(no subject)
The "ND" filter we used on Phil's music video shoot "Life in La" ... originally I slapped it on there as a joke because we'd forgotten our ND filters and so badly needed them ... and then we gaff-taped it to the lens.
I feel like I work at my best when it's with the unprepared. In my opinion, my crew and I work faster when the director isn't overly ready. For some reason it's easier to make things up as we go than to execute heavily pre-planned/ambitious set-ups. The work we do comes together when I'm allowed to "discover" (or "figure out" if that sounds less pretentious) the image and frame along with the director while we're working. I think I'm difficult to work with because I'm not a big fan of pre-production meetings... especially the long ones. I feel like in the long ones we begin to over-think, over-analyze. I appreciate floor plans and shot lists, and sometimes, they are necessary but whether we have these things or not, we still end up having to adjust, re-think, re-adjust, re-plan, and improvise. So much can be communicated to me with fewer words "lens flare" ... DONE! ... "focus-thing" ... DONE! ... "smoother" ... DONE! ... "darker", "lighter" the list goes on but the words remain precise, concise, and efficient. It's definitely important to prepare, make estimations, and set-up our ideal scenario but when director's talk my ear off, I feel like it compromises me, distracts me from what is really important for their work and their story. It clouts my mind with what we hope to predetermine but ultimately cannot. I'm learning that it's when I'm left to my own devices, on location (with a blocking rehearsal...or two), that my understanding of the lights and the camera and the action and the scene and the story really begin to come clear to me. So many of the things that directors like from me are happy accidents, many of the reasons why they come to me is so that I can recreate something I did in the past that came from me fucking up, people invest their trust in our style and my work because (unbeknownst to them) i'm a bumbbling idiot. Maybe it's not so much that I work best with directors that are unprepared, I think what it is is that the seemingly "unprepared" really just trust me and my crew and it's because of that trust that our best work is so obvious. Yeah, I guess I feel like we work at our best when it's rooted in trust.The crew and I are more like rabid dogs...sure sure we're effective and terrifying on the chain...but when we're cut loose, we really do some proper damage.