Something died today...
So we just got back from our first shoot for 'Old Ways'.
Pretty much nothing went according to plan.
Everything took a far longer than anticipated, we were supposed to be shooting by 12:30 in the afternoon but instead we got going at about 2:30 at the tail end of our daylight. Shooting at this time in the north doesn't leave you much daylight.
The location we were going to use didn't work out. But we found a fantastic new one, based on a suggestion from one of our cast/crew members Adrienne Talbot. Thank you Adrienne. We moved to the new location and set up. I won't say why yet, but the location was amazing!
However, let me tell you something about filming in the cold... it sucks!
Eventually, after rigging up all my gear and covering everything with hand warmers (those portable heat packs you can stick in your pockets) and hockey tape. In the past I have had great luck with using hand warmer packs for keeping gear warm in the arctic winters, until today. We set everything up with precious daylight dwindling fast. Blocked out our first scene, shut off the vehicles, and started shooting. Aside from a few Sunday snowmobiliers causing delays it was going good... for a little bit. We shot the beginning of the the first scene and suddenly our audio died!
I checked everything, and it turned out the 6 or so year old battery I had left in my mic had finally bit the biscuit. I swapped it for another one and started up again... three minutes later is died too! Previously I had tried to find Lithium batteries in town, as they handle the cold better; but no dice.
So suddenly we were out of batteries, and no batteries meant no audio!
So yeah, impossible to film dialogue without audio so we packed it in for the day to regroup and lick our wounds.
We are going to try this again. This time indoors in front of a greenscreen, because, as I mentioned, shooting in the cold sucks! The only things we are shooting outdoors are background plates for our green screened actors. Take that arctic nature!
I'll let you all know how the next one goes.
JJ
Pretty much nothing went according to plan.
Everything took a far longer than anticipated, we were supposed to be shooting by 12:30 in the afternoon but instead we got going at about 2:30 at the tail end of our daylight. Shooting at this time in the north doesn't leave you much daylight.
The location we were going to use didn't work out. But we found a fantastic new one, based on a suggestion from one of our cast/crew members Adrienne Talbot. Thank you Adrienne. We moved to the new location and set up. I won't say why yet, but the location was amazing!
However, let me tell you something about filming in the cold... it sucks!
Eventually, after rigging up all my gear and covering everything with hand warmers (those portable heat packs you can stick in your pockets) and hockey tape. In the past I have had great luck with using hand warmer packs for keeping gear warm in the arctic winters, until today. We set everything up with precious daylight dwindling fast. Blocked out our first scene, shut off the vehicles, and started shooting. Aside from a few Sunday snowmobiliers causing delays it was going good... for a little bit. We shot the beginning of the the first scene and suddenly our audio died!
I checked everything, and it turned out the 6 or so year old battery I had left in my mic had finally bit the biscuit. I swapped it for another one and started up again... three minutes later is died too! Previously I had tried to find Lithium batteries in town, as they handle the cold better; but no dice.
So suddenly we were out of batteries, and no batteries meant no audio!
So yeah, impossible to film dialogue without audio so we packed it in for the day to regroup and lick our wounds.
We are going to try this again. This time indoors in front of a greenscreen, because, as I mentioned, shooting in the cold sucks! The only things we are shooting outdoors are background plates for our green screened actors. Take that arctic nature!
I'll let you all know how the next one goes.
JJ
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