Super Long Day

So today was super long. I was up early this morning so I could be at the office at 7:30am to head out to a shoot. We're doing a commercial for a local restaurant, so we had to be in and out before they open at 11am. I was basically a grip, which is what I'll probably have to be for a while until something comes along where we're not so pressed for time (which might be a while, given the natue of small-market advertising). Eventually, though, my supervisor wants to hand me the reigns for a project. Today I was basically setting lights, handling equipment, occasionally offering a second opinion, and other such things like that. Including having my hands show up in the edge of a shot to be the waiter setting a plate on a table. :-)

After the morning shoot, we piddled around the office for a little bit, and I captured all the footage into Final Cut. I'll be editing the spot, which is exciting. Then we left in the early afternoon to go shoot footage for two more commercials for a different restaurant. For this one, we unfortunately didn't have much of a script to go off of. We had written narration for both spots, and a very vague shot list that had been handed down from the big boss, but that was about it. He showed up at the beginning and gave us a really quick run-down of the sort of thing he was looking for, then took off and left us to it. Naturally, the restaurant had an unexpected lunch rush, meaning we started way later than we wanted to. The shoot took way longer than expected, and we basically scrambled around like ants trying to get everything done as quickly as possible and still have it look good (this was actually one of the projects my supervisor was hoping to have me shoot, but because of all the delays and such, it didn't work out. I did get to try out a couple shots, though, which was fun).

All in all, I finally ended up back at the house at around 7:15pm, about 12 hours and 5 minutes after leaving this morning. Quite the tiring day, but it was good experience. Tomorrow should be pretty slow, and I'll most likely be done early, which will be a nice follow-up (my supervisor even offered to have me just take the day off, but I see no point in that).

This weekend should be fun. Plans are, once again, to head up to Harney Peak. This time the weather is supposed to be good, and I'll be going with a group of guys instead of on my own.