So this past Saturday I shot a short film. My crew and I have spent that last several months planning and preparing, gathering the equipment we'd need, making sure we had all our paperwork and permits in order, etc. Then, the evening before the film shoot, we get an email notifying us that the Pot Festival (marijuana is legal in Washington) is going to be happening at the same time that we were suppose to be filming at our second location, and just 50 yards away from us. Naturally, it would have been nice to know this a month ago when we first contacted the city of Seattle about our film. Oh well, it was too late to do anything about it so we decided we'd have to make the most of it.
Saturday morning, at our first location half of our crew thought we were starting at the second location, and were a half hour late. Then, when our equipment arrived, we discovered that we had no memory cards for the camera or audio recorder. Thankfully, one of our crew happened to live nearby and he had a couple memory cards. Our DP hadn't shown up yet and he wasn't responding to calls or texts. This was very out of the ordinary for him but there was nothing to be done at the time except promote my gaffer to DP for the time being.
The first location went well and we finished ahead of schedule. We packed up and everyone headed to the second location; none of us knowing exactly what to expect once we arrived.
The moment we arrived at the location, it became clear that we wouldn't be able to film there. With the 100+ people smoking pot all around us, not to mention the loud music and emotional speeches that made any audio recording pointless.
I told everyone to take lunch and my gaffer and I scouted around for a replacement location. It took about half and hour but we finally found a suitable replacement location not too far away and we were able to begin filming the scene. My DP finally called and explained the situation and he was soon with our crew. And then our camera stopped working.
It was at this point that I considered scrapping the day and rescheduling. Thankfully my crew kept at it and I wasn't about to let them down. We fussed, we prayed, we made some calls, and in the end my brother (who had an identical camera) was kind enough to let me borrow his camera. By this time, we had about an hour left before our actress had to leave.
We resumed filming and, miracle of miracles, we figured out what was wrong with our original camera and we were able to shoot with both cameras simultaneously. We wrapped the last shot with one minute to go before our actress had to leave. I sighed a breath of relief and now it's just editing and some ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement, for those lines we didn't quite get a clean recording of on location).
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