Open 24 Hours

There is so much talent in the Park School of Communications at Ithaca College. The number of fantastic productions that come out of the school is amazing. I have personally worked on five ICTV shows and one senior film thesis in my short time here so far. This weekend I'll be helping out on another film. This one is a CP2 (Cinema Production II) film, Open 24 Hours. 

The basic plot is as follows: a man and his long-time girlfriend go to the store to get a morning-after pill, but after a meeting some interesting people they begin to think that this might be the perfect time to forget the pill and start a family. (disclaimer: I haven't read the entirety of the script. I read the treatment and that's pretty much the gist of it)

Even though I'm only boom op for the film, I am still really excited. We are filming in the Tops here in Ithaca (the one down past Wegmans). Because we are, y'know, filming in a supermarket, there are a bunch of things that need to be taken into account. One thing is that we can only do stuff when the store off of peak hours. Hooray for overnight shoots! The rough schedule of filming is 9pm-7am on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. 

Other things that I've thought of that could be intriguing: 

• We are probably going to have to move some food packaging around so we do not see any logos. EDIT: Apparently we aren't worrying about that
• Continuity would be a b!%&# over the course of filming three separate days. Customers or employees could move things around on Saturday that will mess up Sunday. 
• What kind of security/supervision will there be? I hardly think a supermarket will trust 20 college kids to roam in their store. EDIT: The Tops night crew is small, about seven people.
• Almost all of the crew knows each other, and I predict lots of distraction. Everything is nice and organized, however, so there's hope!
• I've never been to a shoot that has been shot on actual film, so it will be neat to see that happen.

So yeah, I am excited. It will be an interesting weekend to say the least. I wonder how much sleep I'll get...

Boom Op vs DP

Last week I posted a little about sound design, so this week I wanted to post about sound recordists and boom operators, the common audio positions found on a set. Sound guys notoriously get treated like shit. Most other crew members including Directors, Cinematographers, and Producers don't give sound priority. All they care about is the image that is being shot, but in reality the picture can be great but if it sounds bad then the entire film is going to be bad. That's just how it is. Of course there are exceptions to this and there are Directors and DPs that care and ask how a take sounded, etc, but for the most part this is the case on professional sets and especially on college sets. Sound doesn't get enough appreciation.

This link below is called "An Open Letter From Your Sound Department." It is written by the top Hollywood Mixers and Boom Ops and gives practical solutions for each crew member on set to make the film sound better. I bet no one knew that it is in the Grip's job description to help sound and set up sound blankets and work to create the quietest filming environment. I learned quite a lot from this letter and anyone can learn from this. Definitely worth a read.

http://filmsound.org/production-sound/openletter.htm

As someone who has both been a Director of Photography and a Sound Mixer/Boom Op, I can relate to this short animation that makes fun of this relationship between the camera and the microphone. Anyone that has done both these positions or just taken notice while on set of what goes on and where all the power seems to be. I would highly recommend everyone to watch this video.

There are plenty of things like this that occur on film sets and there are quite a few of these animations that poke fun at it all and they are all funny and completely true.