We had managed to assemble an awesome crew for our shoot day. Some were friends that we had known for years, others were strangers who came out as a result of a twitter post. Our call time was 4:30 am and everyone was awake and on time. We started our day getting to know each other, going over the gear, explaining who would be responsible for what, and running through the storyboards to get everyone on the same page.

We started hauling the gear out to the woods before the sun came up. We used our rented light to light up the woods. (I’m pretty sure the neighbors thought there was an alien abduction happening.) As the sun started creeping over the pines we were ready to go with our first running sequence. Once our lens was pulling enough light to shoot at 300 frames we were off. It took us until about noon to capture every shot on the storyboard. We had a few mishaps with the Movi that slowed us down. The Movi was turning off randomly, which required a system reboot each time it turned itself off, about every shot. This really cut into the shooting schedule! So much so, that Neil Murphy our Assistant Director, was really put to task on trying to keep us on schedule. We were running a full hour behind schedule because of the issues with the Movi, so ended up calling break for lunch to trouble-shoot the issues.

After warming up with coffee and sandwiches we were ready to start the painting sequence. Because of the Movi issue, we ultimately decided to move to hand-held camera for the painting sequence. Having only limited opportunities to capture what we needed, made everyone a little nervous. Not to mention we knew we would be tossing paint around a camera worth more than our lives. We started by getting our establishing shot and a wide shot of Joe doing the painting from beginning to end. Our next set-up was putting the camera on a hand held rig and grabbing the close up shots. Paint was flying everywhere. The wind had picked up and I remember seeing Joe toss paint toward the board and having the wind carry the paint about 10 feet into the trees. When the scene was done it looked like a unicorn exploded. Everything was covered in paint…except the camera. It was a modern day miracle.

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