Heritage.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Archives for posts with tag: on the set
Taking a break between setups.
Setting up for a shot. That’s my Billabong fisherman’s hat doubling as a hood for the monitor.
My Canon EOS 5D Mark II on a setup rigged by my dependable crew. Nothing a couple of C-Stands won’t handle.
This photograph courtesy of Budak. I cannot for my life remember now why I was smirking.
When my personal life is such a mess, it is all the more that I strive for perfection in each and every frame of this make-believe world that I have absolute power over.
With the last bottle of Muji milk tea under my arm, I shuffle down the pitch-black corridor, my head bowed, my eyes watering, and quietly whisper some words of encouragement for myself.
“Someday, this will be all worth it.”
Maybe this is what keeps me going.
Considering that I don’t really feel any more in whatever I do for a living these days, I don’t really know why I’m writing about the shoot I did earlier today. Perhaps it is because the shoot went well, but, then again, it is only when a shoot has gone belly-up that I feel compelled to write about it.
But, yeah, the shoot went exceedingly well. Smooth. Butter smooth. So well that I called for wrap almost three hours ahead of schedule. The weather held up. There were familiar faces on the set; my girls, who I still see almost every day even though I’m no longer resident at the production company they’re at; the same make-up artist and the same camera assistant who had been on my last shoot. The agency creative director was easy to work with, which was a surprise considering how, when he had been on the shoot we had a month ago for the same client, I had thought otherwise.
On that shoot, my mentor—my former mentor, really—took the lead; I was on set to assist him as the tethering tech, the guy on the shoot who works the shots as they come in live from the camera tethered to a laptop (I make Lightroom fly, something my mentor the old guard struggles with). I got the feeling that the CD had left the shoot not completely satisfied, even if he had put up the “good-job-you’re-the-best” front, that facade and veneer of hollow professional friendliness and courtesy I could detect from miles out and that I, despite being guilty of practicing exactly that every once in a while, abhorred.
The thing about compliments, receiving or giving regardless, is this: just as there is a very fine line between looking cool and looking like a dickhead, the distinction that separates a sincere compliment and a copious amount of it, so much and so profuse that it borders on gushing, is razor-thin. Keep gushing about something, and throwing in superlatives while you’re at it, and my bullshit meter goes off the scales. As far as I am concerned, a sincere ‘thank you’ gets you a long way.
I was glad I did not get much of the bullshit after we had wrapped. But the bit about “you’re a solid photographer” was really unnecessary, especially when it is followed by “you really know what you’re talking about.” Of course I know what I’m talking about. That is why you hired me in the first place, isn’t it?
I’d much prefer if you showed me appreciation by way of a fatter cheque. Superlatives do not cash out.
About
34, male and very Cancerian. Often irascible, even if he is prescient to his emotions. Lives for the resonance of beautiful passages, cinematic magic and aural bliss. Dabbles in fiction writing, photography, sketching and daydreaming in his free time, even though he is paid to do just those in a professional capacity.
He is, in other words, quite a geek.
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