This pass weekend I helped my friend and colleague,
Alex Alvarez, on a short film. Alex, who is a sound man for as long as i've know him, had recruited me from time to time as his boom operator( the dude with mic on the end of a stick) and wanted me to join along on this project. The short film, called "Chlorophyll" and it was a four day shoot. I had other gigs lined up so I could help out for two days. The first day of shooting was shot at night. Alex didn't need me for the evening, he just told me me to pick him up after the shoot. I met him later on around midnight at a studio near the Design District in downtown Miami. There I was introduced to
Andrew Hevia, the producer of the short.Andrew, who was also Minister of Agriculture at Borscht Film Festival,had a interesting resume of short movie on his website. I immediately complemented him of his 16mm short "Spinning Off!" , which I really liked. I got a bit of the low down on what was going on tomorrow from Alex and Adrew.
The next day I met the director
Barry Jenkins and Cinematographer
David Bornfriend.They both came from San francisco but Barry was originally from Miami I later learned.He made a name for him self as a filmmaker and has directed 6 films.David Bornfriend was a photographer turned Cinematographer thanks to the DSLR revolution. We were shooting on two Canon 5d mark ii with tripod, a
RedRock Rig and a
Konova slider. The lights were...wait there was no lights!!..Expect for a china ball, everything was shot by natural lights. Not even reflectors or bounce boards were used. Was this madness?! Perhaps. It was certainly the first time I've seen a DSLR film production with out some lighting gear.This makes me eager to see what the final results of the picture will look like as Barry will be editing the movie. Another thing I saw for the first time on a production was the iPad Slate. I mention about this app on a previous blog and was ecstatic to finally see it being used on a set.
For sound, Alex was recording on H4 Zoom which he has gotten used to after several pervious shoot using the DSLR. Met a lot of great people on the production and hope to work with these guys again.