J.O.B Shoot

Whew... what a week. The lack of posts is due to the fact that I have been WORKING... HARD.

As some of you know, I am a voice-over actor. But I also do other work in the media field.

On Thursday of last week I began working on a film shoot with one friend (a really cool sound guy), for a friend of mine (an actor, producer).

See, the production, which will be released in a few months, is a modern day adaptation of Job. It has been Peter's dream to do this for about 4 years, and he finally got funding!

The film will be about 45 minutes to 1 hour long, and is targeted at churches, and at the African-American audience (Peter's vision is to impact that culture). My other friend, Byron, is an Emmy Award winning sound designer, and he did the sound recording and will be doing the post work for the film. He called me because we have worked together quite a few times on shoots, and because I was a friend of Peter's. I was the boom operator. Basically, I hold the microphone, which is on the end of a long pole (a boom) over the action to catch the sound. Builds the arms pretty well, cause I have to hold it up pretty high. Some of the scenes were 3 or 4 minutes long, and you have to hold it, move it over the actor who's talking, and not let it down... both arms straight overhead... ugh.

So we began on Thursday shooting in a hospital. I got up at 4:30am, we drove to New Jersey (8am call) and began shooting. Around 9pm we left... talk about a LONG day... the next day (which I didn't work, I had other things I was doing) they had another 8am call, and Byron got home at 3:30am!

Monday we picked back up, with another 8am call (got up at 4:30am again), ending around 9pm (we rented a hotel that night). Tuesday was fun, we shot a rain scene among ALOT of other things... that was an 11am to 11pm day (I pulled into my driveway around 1:30am)... and Wednesday we shot in the Empire State Building from 12pm to 8pm.

At 8, the sound guys were wrapped, but the rest of the crew was doing some MOS shooting. MOS stands for "mit out sound" which means "with out sound" but they call it MOS because some German director said it that way... go figure. It's just like clothespins being called bullets or C 47's (there were 47 in a bag) and the fluffy microphone cover being called a dead rabbit.

It was a mixed crew, many were not Christians, and I think it was a testimony to them (I hope it was) on what we were trying to do. Peter started the shoot with prayer, and ended it with prayer, which was really neat.

Anyway, I am just getting back to normal today...

All in all, it was a GREAT time, got to help a friend, got ALOT of experience and knowledge, and got to be involved in something that will have an impact on the culture!

Now... time for a rest... the MLG show starts up again next week...:D