The Kindness of Strangers

Shooting is going pretty well so far. I hired a great sound recordist who can back up as DP which is serendipitous, since we just found out we are getting the opportunity to shoot the city, lake and waterways from a helicopter (yay, yay, yay!), and my DP is convinced that the laws of physics dicate such a machine should not remain aloft and therefore refuses to get into it (boo, boo, boo!)

But to each his own, right? Of course, the helicopter ride takes the cake for being the flashiest example of the kindness of strangers, but we have been treated like royalty all week (ok, royalty who has to lug their own film equipment themselves), but I feel like a princess nonetheless.

The crew has been given access to shoot from the bows of a Wendella sightseeing boat, in the belly of the Field Museum, a bustling kitchen at the Palmer House Hilton, on a barge moving up the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal - through the electric fish barrier, and now, the helicopter. It's truly amazing to me again, how passionate folks are about this issue, and now how generous folks are with their time and resources.

I could make an entire doc exclusively starring each one of my amazing cast members!

Prep, prep and more prep

OMG, i have plane tickets!! This thing is really happening!! Had a production meeting here in LA this weekend with my DP, the insanely smart Kevin Elliott, and my BF, skilled supporter of all things carp, to talk through packing.

Kevin is bringing his 1K chimera on the plane, I bought 2 1k chimera light bulbs from B&H Photo which are being shipped to my fearless associate producer, Allyson Nelson, in Chicago. Also bought a giant flashlight for unexpected dark moments, or filling in between the 1K and the lights that Split Pillow will loan to me. The camera we are using is also Split Pillow's, a Panasonic HVX200 DVCPro camera. It stores data on P2 cards, but sadly Split Pillow only has 8GB cards available for loan. The camera holds two cards at once for a total of 16GB of space. If we shoot at 720(HD), we can shoot for about 30 minutes. Given that I have interviews set up back to back with little downtime and by our workflow estimates, using the camera as a deck, the cards will download to my Macbook Pro at a rate of 1:1 (30 minutes for 30 minutes of data), I am looking into renting bigger cards.

Still need:

• more P2 card storage space
• an in-field sound recordist
• possibly a p2 card reader (so that we don't have to tie up the camera)
• a rental car and somewhere to sleep
• 2x1TB external hard drives for redundant backup