Shooting Day 2

So we went shooting again on Sunday. I got up at 5am which was rather painful. I'd been planning to be in bed by 9:30ish, but the community house was visited by members of the extended community so 12:30am it was.

Anyway, I picked Helen and Jon up at first light and we drove to church to meet the crew and cast. Then it was off to Stockton Beach which was to double as our desert for the day.

Actually we made it to Stockton Beach only after breakfast and getting lost for an hour or two. But we got there.

Stockton Beach, as far as I can tell from the small amount that I saw of it, is the gathering place for the weekly weekend convention of dirt bikers. All over the place there are people with trail bikes and ATVs. This makes it difficult to shoot a scene that is meant to be set in a deserted desert. There's tracks everywhere and the noise of bikes regularly coming from all directions. Still we did our best.

During the day we managed to shoot all the stuff we wanted except one scene which we moved to a smarter place in the schedule. It was hard work spending all day walking around on sand, and harder work lugging equipment across dunes all day. And I didn't even carry the heaviest stuff.

The jib was good fun. And I'm enjoying having a camera assistant, who when he isn't distracted by the "Making of..." camera or anything else of mild interest, attends to my every need. Basically, after every shot (if it's hand held) I hand the camera to him and walk away. I hear this is standard industry practice. I'd feel bad doing it except the holding the camera all day might mean that the quality of my work goes down cause I can't hold the camera steady anymore I'm so tired.

I haven't seen the footage yet but I think I did a better job with Day Two than Day One. I'll watch the stuff tomorrow.

We finished our shooting at about 8:30pm. We all split up decided to travel home separately because we were tired and just wanted to get back quickly, but we all met up at McDonald's anyway. It may have been that we all wanted to avoid each other and accidentally bumped into everyone else none the less. The joys on only having one big rest stop between Newcastle and home.

I made it home by 11. It was a rather extended day.