This blog is going pretty well, and my goal is to blog on every single day if at all possible.  I want to keep my audience informed and in the loop!

Today we shot at 39th and Division at a the diner there on the corner.  I arrived at a church parking lot nearby where crew parking was, parked my car, and caught a shuttle van to base camp.  Today, "base camp" where all the trailers, offices, costumes, etc. are was just in the parking lot outside the diner, so it was all right there.  I did my normal check in and got my walkie talkie and headset.  Today when I arrived, Ann, the base-camp P.A. was rushing around collecting all the "sides".  For those of you who don't know what Sides are, they are small little half sheet booklets that the office prints out every day.  On the front page they have a small version of the call sheet where they tell what scenes are being shot that day, where, who the actors are, when they're supposed to report in, who the "stand ins" are (the people who stand in for the actors while the cameramen frame the shots so that the actors can take a rest from time to time), and any additional notes.  Behind the front sheet is the script from the scenes being shot that day.  Basically the Sides are a quick version of what is going on that day, and very important to the crew so they can stay informed.  The problem Ann was having, was that the front of the Sides were the ones from the day before... So we quickly started tearing the fronts off of all the Sides and cursing at the office for making out lives a little harder.  (Mostly because a large majority of the crew already had the Sides, and she would have to spend much of the day replacing these for people, as if her work with the cast isn't busy enough)

Anyways, from there she made sure I went back to crew parking, where the catering truck was, and got breakfast. (More french toast and eggs! I think next time I'm gonna try the breakfast sandwhich or breakfast burrito)  After eating my breakfast I radioed in to Ann and got a number of orders for different crew members, wrote them in my handy-dandy notebook, ordered them, and brought them back on a van with napkins, forks, etc. a small time later.  When I got those breakfasts and returned them to Ann and other parts of the crew, I stood around for about 30 seconds and then found someone else who needed a breakfast on set.  After looking at my watch on the final breakfast I brought to crew (which was maybe 10 or so), it was 9:30am, meaning I spent about 3 hours fetching breakfast! This wasn't as bad as it sounds though, better to be active than do nothing at all, plus I'm sure I'm winning a few favorable points in everybody's books by doing them this service... but maybe I'll start considering collecting gratuities... haha.

After fetching breakfast for a while I was stationed at a door between the set of the diner and the connecting bar.  Basically I spent the next 5 hours holding down fort, aside from a few trips to "craft" (the snack bus) where I fed myself, or to the coolers where I stayed well hydrated (Chris will be happy about that).  While I had fewer conversations with the crew, besides one of the stand-ins who was asking me about Catlin and what I thought of it since she's considering it for her child who is currently 3, I did get the chance to check out "video village".  This village of which I speak is usually a tent in which the director, first assistant-director, director of photography, etc. sit and watch the camera shooting take place.  From there I got to see how the camera lens drastically altered each scene, and I got to see how they set up each shot.  I noticed a lot more longer, more continuous shots that we use in our film classes.  While this takes much more coordination, it creates a better visual effect and a more streamline action sequence.  Their cameras also allow them to pull focus much better than ours do, which I think contributes well to their ability to tell story and create nice visuals.  Besides this the day was somewhat repetitive and got tiring considering my long string of early mornings.

Otherwise it was "another day in paradise" as some of the crew like to say.  I enjoyed it and it's very likely that after the first day of the district track meet tomorrow I will go back to set! Tomorrow they just happen to start working at 2:00pm because they are doing a night shoot instead, something I would be very interested in seeing.