Saturday

Saturday morning I woke up at around 7:30 or so, but we hung around the flat (where James lives) for a while taking a long time to wake up and have showers. James was already gone. James' shower had this thing where we had to wait 20 minutes between showers so that meant we took a while. But that's ok because it was very relaxing staying in bed.

We were all in Ulladulla to film a concert that James was putting on for Easter called "Reclaiming Easter for Christ" or REC. There are some bands that come down from Sydney for the show and they play on a stage at the front of the Church with lights, big speakers and big screens, it pretty cool.

We all arrived at the church at around 10:30 to begin our set up. We worked our way through that slowly while we solved problems like cameras without connecters to mains power (James R (Not from Ulladulla) made a cable which fixed it) and having the wrong connectors on the end of the video leads. We were finshed setting every thing up but the cameras by about 2:30. This meant we had time to put U2 Elevation on and whack it through the sound system on the stage (maybe its more technical to say patch instead of "whack"). That was cool.

They had a sound check during the after noon where we tested the cameras, found shots and I practiced it my cable boy. I was on front hand held camera so I had a kid who run behind me making sure I didn't get my cables tangeled up. It was usful because I had my video cable, my power cable and my coms (headset communication stuff, they were cool, when you put them on you got to say "Tom is on Coms" and feel very professional). The kid and I praticed for a while walking up and down next to the stage and then on and off the stage, so he could get used to rolling and unrolling the cable quickly. He did alright, he a was good kid.

Following sound checks we set up the projectors that were projecting onto two big screens either side of the stage. When they were set up they looked very cool. I was most impressed.

At 5:45 we had a prayer time. At 6:15 we started a video that played on the screens. At around 6:45 we all took our places, Robert on mixing (with a very cool, posh, professional video mixer), David on back camera, James R on middle camera, and me on front. At 7:00pm the concert started and off we went.

It was very much fun. I got to run around the stage, filming. Looking for shots. Rob would tell me when I was being "broadcast" on the big screens. I spent most of my time at the front of the stage, running up and down, getting shots from down there because the audience didn't move to the front of the stage. The first band were called Bodyworx, they weren't bad, but they weren't really good to film, they didn't play for the camera.

The second band was The Coopers and they were cool. There were three of them which made life easier for me, I had less people to worry about when I was on stage. The lead gutair guy was very good. I got to do the close ups of his gutair solos and he was the bomb. I liked filming them. They played for the camera.

It's exhausting work filming for two hours straight, because your brain is always active. You're always picking shots, shooting them, looking for new ones, plus your on your feet and you get no time off. You always have to be paying attention, and on your toes. I found I was exhausted at the end.

When the concert finished we then had to pack everything up. We had to put all the video gear in the back of my van. We had to roll all the cables, then we had to take down all the other gear. All the sound system and all the lights had to be taken down. Anything that could get broken had to be packed up.

So we set to work while the rowdy, Ulladulla night life wandered past (mainly drunk teenagers who swear and fight). We finished at around 12:30am. It was quite a job. While we were packing up James P (Ulladulla James) told me that someone had been murdered in Ulladulla that night. It was meant to be a drug thing. I was happy it wasn't me.

Back at James P's house we sat around for a while drinking soft drink and eating shapes. At 1:30 we went to bed. There were very few fart jokes on that night.