Getting Ready For Another Episode

            Two years ago I was working in healthcare, and if you told me I would end up being the type of person who couldn’t travel anywhere without my laptop, I’d have laughed. Yet here I am, stuck in bumper to bumper holiday traffic coming home to New Jersey from Maryland, laptop out in the car, using my iPhone as a hotspot so I can read the script for episode two. The Delaware Bridge is closed so it’s looking like I’ll have plenty of time. This web series has turned me from frequent flyer to “can I purchase WiFi in advance, so I can work through this flight?” Now when I check into a hotel, I look for the outlet before I hang up my clothes. I spent a solid hour of my Sunday at my niece’s christening answering e-mails. My sister in law asked me, who could you possibly need to talk to right now? My director and my leading lady, of course. The only two people I remember to correspond with these days! All jokes aside, my husband and in-laws are outrageously supportive and tell me all the time they’re waiting for me to take them on vacation when I’m a big-time producer. That would be a dream, I hope I can make that happen one day.

            This morning while scrambling to get household chores done and make it to a pre-production meeting on time, I laughed out loud at myself when I realized I remembered my iPhone charger (it was dangling from the charger port..) but left my debit card at home on my computer desk. My brain has become all Mount Airy all the time!!!! Am I stressed out? Yes. Am I happy? Yes. Are the two mutually exclusive? Not even a little bit. One thing that I’ve realized about film people is that we’re chaotic, all of us in one way or another. We love chaos, we’re good at it, we thrive on it. It’s what makes us great at this. If our crew isn’t bouncing a million and one ideas around the room, we’re lovingly cracking on each other, arguing our take on a scene, or running around trying to make everything perfect for that one shot. We’re meticulous and emotional. We’ll run the same scene five times late at night to get it right and get our feelings hurt if someone doesn’t like it. We all have different backgrounds, ideas and opinions, but we all have the same goal in mind: bring that vision to life.

            Although we’re pretty far from seeing it all come together I have a feeling in my gut that this is going to be good. I also feel as though I should clarify that I do not always have this feeling. Earlier this semester there were two projects I worked on where I definitely did not have that same feeling. Let’s just say they won’t be making it into any demo reel, ever. With that being said, I’m f%$#@*^ excited to see the final product. The awesome and talented girl that was picked to edit Mount Airy gave me a sneak peak of what she was doing with the footage from episode one today and I'm so excited to see even more. Since I’ve decided to make this post short and sweet to rest up for back to back shoot days later this week, I’m sharing some behind the scenes photos I snapped with my iPhone while we were working on the pilot episode:

Awesome iPhone shot I took from the rafters above the pool. Check out the crane operating the URSA over 13.6 feet of water in the bottom corner! That camera costs the same as a whole semester in our film program...

Professor Voorhees in a rare untucked state getting the perfect tilt while our leading lady lounges in the pool. 

Professor Levy literally taking matters into his own hands to get an extreme close up. Cinematographer, Maguire watches intently, never too far from his camera.

      Maybe I’ll post some short behind the scenes clips from this week's shoot to my Twitter feed, who knows. I guess you’ll have to stay tuned and find out. In the meantime, look out for next weeks podcast to see if I make it out of producing episode two alive. It's 50/50 odds at this point.