Rolling, Background, Action!

This weekend I assisted in producing an audition video for some contestants trying out for a popular NBC reality show. We had planned doing it throughout last week, but, as usual, personalities and schedules came into play and, thus, we did it all over the weekend .

Interestingly enough, shooting the content was easy enough. The hard part was the editing of the video. The video was required to be 5 minutes long and there were some requirements we had to satisfy in the contents. When one things about it, 5 minutes is not a lot of time to tell someone why you should be on a show . After shooting all of the initial footage, we got into editing it, and it was kinda difficult to put together the footage into a cohesive story. We chose to reshoot some parts of it to tie together the other pieces more easily. Overall, the video turned out pretty good.

Each time I do these type of projects, I learn new stuff. As a director, I got to use coveted Hollywood keywords such as "rolling", "quiet", "background", "action", and "reset". I now understand how useful they are where before sitting on the other side as an actor I hated hearing them, because I felt the process was self-explanatory. I now can see the looks people on camera give when they hear those words and see how focused they become. I also learned how to handle difficult creative disagreements without becoming a complete arse about it. There were 4 cooks in this kitchen and I feel we all had a say so in the ingredients of this soup while maintaining a unified vision. I learned when to recognize a reshoot is required and when it isn't. Without that reshoot, this video would've been much more haphazardly put together. As a producer, I learned when to take a break and let things sit while ideas are floating around. All good skills to take with me to the next adventure!

I caught up (somewhat) on my sleep yesterday by sleeping till 3 PM. I need more days off like that !

Currently listening : City of Evil By Avenged Sevenfold Release date: 07 June, 2005

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