so this is Christmas

it's been more like hanukah this year: we opened some presents on Christmas day; tim's birthday is on the 27th, so there were more presents then; last night we had the full family Christmas with becky and brady, and i've heard we even have one or two more gifts that are still in transit.

i remember when i was younger, i wanted toys and decried clothes.  it was fun to be cleaning up the wrapping paper and looking at my pile of presents; between me and my brother we had a couple of good nintendo games, so that we would play one until we got bored and returned to the pile to retrieve another new game.  when we were done with them, there were other toys that we'd temporarily forgotten, and we'd experience a second excitement to remember what new things we had.  in the more recent years beneath the tree would be numerous dvd-shaped gifts.  between myself, my brother, and my dad, there was no need to disguise their shape; we all asked for several movies, and so it was a question of not 'what' but 'which'.  i would admire my new additions to my collection, feeling cinematicly wise [this was especially great that year that tim worked at best buy and my parents got the employee discount].

this year i tried to be mature.  i asked for two dvd [both criterions--i can't express how excited i feel to hold a new criterion movie in my hands] and that was really it for 'toys'.  i set aside some money to go shopping for clothes in the after Christmas sales, and the one or two articles that i do unwrapped are usually things i picked out, tried on, then left alone with mom or dad for a few moments at the store the day before.

so what did i unwrapped this year?  measuring cups, jumper cables, and a paper shredder.

all things i asked for, and i'm excited.

this one's for you, mandy

mandy:: i know you don't read my blog, but thank you so very much for being that friend who somehow knew when to say hi. that little gesture meant more than you know and turned my day around.

jess, thank you for being so darn awesome and a stellar friend. i can't tell you how much i appreciate you.

Christmas day

i was a little curious what today would be like. becky and brady won't get here until friday, and after much discussion we settled on the plan to open some presents now and save a few for when they join us. becky was absent for two Christmases while she was in brazil, so it wasn't horrible that she wasn't here. plus, she would be here in a few days, along with her husband. and thus we kind of had Christmas, and that went quite well. we all got some cool presents, with mom's new bathroom scale being the toy that everyone wanted to play with, and had a good lunch. incidentally, our dishwasher broke yesterday, meaning that mom and i will be appliance shopping tomorrow and that today tim and i did the dishes by hand, which inevitably led to a dishtowel fight. the sad end to this story is that despite me being better skilled with the weapon of choice, he got a really good, stinging hit on me.

12 days of Christmas at 30,000'

seven years ago i was on a plane back to minnesota after having been in japan for two years. i forget if we were flying from l.a. or san fransisco, but the plane was en route to chicago if i remember right. [it was a stormy Christmas season; i ended up spending the night in minneapolis, where my mom coincidentally was, while my family and friends had gathered at the fargo airport]. somewhere over the states between california and chicago, the captain came over the intercom and wished us a happy holidays and announced a game: whoever could be the first to name the twelve days of Christmas would receive a special prize. the engaged couple next to me started working on it while i began to recall the old disney Christmas record we listened to for so many years. i must have been doing something odd, because they turned and asked me if a had it. i said i think so and they called the flight attendance over. i began with the twelve drummers drumming and eleven pipers piping, and by the time i reached the six geese a-laying, people started to clap for me.
i was awarded with a bottle of champagne, which provided a nice final missionary opportunity as i gave it to the couple next to me and explained why i didn't want it.

the annual muppet party

tonight's annual 'muppet's Christmas carol and egg nog' party was a huge success. we're getting better at making egg nog [having an electric mixer to whip the egg whites certainly helps] and the turnout was great. we sang along to the songs as best we could, laughed when we wanted to, and there were warm-fuzzies all around.
tonight i noticed just how good of a movie it is. the fun of the muppets is certainly part of it, but it's a solid-made movie at its core.

as we were sitting around the room and talking afterward, jaime reached down into our couch and pulled out mark's missing camera cable. then she pulled out a shoehorn. 'my shoehorn!' i shouted. and then jack reached in and said 'hey, a rolling pin!'
and, sure enough, he pulled out a rolling pin.

o juno, where art thou?

the number one movie i want to see this year is 'juno'. i read about it when it was at the toronto film festival a few months ago, saw the preview for it before 'dan in real life' [which is also worth a look] and knew right then and there that i needed to see it. and, today, as mark and i are looking for a movie to see, i find that 'juno' is playing NOWHERE in utah... GAH!

