Directing from the booth when the 'booth' is 3000 miles away...

It was an interesting transition from making movies guerrilla-style in Los Angeles where we moved quickly from locations on a dry lake bed in the desert to a Las Vegas casino or back to L.A. to shoot in a restaurant after it closed at 2 in the morning and wrapping at sunrise. Like many of the European filmmakers who influenced me, I operated my own camera usually shooting hand-held from the shoulder as I always felt that the slight or abrupt changes in frame constituted the filmmaker's visual 'penmanship' that made the film more personal. I started with an Arriflex SR with a NAGRA recorder for sound--later I went digital like everyone else.

 

Things changed when I started making movies and television series with actors who were 3000 miles away. Suddenly, the camera was on a tripod or on someone else's shoulder which took some getting used to but Pry,ce Jaymes, who attended one of my webinars and who went on to star in our movie Exigence on Prime and function not only as an actor but as a co-producer as well, took on the task of camera management taking my directions on angles, framing and movement with a minimum of fuss and bother. We were in 'guerrilla' mode again!

 

If you look closely at the photo here. you might recognize me on the corner as I am watching the set-up for a scene in our comedy series Ask Aunt Lolly...