TUWOPS: Day Four

So today was a pretty relaxed day. We had two location moves, but otherwise it was a pretty simple shoot. For the most part the stills I’ll be showing are from a day previous. So the big scene we shot today won’t get into my editing system until tomorrow.

Which leads me to answering a question from a fan of this blog. They wanted to know about our gear and workflow. I can’t recall the exact camera, but the format we’re shooting on is HD-XDCAM, 24p (23.98). I’m editing the footage at high-res on an iMac 2.1 Ghz with 1.5 GB of ram (which I’m probably going to upgrade to 2.5 GB after realizing how cheap that is to upgrade). My DP has a faster computer sitting around collecting dust which I may borrow. I’m just getting slight stutters do to the high-quality of the footage, but nothing monumental. If I do borrow my DP’s tower then I’m going to have to figure out how to get monitors… it’ll all work out…

So for those unfamiliar the XDCAM discs work as both discs and tapes in how you can capture them, so it means that you can dig footage in actually faster than it would take to capture it like a tape. When a disc fills up we try to upload it to my hard-drive. I’m editing on Final Cut Pro, despite the fact that I’ve been using primarily Avid for the last few years.


So onto today’s shoot. Another day with Christine Horne, another fun arty section to shoot. Her character is a poet who knew Paul when they were both in art school and so there’s a piece in the film where we see a collaboration they did. I can’t lie. It’s been a blast to shoot it.

This other shot here is from yesterday’s shoot at a pool hall, which I was concerned about because it’s over four pages of dialogue but Kris and Christine chewed it up and spit it out like it weren’t no thang. You gotta love actors that can make you look good.



Today finished with a session in a recording booth getting down some phone calls, answering machines, etc… that I’ll need down the road. So a pretty relaxed day, which helps since tomorrow we’re shooting all night – so no updates till Friday I imagine.

I can’t finish this entry without giving a huge shout out to Carlos Diaz, one of the actors in our film. We had an issue with one of the extra’s casting agencies earlier this week (in which they basically never confirmed with us, and then so we had no extras – luckily some eager teens saved our butts and played soccer and tag all afternoon). However tomorrow is a scene where we MUST have extras. I put an ad on Facebook seeing if anyone had any ideas for people that might want to earn a little cash being an extra, and within minutes Carlos was all over it like a bar of soap in a prison. He even took his laptop to the set of the series he’s currently on, just to bust ass and help to make sure that we’d have extras for tomorrow night. Huge trooper and huge shout-out.

So my goal is to stay up late tonight and start playing with the footage. Have to condition my body for tomorrow’s night shoot. Should be a blast!