nevertheless, 'alvin and the chipmunks' is in every theater from salt lake to spanish fork.

the pretty ballerina

racing the light of magic hour as we shot flaming coconuts flying through the sky, we finished on 'the pretty ballerina' battery, one of our strongest and my personal favorite [it's common to label/name the batteries in one way or another to keep track of them].
we wrapped. four days in utah [which feels like a whole other project months ago] and ten days on the north shore of kauai, which was an adventure like nothing i've ever been a part of. in college i shot 15 or so projects, and have continued to study the art of cinematography since. the most visible aspect of the craft has to do with lighting. a good dp is someone who can sculpt the light almost alchemical. a knowledge of lights, gels, and variations in diffusion is what i brought with me when i worked. and that is certainly a part of it. but it's only a part of it. and while i could tell you that in an essay, i think this project helped me understand it.
i generally expected the director to say 'the camera goes here', and so i'd have my assistant put the camera there and then i'd work with the gaffer to light it and we'd shoot it and then i'd ask the director where the camera went next. repeat.
the catch on this shoot was that there were no lights. and the natural light was such that i couldn't do much to it anyway. but i'm a 'director of photography', but just a lighting cameraman. [i recently watched a documentary on cinematography in which one of them said 'i am a cinematographer. ...not a director of photography.' that's puzzled me, because i've always preferred it the other way] i direct the photography, and that should encompass more than just light and shadow; that should involve the composition of shots, based on the events of the scene, where should the camera be to most effectively reveal the story? i'd better know.
the dp has more artistic power on the set than anyone save the director, and that realization was the scroll of knowledge i found at the end of this journey. that's a lot to carry, but i look forward to my next opportunity to try out what i learned.

the suite life

due to scheduling changes that we knew of when we got here, we changed houses today. we're now down at the other end of the street. still a nice house, though a little smaller, and a little light on the rooms.
once again, paul and i were here first, and once again, we nobly offered to share a room, so we got the biggest room, the master room. beautiful attached bathroom, wonderful shower, two sinks. and one bed.
very large, but just one. i like paul and have no worries about him [well, apart from the sleepwalking, and that fear has subsided some with each passing day], but its still, well, kind of weird. we'll each hug to our own side, and he suggested one of us sleeping on top of the sheet, so there's no possibility of bumping one another.

the aforementioned spacious bathroom has a stylish shower that eschews the traditional curtain in favor of a deep, three-sided stone and glass area. i love the design, but, as we soon discovered walking through the room, the two mirrors across from one another over the sinks are in such a way that you can fully see into the shower from the room's main door. so there will be definite notifications when the room is in use.

mostly, i think what's bothering me is ryan's referring to our room as 'the bridal suite.'

t.i.h.

