The Visitor from Elsewhere

As today was a my day to be not at my “day job”. I spent it working on a shot list, my director, Dave Mcguire and I put together on Wednesday for the film’s big murder scene. What it needed to contain were very specific shots that use a nomenclature based on scene numbers, shot abbreviations and letters of the alphabet but not all of them.

Then, because I am also the producer I sent out an update to our actors about the upcoming shoot.  We are still looking for an actress to be the murder victim and I am hoping a couple of actresses I have been in touch with will be able to fit us into their schedule.

I also spent a bit of time negotiating a price on a wide angle lens for our new Canon HV30 high def camcorder. I like the idea of using a wide angle lens because I love the idea of getting more of the world in the shot and I am hoping we can do some time lapse shots of clouds with it because I want to make boiling clouds a motif in the film. I have also found a fantastic source of expertise and useful information at http://www.hv20.com  This is a wonderful forum full of extremely knowledgeable, and generous professional videographers with real world knowledge on everything having to do with the HV20 and HV30 high definition cameras from Canon.

As the night started winding down, I started learning about how to do inexpensive dolly shots.  I Googled DIY  and found oodles of useful info on how to make dollies from everything from pvc pipe, plywood sheets to skateboards and even wheel chairs.  I emailed what I discovered to Director Dave and DP Andrew to get their feed back.  I am just a writer. What do I know?  I am very fortunate to have such good and patient friends who are also so much more advanced in the movie business than me. Both are Columbia film school alums and both have been incredibly good to me.

Tomorrow I want to send out a few more e-mails and get some work done on the script. Producing is so time consuming! But hey, without producers, the movies don’t get made.