SOME OF MY TAKEAWAYS

One of my biggest takeaways from the article was the idea of “not killing ugly babies.” I understand this to mean that we should not immediately dismiss ideas that seem either underwhelming or too crazy/impossible to carry out, because with more development they may become incredible. Along these lines, the belief that “risky shot ideas… take cinematography to memorable places” stuck with me. Boring and basic shots often make for boring and basic films. The ultimate takeaway from this article, which I think can be applied to almost any domain of life is to plan for the worst, hope for the best, and be flexible. He stresses the benefits of having shoot days planned to the minute, thinking about possible issues with lighting and sound when site scouting, and being prepared for things to go wrong, batteries to die, and actors to be late.

 

SOME ISSUES I'VE DEALT WITH

I’ve definitely had my fair share of dead batteries, accidentally formatted sd cards, and dust-laden lenses. I have come to understand through these experiences that if something can go wrong, chances are, it will. For example, when we (Eva, Chapin, Sophie, Carson, Mia, and I) went to shoot for my texting-and-driving PSA, someone (who will remain anonymous) was unofficially placed in charge of the SD cards, and we happened to be shooting for a different project the next day, and when got on set for the other shoot they accidentally put the SD card with our footage into a Tascam and reformatted it. This meant we had to wait for another sunny day and reshoot, but when we did, we came up with some new shot ideas and it ended up being better than it would’ve been without the mishap. I’d like to think that many problems often come with silver-linings like these, even if they aren’t quite as evident as it was in this case.