Day 72: Day 1 of Shoot

My 2nd job as an assistant director today.
Another pizza shoot. God you should see how
much food is wasted and spent on a commercial.

the poor talent probably had ate like 10 plates
of spaghetti of having to do more than 100 takes
just on a 1-second shot of him having a bite.

to get the precise shot is so tricky.
for a normal tv director, i see most
takes were almost the same. that's
where i've to convert and learn from
the commercial director.

back in my TV days we are to shoot everything
fast. like 10 scenes a day. 2 days shoot per
half hour episode. contrast to commercial
a full 12 hours day shoot for a merely 30 seconds.
that's the precision and integrity needed to
direct a spot.

it's bloody tricky and i'm trying to learn
as fast as i can. being an assistant director
is a complete different genre to directing.
it's a little bit mixture of time management
and sensitivity of visual plus handling
emotions of the entire crew. you have to rule
them yet make sure that they are happy with
you, yet you are the most probably the first
person to get blame if anything fucks up.
from both the director and producer.
yr like a middle man in communication with
everyone, from the camera department to
art department and to lodging department
and finally pleasing the director of having
a comfortable shoot for his creativity
to unleash. and creative people sometimes
are not very well tempered people.
and producers can be very precise and calculative
in all manner. so be prepared, assistant director.

there are really good and respected assistant
directors that no directors nor producers
dare to pick on or find fault in. basically,
they just surrenders the whole shoot to
the assistant director.

it takes time.

and am learning.

-chinyew