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Do Something With Your Life's 8-week shoot has passed the halfway mark. Saturday was a very active day with a small, compact crew zooming around the Lower Mainland in a van. As insurance does not cover roof harnesses, Redbud Films was not on set but was provided with this shot of Tom Belding and the bike rig that was built for some Tour de Vancouver shots.
With more than half of the film captured, cast and crew gathered Sunday to watch the dailies. On a personal note, the day did not get off to a good start. A packed bus and loose coffee cup lid was a disaster waiting to happen. Despite the driver's assistance of waiting until I sat down to move, I still managed to shower my leg, sweater and neighbour's foot in scalding coffee. Momentary silence. The mouths of small children gaped. Needless to say the day improved significantly with coffee number 2 and when the footage started rolling.
What's very cool about watching dailies is that for every frame of footage everyone in the room sees something different: the art department sees colour palettes, the DP sees focus and framing, and the director, while often seeing these things too, will also key in on performance. Speaking of, sound is not usually synched yet for dailies but director Darren Borrowman provided live ADR (Automatic Dialogue Replacement) as well as director's commentary in a variety of languages - well, maybe not all of them were actual languages. Note to everyone: once you've watched Do Something With Your Life, be sure to watch it again with the Director's Commentary on.
Even in this raw state, the heart of the film is right there in the dailies. The lead character may be twenty-something but figuring out what to do with your life is something that audiences of all ages can relate to.
Afterwards, Darren Borrowman, writer Andrew Menzies and producer Bob Woolsey stayed behind for some interviews (to be seen in The Making Of Do Something With Your Life). Topics such as story development, funding, choice of locations, production, marketing, and distribution were all discussed.
As anyone who has seen Robert Rodriguez's 10-minute Film School or read his book Rebel Without a Crew will know, the "do" of low-budget filmmaking often involves as much creativity as the story process. Do Something With Your Life is no exception. This is not a team willing to sit around and wait for others to green light their production. They developed a story, found the people and several months later they are whipping around the city every weekend bringing that story to life - now that's doing something with your talent.
Among other items discussed...Darren and Andrews' ridiculously synchronized wardrobe.
Until next time...
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