remember the opening for herzog's 'aguirre, wrath of God', with the conquistadors slowly moving across the south american landscape? that's what today was for us. we made a 4-mile hike to a waterfall; one that had the advantage of never been used in any major movies before because of its remote location. how herzog's crew carried all that film equipment for his movie is something i can't imagine; i'm impressed that paul was able haul that heavy beast of a camera this far.
we were told that this trek could be made in two hours. we made it in 2:45, during which we traversed many mountains, hopped over waterfall streams crossing our path only to be faced with mighty rivers, with no choice but to hold the equipment overhead as the water rushes up to our waste. there were times where it was difficult discern the correct direction, and while other times presented no apparent way to move at all except to gymnastically maneuver between tree branches.
while this was taxing on both body and mind, the same challenging land also buoyed our spirits with impressive mountains of brilliant green, mist rising amid the hills; the rich blue pacific ocean strecthing to reach the endless sky; bamboo forests and lush jungles, us forgiving our soggy shoes, socks, and pants because the same water provided the majesty all around us.
the waterfall was the capstone of the dual nature of the journey, of trial intertwined with beauty. at the base of the valley the water splashed at the end of what must have been a 200-foot fall. everything was verdant and alive. yet, like so many other locations on the shoot, it wasn't quite as it was when it had been scouted a few months earlier; the water volume had seemingly tripled, creating much more noise and bringing more wind and more spray. despite the blue sky above, it felt like we were perpetually in a mild hurricane. t.i.h., my friends.
but we'd been at this for over a week already, and we knew how to work in this; you just do it. finding places to safely rest the camera while framing a usable shot, doing all that we can to keep the camera dry, and fighting an sisyphean battle to keep moisture off the lens [never had the choice to use a single zoom lens over a set of primes been proven wiser]. wiring the actor's with wireless mics was obviously the only option, and we had a laugh when brian commented that he could hear one of their heartbeats. this was made all the better because this scene involved a kiss, and evidently someone was a little nervous, because the beat got faster halfway through.
the three hours spent hiking in the morning and saving three and a half hours for the return trip [we do not want to be on that hill in the dark] left us with about 3-4 hours to shoot. we worked as fast as we safely could and used every trick we could to speed things along, but in the end we had to cut a scene and shoot it somewhere else another day.
the return hike was reminiscent of the triathalon i did last year; after the first hike and the shoot, i had no energy, and you can take all you want from nothing, it's still going to be nothing. actually, i had run out of energy about halfway over the second of the three or four mountains we crossed at the start of the journey; the rest of the day had been on that mystery energy that comes from i don't know where. so the return home wasn't all that bad, save final 20-30 minutes when the sun had fallen from the sky and it was getting to dark to see much. i saw a light up ahead and was happy to hear ryan's voice; he brought me a light then continued on, going to give help to the group behind me. i was surprised to know that i wasn't the last one, and relieved to see people again. heck, i was thrilled to see.
sitting in the car on the way home was one of those moments when you never thought you'd feel that comfortable again. but if a warm, dry, cushy car seat wasn't pleasure enough, we were rewarded with the one thing i told myself could make this better: we heard the 'huli huli chicken' song on the radio.
t.i.h. this is hawaii.

for the benefit of mr. seal

we were setting up a shot this morning when some of the crew started wondering off down the beach, saying there's a seal down there. that's cool, since we haven't had a chance to see a lot of ocean fauna here, but brian and i were working on the shot. then someone added that the seal was on the beach.
we've paid to come to hawaii, we may as we see the seal.
and, sure enough, around the bend there was a big, real seal, lying there on the sand. he [she?] was quite a ways from water and had one eye closed. there were no tracks from him to the water, signifying that he'd been here for quite a while. it didn't take a marine biologist to see that we had a beached seal here.
what do you do? that's a big mammal, but i suppose enough of us could maybe roll him back out. as one of the actors got near him, he barked. we were all keeping a good ten feet between us and the sea creature, fascinated but cautious. matt the actor, for whatever reason, began running circles in the sand in front of mr. seal. he didn't like this and began barking at him some more. matt kept running and the seal lifted his head in irritation. alright, the seal can at least move. i think matt enjoyed getting the reaction, as he continued to run around. evidently this really ticked off the seal, because he was barking as he flopped himself around and back out to the ocean. turns out we didn't save his life; we ruined his quiet time.

grace under fire, pressure, rain, wind, and cold

my feet are really starting to hurt; teva-like sandals are made to be worn for an afternoon on the beach, not for days on end through the jungle. but when you're in the jungle, that sense of the exotic eases the sandpaper-like feeling of the sand caught between the strap and your skin.
today it rained. all day long. constant rain. we keep the camere under an umbrella, but it still manages to get wet. everything, everywhere, and everyone gets wet. no matter that i've got my raincoat on, i was still wet. brian [our director] didn't even bother to wear any raingear. you can either be miserable that you're wet, or you can cheer that you're in hawaii.
shooting on the beach still brings the unexpectedly large wave, so that i am not surprised to find water up to my ankles during the middle of a take. our production designer had built the characters' makeshift shelter yesterday and today we decided to move it further down the beach, as we've found a more secluded spot that's also better for sound. we've now got it on a great spot on the beach, close enough to the forest to be sheltered, still receiving enough light from the beach for us to shoot. one of the hardest things about this shoot in hawaii has been the lighting; we have a small grip package and no lights, but with only two two grips/electrics, it boarders on impractical to bring out much to carry through around with us. plus, a 12'x12' silk isn't worth much if there's no sunlight to diffuse. i think that's hard on brian, to pay for this equipment and not be using it.
it occured to me today that i spend a lot of energy focused on operating the camera, designing the framing and setting up the shot; i like that and it's part of the job of a director of photography, but i think that if i had an operator, i would have more energy to tweak the lighting. i've never felt the need for an operator before, but this is taking more work than anything i've shot before, too. as i was looking at the shot, wondering what more could i have done with the resources i have, i realized that if i had set up a shiny board, a silk, some negative fill and a bounce that was giving me the same look, i'd be thinking i was pretty amazing. i'm lucky to have the overcast weather, giving us soft light everywhere; things look pretty good the way they are, which lets us move fast. as i was about that, i saw where i could move a bounce board and separate the actor from the background just a bit; we took a few moments and it that little tweak made a good difference. that's where the art of lighting comes in: like anything, little details make good go to great.
when dumbledore looks into the mirror of erised with harry potter, where everyone sees what they want most, he says he sees himself holding a pair of nice wool socks. i appreciated that more today than i ever have before. i think i would have seen myself wrapped in a thick, warm towel.

