We finished our second film shoot on Monday evening, and I’m quite happy to be finished.  I started to feel very sick on Saturday morning, and really didn’t want to go to school, but we were checking out that day so I couldn’t really sleep in.  By the end of that first day of shooting I was really feeling awful.  Sunday was an especially tiring day.  Our shoot was expected to last from 11:00am until 3pm or 4pm, but lasted until 7:30pm.

My shoot took place Monday morning at a restaurant on Bleeker and McDougal called “Le Figaro Cafe”.  I was extremely worried the entire time that the manager was going to toss us out of the place at any moment, but we managed to get it done without any real problem.  Although at one point in time the manager was hinting at the idea that I should be giving him some “compensation” for using lights, but I managed to get by without having to pay them anything.  We did stay for a big lunch however.

I had to shoot extremely quickly since I was worried about getting in the restaurant’s way too much so I made sure to have a very organized, and detailed shot list prepared ahead of time.  We arrived at 10:00am, started shooting at 10:20am, and finished at 12:20pm, just in time for a nice lunch (expensive too, $120).  I will get my footage back in digital form tomorrow, so only then will I know if things really turned out the way I had hoped.

So far I have to say that my biggest concern about the school is that I really feel like my tuition is actually more like a contracted agreement to rent equipment only from NYFA, instead of tuition at an actual school.  The equipment is really crappy too, and you can’t take anything out unless it is for your projects.  I’m starting to feel like I’d be better off just buying a bunch of books on film, and spending money to rent the equipment on my own and doing my own tests.  The in class sessions are somewhat useless, but more on that in my next posting.

Posted by Emmet Gibney on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 2:47 pm.