Serendipity, Part 1

It's 2 weeks till we roll camera, and I just got a google alert with this breaking news. Talk about serendipity, that's the first day we'll be set up in Chicago and ready to shoot.

Contacting Illinois Department of Natural Resources now...

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

Away we go!

Started filming this thing officially last night at a panel discussion on Asian carp and the Chicago waterways at the University of Chicago. It was rather stressful and lovely at the same time to be in LA but hand over the reins to some very capable people in Chicago - guess that's why they say movie making is a collaborative process. I couldn't help but think of the scene in South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut where the boys lure their friends to a meeting of La Resistance by promising pie and punch.

Big thank you's to Jack, Allyson, Paul, Colleen, Anu, The University of Chicago Sustainability Council, Split Pillow, and Columbia College, and the panelists Joel Brammeier, Jim Farrell and moderator Josh Ellis.

Jack, I hope the refreshments were worth it.

Hi, I am planning to use this space to document the process of making Carp, Canals & Chicago for Split Pillow's Chicago 360 v.5.

Going to check out blogger.com features and the like.