welcome to the jungle

today was a good day. i checked the sky this morning and it looked clear--a day of bright sun would be wonderful for our schedule. arriving at the beach, we were met with winds that caused me to wonder how much more devastating are the sandstorms of arabia. brian and i searched for usable spots to shoot away from the windswept beach, and we ended up doing our entire day like that; almost nothing we shot was scheduled today, but we still got a lot of shots completed. we found a a beautiful spot where the light was breaking through with morning mist still in the air. by the time we had the dolly and track set up, the light had moved some and the mist was dissipating, but we got the shot and it looked very good. i've found i much prefer shooting in the jungle to the brushlands of utah; there are no dry and prickly plants and weeds; it's lush and green and moist and the air is rich.
we kept a good morale among the crew [with this group, that's not too hard], and the shots looked good. i had a whole post planned about ponderances of being a cinematographer, but i'm so incredibly tired. another time, perhaps.
how is it that we have 11 hours of available light yet i still feel like there is so little free time?
how is it that i'm tromping through the jungle in shorts and sandals [granted, today really should have been shoes and socks day; those sandals are at their best on the wet sandy beach] while my computer tells me it is 3 degrees in minnesota right now? it's like being in a time warp.
how is it that the weather can change so incredibly fast here. if we don't have the right kind of light for a shot, we literally wait five minutes and we have what we need. of course, then we
have to shoot fast....

on an island in the clouds

the power's out in the house. that the internet also goes down with it isn't too much of a frustration, but i am surprised at how dark it is here. so much that it feels like i'm in a photography darkroom.
there are no street lights here, meaning that the streets outside are completely dark when the sun goes down. not just a safety hazard, it means i can't go running at nights like i was hoping to--it's surprising how difficult it is to find your way when it's so dark outside. i don't remember things being this dark at home when the power goes out. it seems like there's always a sort of ambient light when the lights go out. but maybe not. as i've been writing here, my assistant came in to ask what we should do about our batteries; should we used the power inverter and charge from the car, or is there anything else we can do? good question.

today was our second day in hawaii, again on the beach. it's a good location, with enough looks that we can get a lot of scenes out of it. shooting on the beach of a tiny island surrounded by the largest body of water on the planet, the weather changes quite often. today we had rain, overcastness, bright sun, wind, mist, and every possible combination rotating throughtout the day. yet we were very fortunate that to always finish out a scene with consistant weather. we got the first scene all either overcast or rainy enough to make it work, and our next scene on the rocks looked very nice in the diffused light of the cloud cover. best of all, the second long scene in the rocky area stayed sunny long enough to shoot it all. that was the hardest part of the day, and took longer than it should have. we just couldn't seem to block it out right, or at least in a way that was practical. looking from the beach over to the rocks was fine, but any other angle had us precariously into the ever changing water and looking back into the beach of tourists, many of whom found us far more fascinating than the hawaiian landscape.

as brian and i were trudging through the scene, i couldn't help but again realize how little i know and wonder how some of the great cinematographers would shoot it. if they had the same resources as i did, what would they do? where would they put the camera, what light would the use, and how would they work with the director?

