sara Liza Baumann, director of the now infamous and critically acclaimed short "Botomul" recently decided to try her hand in directing stuff here. Since she kinda got screwed with her last crew, so I tried my best to make her feel more at home during my first project with her, a promo film for World Concern. This is the first time I had a director not only direct, but edit the footage in FCP and become the first director ever to be the 1st AC and pull focus like a champ (which btw is ridiculously difficult, since I was shoulder mounting a full on HD cam with a 50mm prime and moving around taking closeups of stuff......oh, and this was her first time as well).
Working with talented and lively peeps like Baumann is really something that you don't get to experience here much and it finally pumped some new life into what I thought was slowly becoming a monotonous and "regular" job. I can only hope I find other directors who share her enthusiasm.....and on the other hand, I'm hoping she can hold onto that enthusiasm once she's worked with some of the agencies, clients and the like. The director also felt obliged to take some pics of the set, and me. Sadly, I was to busy to take any of hers, but we forgot to cut the roll on the last shot of the day and we ended up of like a second worth of footage with her in it, so here's a pic.

You can follow Sara on her website: www.oldfanfilms.com