A Message from the Director of Photography

By Rachel Morrison Director of Photography

FADE IN:

If I weren't so exhausted, I would have written much sooner, but I will do my best to start from the beginning. Alas, the beginning seems like so long ago...

When I first signed on to shoot "Palo Alto," I was told my entire crew would consist of fairly inexperience high school (and a few college) students. Needless to say, I was nervous. Very, very nervous. "We will teach them," Brad said, without hesitation. Ok???

...And so the process began. With the extraordinary assistance of Larry Parker, we scheduled lighting workshops at Mole-Richardson stages to train the kids on everything from basic set safety, to the ins-and-outs of cinema lighting.

Many of the crew had barely worked on a set before, let alone anything even close to what we were setting out to do - a 30 something day shoot, comprised entirely of nights. No sooner had we got our equipment, than we started an intensive program of night lighting - attempting to familiarize everyone with the gear, the walkie talkie lingo, set procedure etc. We met at a parking lot off the 405 and ran drills until about 4AM, in an attempt to get the crew used to working nights and sleeping days. To an outsider, the whole set-up was pret-ty sketchy.

But "the beginning" started way before all that. It started with a conversation with Dan, where he suggested we buy a school bus, which could be used as the picture car and double as a means to haul our gear. "What!!!???," I demanded. We NEED a truck. With a lift gate! There were discussions that started by Daniel asking why we needed walkie talkies and ended with me pretending to scream "Pan the 10K" at the top of my lungs [at 3 in the morning]. "Got it, got it" Dan reconciled.

Like any good indie, this one has always been a delicate balance of what is necessity versus what is expendable. Many of my wishes, Brad answered with, "but I can build that". And build he did. See pictures of the 22-foot crane that was ingeniously designed in Brad's backyard. Other tools would have made our lives a billion times easier, but just couldn't be purchased on such a small budget.

CUT TO:

We are over half way done with the shoot. The crew has been extraordinary - rising to every challenge and impressing me time and time again with their quick insight and knowledge learned.

At only 19, the gaffer, Eon, is one of the oldest on the crew and is not only an incredible team leader, but is extremely wise in his ability to judge light. George, had barely set a C-Stand before this shoot, but is now Key Gripping up a storm He is 16.

Going in to the shoot, the position I was most concerned about was the Best Boy Electric because this crewmember deals with all the power. Running and distributing from a 500amp generator is not only essential to any production, but safety-wise, it is truly a matter of life and death. Kenny has stepped up to the challenge and exceeded even my best expectations. He is only 15 years old! When I was 15, I think my biggest responsibility was not screwing up the orders at the local Au Bon Pain.

Rachel, Matt, Dillon, Kujo, Juneau, Vince, Luis, Jon, Jay... everyone has busted their asses in both the camera and grip/electric departments and for this I am truly grateful. This production more than any other I've worked on is really a TEAM effort.

OUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES:

From a cinematography standpoint, the hardest thing about this shoot (besides the hours of course) is that night out here in Palo Alto is DARK. Very dark. Of course, you say, what did you expect? But the difference shooting here than shooting, say in a city, is that there is no light in the background, and there are very rarely sources from which to motivate light.

Normally, one might be able to light the foreground elements in relation to the background, but here you need to light EVERYTHING. This can be extremely time consuming. Every set-up, you are dealing with a blank slate. When you turn around for a reverse shot, your subject may still be lit, but you have to light the background all over again. And for those who don't realize this, it takes a lot of light to make things visible on film. And trees, especially, which seem to be everywhere, eat light like you wouldn't believe. And a lot of light takes a lot of time. Oh, and in case I didn't mention it, lights are heavy.

Another huge challenge is that because we don't have many sources to motivate light i.e. city buildings, streetlights, storefronts, we often have to make MOONLIGHT the motivating source. This wouldn't be a big deal if we had the proper tools for moonlight, but we cannot afford condors or cherry pickers or helium balloons. We have high-high-roller stands and mombo combos which can maybe get to 20 feet in the air, depending on which light fixture we use, but really can't get high enough to provide a 'toppy' source = moonlight. Aaaagghhh.

This has been our biggest battle time and time again - How to cheat moonlight for night exteriors without ugly shadows or rapid light fall-off or gigantic specular reflections from shiny metallic surfaces such as the cars that are practically featured characters in the film. It is all much more difficult than one would expect.

The only other consistent challenges are 'found' locations (read white walls) and scheduling- we spend over 1/3 of our day, nearly every day, setting up and breaking down. In over 3 weeks, we have had exactly 1 'walkaway,' where we could leave the gear in the location overnight... But enough tech talk and enough about the challenges because the point is, overall, we are definitely prevailing.

Daniel starts and ends each day [and by 'day' I mean 'night'] by saying "another day" and slapping me high-five... This is almost like a metaphor. "Another day???" at the start, with the uncertainty of what indie problem will arise... met by, "Another day!!!" when we wrap, with a sigh of exhaustion, and the pride and enthusiasm of accomplishment in the tone of his voice.

FIN.