our last shot of the day gave us a very calm ocean, which lured us into trying our luck. we needed our actor out in the edge of the water, on his knees in prayer. and the best angle for that had us also in the waves, with the camera very low. you'd think we would have learned from yesterday: we were nearing the end of our first day, shooting at the tree line, far from where even the highest waves were washing up at that time. then one of the actors said 'wave!' and we turned to see water rushing in at us. paul grabbed the camera just as the tripod was almost completely engulfed, saving the camera. earlier that day we were debating if 'pelican' cases were waterproof. i said i thought they were safe to even toss into a lake but didn't want to try it. the mighty pacific, however, had other ideas. i was chasing it as the ocean carried it just out of arm's reach, the black case bobbing in the water. eventually i grabbed it, but as i was coming back, i saw a sad sight: mary's camera case. not a watertight case, but a simple consumer case for a digital still camera. someone grabbed it, but the water had already done its damage. as we were regrouping, i looked out and saw ryan coming out of the water and carrying what was once a 4'x4' black flag. it looked like it had been through a hurricane and lost. the fabric was completely ripped from the frame on three sides. how it was destroyed so quickly was impressive, but, as ryan put it, 'the ocean claimed it for its own.'
today's tides had been, on the whole, much more consistant. we had a few people on wave patrol, watching out while we got the shot. with the layered light of the clouds, the palm trees, and the 'skyfire' filter making everything look like a bold sunset, it looked good.
as we were loading the vans [our grip truck was confiscated this morning as some workers deemed it too heavy to pass one of the many one-lane bridges on the way to set, despite our having crossed it twice yesterday], ryan noted that we've maintained consistancy of light quality from scene to scene. that got me to thinking further that despite my frustrations that not all of my shots are beautiful and crafted to perfection, i couldn't think of anything that was particularly bad today.

being the director of photography brings with it all the connotations of the title. agonizing over the design of each shot, collaborating with the director on where the camera should go and why is followed by working with the grip and gaffer to practically use the equipment that i told the director/producer we need to pay for encompasses the most immediate aspects of it. after the hour meeting with the director and production designer about tomorrow's schedule, i have spent another hour talking with the first a.d. and costume designer about set etiquete, protocol, the inter-connectedness of it all, and the ins and outs of politics between departments. that opened up a previously little-considered realm of my job that almost made me forget i had to make the shot look great, too. i hope i get the chance to be a d.p. again, so that i can continue to practice and improve. but right now i just need to push on through tomorrow. my assistant is fantastic, i think we'll break in some more equipment tomorrow, it's 11:30 now, and the 'hope mix' is on its last song anyway.

the somnambulist

ok, this will be told rashomon style, because no one really knows what happened.

mary's story: "i was asleep upstairs when i heard this screaming coming from down below. i'm thinking, 'oh great, it's the first night and they're already fighting'. i came down to find jeff at the his door, telling me everything's fine and to go back to sleep."

paul's story: "i had this dream that i was looking for something and the next thing i know, jeff is screaming at me and i'm screaming back. it really freaked me out."

my story: i had gone to bed around 10, very tired after that long day of shooting and travel. i remember being awoken by the sound of my screaming more than i remember actually screaming. but i remember it being not just a startled yell or a cry, but a full-on life-in-mortal-peril janet leigh scream. a dark mass that was my roommate was in front of me. 'paul? paul!' i asked, and his response was one of confusion. 'are you alright?' 'yeah. what happened?' neither of us were really sure, but i could hear mary coming down to check on what had happened. i assured her there were no injuries or alien abductors. as i went back into the room, paul was already asleep again. i, on the other hand, still had adrenaline coursing through me and that post-nightmare mentality, where, despite the obvious absence of any sort of danger, the psychological vestiges of terror linger firmly. i laid in bed for another 30 minutes, afraid to take my eyes off the bed across from me.

this did give us a very good story to share on set today. surprisingly, no one else in the house heard us.

