So, we geared up last week Friday to continue our journey to finish up our short film, The Ones That Left. Again we needed a few additional items so Ash begged Alex at Hand Held Films for a stupid order that he actually agreed to. That’s an M40, Joker 800 (W/ Leko attachment), Joker 400, Hazer and some grip. Ash packs up by himself and he’s off to the kleenslate studios to start getting ready.

Friday night 9/27, Sam Hicks Ash’s fellow DP comes to lend a hand. Sam tells Ash he’s crazy as hell and there is no way he’d do this without a crew. It makes sense, but it’s true. Ash gets crazy sometimes.

After hours of setup, they knockout the first half of the basement scene. It came out pretty nice. We added a rotating gimble for a bit of weirdness.

Saturday, Ash took off. Afterall, it was another 6am wrap the night before. Our dope and patient actor, Michael Hawkins, didn’t even complain. He drove ALL the way from CT to Brooklyn to shoot his scene and we didn’t even get to it. He even jumped on a dimmer to help with a flickering light effect.

Sunday, 12 pm, we’re scheduled to knock out our outside scene for the third time. We just haven’t been able to finish that damn thing. Ash wakes up bright and early, speeds off to Dominique Ansel Bakery for some cronuts. He’d been talking about them all week, he buys 12. Along with a ton of other stuff. Yummy!

Jelani comes through, they get to rigging, they get to rolling and what do you know, it’s night time. Shots don’t match and they have to reset.

Monday, okay, lets try this scene again. Our actress Alyssa, who is just as patient and cool as Michael was willing to stay the night so we can wake up 7am and try to get this shot in the am.

We setup, all seems to be going well until the sun just keeps peeking through our diffusion. Shots have too much contrast and they don’t match. Alysa has to leave for work and Jelani has edits to do.

All good, Ash will just film some other stuff with Tyler on the 3rd floor. Ash bring up the gear, swears a bit, sets up for the shot, it’s night time and no way to bring lights up to blast them through windows.

No worries, for the 4th time, he’ll just try to get the bedroom scene. Ash sets up, Jelani comes back, camera is setup, lighting looks amazing, but Jodey again, wont pretend to be sleep. By the time he is ready to go to sleep, it starts raining and ash has to kill the lights.

Tuesday… Ash is dead tired, no energy and is moving at a snails pace. His only G-A-F, is to get one reversal shot outside and to reshoot the bedroom scene. He’s by himself but has 24 hours to get it, so hes pacing himself and is determined to knock it out.

He goes outside in the am with the actress, sets up the overheads and grabs the shot. Easy cheesy. He comes back in, starts lighting for the next scene… BAM M18 stops working. He grabs the 4k, swaps it out, all is well.

Around 11pm, they get to rolling, at some point in the night we felt accomplished.

Stay tuned and hopefully the next post will mention how we’ve completed our short.