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| | | | | | | | | | | | | Pete Jones - First Day
For three and a half months, I prepared for my first day of shooting. The problem with preparing for something you have never really done (to this extent) is that, no matter how many times experienced people like Chris Moore and Pat Peach tell me it's crazy, I couldn't really fathom it. Well, damn, I wish I could have that first day back.
For starters, my bullheadedness resulted in a location that was all wrong. If you learn anything from this episode, learn never to shoot in an environment that you cannot control, such as the El train during rush hour. It's just miserable. Another great lesson to learn is to try and reduce the inexperience level on the first day. What I mean is that in this case, working with first timers who happen to be eight years old and ten years old all by themselves with me, a first time director, was a recipe for disaster. Schedule your days more wisely. I can give you many excuses as to why it was the way it was, but in the end, the bottom line is: we blew it. And the failure of the first day gnawed at me for the entirety of the shoot. People tried to console me and say that we made our day, which means we shot everything scheduled for that day. But, the question I kept asking myself was how much of an accomplishment is it to make your day if what you shot is shit? Another lesson to be learned is again, if possible, do not schedule crucial scenes on the first day and in my mind, these three scenes were in the top ten as far as importance.
Adi Stein, who plays Pete, and Mike Weinberg, who plays Danny, do an incredible job considering they are ten and eight years old respectively and have had very little experience on a movie set. But at the end of the day, when time was seriously crunched because the law says kids can only be in front of the camera for four hours, any mistake was costly. When the kids nailed their lines, the dolly shot was off. When the shot was right, the kids weren't. And had we planned our day better, we could have withstood these mistakes. But we didn't, and these mistakes cost us quality in two scenes.
In the editing room, we disguised these mistakes the best we could. And to the viewer, I don't think the scenes will be glaring weaknesses, in fact, according to some cards from the test screening, these scenes broke the top five most favorite scenes. That brings me some comfort but, in the end, I know realistically what these scenes could have been and we fell short.
Experience. As you saw by this episode, it can be an attribute that is painful to acquire. | | | |
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