ocean pacific

whenever i'm up for a long period of time, i like to keep track of how many hours it's been since i've slept. i think i'm somewhere around 40 right now.
'yesterday' [being saturday] was a hard day--we had 11 pages to shoot and worked about 13 hours. we were in an office building all day long, but with trending lighting that was too dark to do much for the camera, meaning that for several shots we had to essentially relight the whole place ourselves. for some scenes it worked alright, including our biggest scene which actually went quickly and nicely, but there were other times, often just one shot of a scene, when i wanted to just go home and curl up on the couch.
at the end of it, though, things were feeling alright, and the inches of fallen snow finally made it feel like Christmas time. i got home around 9, having decided not to sleep, since we were meeting to leave for the airport at 3 in a. i planned to get the house cleaned and take care of a few things, but ended up just sitting down on the couch for a moment and watching a movie on tv. i'm always interested in watching movies when i'm making movies, because afters hours and days of composing shots and designing lighting, i'm more attuned to how the big time productions do it.
becky and brady stopped by around 10 and i was finally able to give them their wedding present, now that they've been married for six and a half months. they loved it as i hoped they would, and i was glad i could give it to them before i left for hawaii. and we decided we had time for another part of the bbc's 'planet earth'.
on a movie a few months ago, a friend of mine mentioned that he had just bought the 'planet earth' dvd set and that it was amazing. i'd seen it commercials for it when it played on the discovery channel but didn't give it much thought. but at his recommendation i put it on my amazon list, though i could never find an excuse to buy it. when 'dadnapped' wrapped, i used that as my reason and grabbed it from a third-party seller just as i noticed it was rising on the bestselling lists. for the past few weeks, it's been among the top three or four selling dvds on amazon, and with good reason, too. this series is incredible: 40 crews, 200 locations, 2000 shooting days, and a look at the world like i have never seen. the first part is a 'pole to pole' look at the different environs of the earth, then each of the following nine 50-minute episodes is dedicated to the arctic, mountains, fresh water, caves, grasslands, deep ocean, etc. as long as the circle of life doesn't bother you, i cannot recommend this series highly enough. amazing footage of rare siberian leopards, underground water caves, glow worms, birds of paradise, otters ganging up against a crocodile, and, of course, elephants! and we've only watched the first four of ten. as a bonus, after each episode is a ten-minute 'planet earth diaries', looking at part of the production and how much work it took to get just a few of the shots. let me just say, i am glad i wasn't on the cave crew....
earlier that day i called my dear sister and asked her if she had time to pick up a pair of sandals and a sun hat for me, since i've been shooting all week and my trip to wal-mart last night was futile. becky pointed out that it is snowing and not really sandals weather. nevertheless, she and her husband showed up at my door with an early Christmas present of nice size 11s and a perfect hat. the best part about the sandals is that they say 'ocean pacific' on the bottom, so that if i ever forget what that large body of water is, i can just check the soles of my feet. oh boy.
having five hours until we left seemed like a long time, yet i somehow found myself throwing the final clothes into my suitcase as anthony knocked on my door. we all met at brian's parent's house on a very cold and early morning, commenting on how none of us had slept. even my new camera assistant had just wrapped a previous movie about three hours earlier.
i'm surprised how much we were able to take aboard as 'carry-on'. you know those little size-measuring things that help you determine if your suitcase/backpack is too big? forget that entirely. our camera assistant brought on the hd camera in its case, which was at least three times the theoretically approved limit, and i carried on a large imac in a carry case. i think paul had to make a small argument for the camera once, but that was the extent of it.
we flew from salt lake to l.a., from l.a. to maui, and from maui to kauai. from maui to kauai the lady next to me noticed my script and asked if i was an actor. i explained i was a cinematographer [i'll admit, part of me doesn't feel worthy of saying that and part of me really likes saying that], and we ended up talking throughout the whole flight, from religion to hawaiian history.
hawaii was pretty much what i thought it would be like, akin to japan or thailand. but with chickens. ryan says he read a sign that explained there was a severe hurricane 10 or 15 years ago that pretty much wiped out all of the farms and their fences, leaving the chickens to roam wherever they desired. waiting at the rental car place, paul the camera assistant offered $10 to the first person to catch a chicken in the open. ryan and ephraim tried with no success, but we've got twelve days here.
it's funny; once the sun is up, one's tiredness goes away. even still, after so many hours, you remember how tired you really are. i think i 'slept' a total of three hours between the flights, but sleeping sitting up like that is hardly rest; i didn't feel any better, and as far as i'm concerned, it's been 40 hours.
here's to shooting a movie in hawaii.

one last thing: we stopped at the nearby grocery store [where milk is $8 a gallon] and noticed their video rental machine. among its selection was 'turnaround', the movie that we had made back in april.
and it was rented out.