Quit

I just got off the phone with the director of the Advanced Production shoot (which I attended last weekend). I had to let her know that I quit and that she would have to find a replacement. I gotta say, I don't feel terribly good, but it had to be done. Last weekend, the shoot was an organizational hell. She didn't know what she was doing and she over-worked the entire crew. To top things off, she didn't provide the crew with very much food or downtime. We were there for 11 hours and we worked all 11 hours.
The final nail came when she failed to recognize the efforts of everyone who was involved in the shoot. She posted special thanks on the film's webpage to the cast of the film and the location providers, but she failed to highlight the efforts of key members of the crew. For example, she failed to recognize Brandon Steed, the nagra operator who basically put his cushy job at the Mac store in danger just so he could help her with sound. She failed to recognize the efforts of her DP, Jayme Schere and she failed to recognize the efforts of her script supervisor, who basically walked away from a very organized and promising shoot just to help out on this one. And then, just yesterday, the director shoots out an e-mail to everyone informing them that a 5th day will be added to the shoot. And here's the kicker...the burden of the camera crew falls on Brock and I. Yep, her AC's, DP and gaffer quit...so she was planning on having me fill in just about every roll on the camera crew. That wasn't gonna fly. So I quit.
This shoot has provided me with two valuable lessons: (1) Don't use the school equipment for your projects and (2)don't alienate your crew.

Your inside is out and your outside is in

Here's a late post for you...

I put the finishing touches on my new edit for "Outside In" today. I forgot why I wanted to make that film, and months after I had made it I found myself really disliking it, but after re-editing it I mentally said to myself: "Oh, riiiiight". It's just a silly film and that's why I had so much fun with it originally.

New points on this edit:

-Letter CU re-shot: on digital. Otherwise, without a good, clear closeup of the letter, the entire film is pointless.

-Monster revelation: the monster revelation sequence is quite a bit different now...the original edit had the dolly-back frame kick into an undercrank when the monster was revealed. Now, it starts off with an overcrank, moves into an undercrank and then eases back in to an overcrank. Lemme be more clear - it goes slow-mo, then fast, then back to slow-mo.

-Tossed out footage re-used: a lot of footage that I threw out on the original edit I use in this one, including lots of cut-aways.

-Cuts to black eliminated: Now, instead of the cuts to black scattered throughout the film, we have cuts to telecine color-correction. I really like this.