09/02/2021
The hardest part about working in the "film" biz is nothing ever goes as planned. NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU PLAN. Before I get too far ahead I first need to say that the families, kids involved in the shoot and Client were AMAZING. Couldn't have asked to work with a better group.... Seriously. cont'd:
A week prior to this shoot my lovely girlfriend and I scouted multiple locations until settling on a local park that had the perfect lighting for an exterior night shoot (one of the hardest times to shoot video /or photos). We did a quick test shoot and after looking over the footage in the editing bay I was pretty pleased with the location. It looked perfect.
Now as a small business owner on a tight client budget we can't just rent thousands of dollars in lighting like those big Hollywood production companies. Instead we have to use practical lighting which in this case is just fancy lingo for street / park lamps.
We had a plan and like good practitioners even tested that plan.
Mere hours before the shoot I get a message from one of the parents (thank god) informing us that the location we planned to shoot at had a HUGE event planned for that night. To be honest I went into panic mode for like 15 minutes then just started driving around to see where else we could shoot. We ended up finding another park. The problem? That park had literally no lighting what so ever but as they say in the theatre "the show must go on".
The lesson? Always have a back up plan. Scratch that.. You should have a back up plan for your back up plan. Murphy's Law: "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong"
Shooting in pitch black, getting eaten alive by mosquitoes, apologizing to families about the lack of light, worrying about everyone's safety running around in the dark... Yeah. Stressful to say the least but with all that being said we still had a blast. Even better the kids had so much fun they stayed after the shoot and played for another hour and our client was stoked with the end result.
When life gives you lemons.. Make a cool video. Thanks for sticking in there and reading this whole thing and next time you're having issues at work, or something doesn't go according to plan just remember you could be an editor sitting in front of a computer with a pitch black video wondering how you're going to pull this off...
