It was a busy, tiring, yet fun weekend. Another spring break came as I enjoyed my time off to participate in Spokane’s 50 Hour Slam. Last year, I didn’t know what I was in for when I accepted a friend’s invitation to join her 50 Hour Slam team. I hadn’t even heard of the event. But I soon learned that it was a fun annual filmmaking festival in Spokane, Washington that attracts dozens of filmmaking teams to create three to six minute short films.
During the previous year, I performed several tasks including operating one of the video cameras for a scene we didn’t use, a little acting, and some last-minute writing; whereas this year, I performed some video editing and social media posting as well as directing photography for a scene we had to reshoot and for some additional footage we needed. One factor common factor in each year was that I was the principal still photographer on set. Somehow each year I stepped into the role without anyone asking me to assume it.
For this year, I had no expectation of being a still photographer on set. In fact, I tried to recruit other photographers with the intention that they might join the team and shoot behind-the-scenes images in addition to helping out. As for myself, my original intention was that I would take another, more significant role in the film production this time. Unfortunately, I was unable to recruit anyone. Most people were unavailable or were already working on other teams. (I actually spoke to fourteen people in all.)
However, I remained unfazed by this. Instead, while I knew that I would do some behind-the-scenes photography, I did not have any intention of doing it primarily. Yet the night of the kickoff to the 50 Hour Slam, I changed plans. Previously, I had stated to my team via social media that I was interested in helping to write the story as well as either directing the film or directing its photography, but this night there was so much fragmentation in the team on which story to write and how to write it that I felt alienated from the creative process. On top of that, there was no agreement on the story by the time most of the team had to leave for the evening. In the end, Alex (the only one in our group aside from myself with any formal training in writing and certainly more than myself), went home to pull an all-night writing session fueled by energy drinks to deliver a story the next morning. I believe that the next day since I had no specific role, I naturally found mine by doing what no one else was doing: documenting the filmmaking process.
Yet this year’s behind-the-scenes photography would be different than the last. Unlike last year where I shot over four hundred digital photos, I was only going to shoot film apart from the digital photos I would shoot with my phone for social media. It was a hard decision, but I chose to only take my Nikon F6, which is by far my favorite camera. Normally, I take just about anything that I might use, but I knew I needed to take only the F6. This was for two reasons. The first reason being to learn to be comfortable with limitations, and the second, to compel myself to develop my film workflow. For too long, I have had a disconnect between going from shot to print, especially in my film capture. Well, no more. The only way to learn to ride a bicycle is to ride a bicycle when you don’t even know how.
Coming next week, I will have a second part to this article where I will include scans of film that I shot while on the set of our short film, Tether, as well as some behind the scenes stories. My current commitment is to keep posting at least once per week on Fridays, so I hope you will join me again next week. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed these digital stills I shot with my smartphone.
Until the next time,
P.R.