{"id":13793,"date":"2023-05-08T19:40:16","date_gmt":"2023-05-09T02:40:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/?p=13793"},"modified":"2023-06-02T08:06:26","modified_gmt":"2023-06-02T15:06:26","slug":"wrap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/2023\/05\/08\/wrap\/","title":{"rendered":"Wrap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I had planned on going back to bed after breakfast, I was going to drink coffee in my jammies, sort my photos, and snooze until the noon call. Instead, I spent the morning driving up and down Route 3 with $75,000 worth of camera sticking out my sunroof. 14, 16 hours passed before I could implement my initial plan. I got back to my room shortly after midnight, ate the snacks I’d scavenged from the craft table, and crashed very, very hard.<\/p>\n\n\n

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I got the call to drive, so I went to drive. Over the course of three days I fetched a bottle of wine, and later, several flats of soda. I sat with our investors (which was by no means a chore, they were delightful) and talked with the cast and crew. Now and then I’d scrunch my forehead while revising lines to make them work for the situation at hand, and then I’d go back to, I don’t even know anymore. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent a good deal of the last day in a jacket that said MEDIC across the back, not because I served as a medic, but because it was cold and the medic had an extra jacket. I sat in the cab of the truck watching the monitor, I sat on banks of washing machines, and I stood hunched in that huge jacket under an awning on the tarmac, always looking over someone’s shoulder at the monitor. I got sunburned on the first day and chilled all the way through on the last. I spent more hours in shoes than I’ve spent in the last three years altogether. I ate too much junk food and drank cold coffee. I wasn’t hungry until I sat down and then, I was ravenous. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One night I ate a burrito from a gas station takeout counter, it was about 10 pm and the burrito was surprisingly good, and then I slept very poorly because I’d had a gas station burrito at 10 pm. I asked a car full of dangerous-looking guys who were not amused to drive around the other way so as not to interrupt our shoot and I met the laundry owner’s hairless cat and I ate donuts out of the back of a 72 Cadillac. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

If this sounds like a lot, well, it was. But I assure you, I was probably the least busy, the least occupied person on the set. <\/p>\n\n\n

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When I got home, I spent another three days sleeping off the adrenaline from three days of seeing my weird little story become a movie. I divided my time between napping on the couch, falling into a deep, deep sleep in my bed, and eating the leftover snacks from the set. I was happy to be out of my shoes, to have my dog at my side, to be in my kitchen, but for about 48 hours, I felt like I’d lost something, forgotten something. Oh, it was the twenty other people who showed up all day, every day, to transform my ten-page script into magic. That’s what it was. Right. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Folks have asked me what I learned from the shoot. It’s probably too soon to tell, but there are a few things I observed. I’m continually surprised (disappointed?) by how hard it is to be taken seriously at your word; people will not believe you are the real deal until you unload a giant truck full of lighting rigs on the loading dock. (Not you, you totally <\/em>had faith.) The guy who told me that if you can see the camera, the camera sees you, that same guy walked right through a shot about 15 minutes after sharing that lesson with me, so even seasoned pros make mistakes and it’s okay. It’s not a new lesson, I learned this when I was playing live music, but folks want you to succeed, everyone wants it all to come together and work. I witnessed almost everyone hit a moment at which they said, “That could be better,” and then, they made it better. That’s how you know you’re working with the right people. The pay isn’t great and the hours are long; you really have to want to do low-budget film because who knows if you’ll ever see more than a few hundred dollars for your time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, hell yes, I would do it again in an instant. In an instant. Yes. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We’re officially in post production. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":13806,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13793","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film-school","masonry-post","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13793"}],"version-history":[{"count":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13827,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13793\/revisions\/13827"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nerdseyeview.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}