Movie Making Challenges

Finally shot all the footage for my short comedy Escape From Jury Duty on Sunday on September 3rd. I had my cast, my skeleton crew, my rented camera, and a conference room at the Satellite Workspace reserved to double as the jury assembly room. All the stars seemed aligned as I entered the Satellite at 9AM ready to set up the conference room for the shoot. I went to the conference room, ran my fob along the door lock expecting a green light to appear, and instead a red light flashed. I tried to turn the handle, locked. I ran my fob along the lock repeatedly and it lit up red every time, and the handle refused to turn. Phil, my audio person, ran his fob along the door handle, same result. So despite my confirmed reservation we couldn’t get into our shooting location. Damn.

So now what? The rest of the cast showed up and we had nowhere to shoot. Finding a shooting day that was available for everyone involved was a real chore so rescheduling was out of the question. Instead we looked around the Satellite Workspace building for another shooting location. After a while we decided to shoot in the Community TV studio at the back of the building. A TV studio doesn’t look much like a jury assembly room but it was the best option at the time. We set up some folding chairs and got the Sony PXW X70 camera on its tripod and began to shoot the movie.

I operated the camera and I really enjoyed it, like piloting a ship but without the seasickness. I had planned my shots ahead of time for the conference room but had to change plans to shoot in the TV studio. This meant I could only point the camera in one direction so as to not show the floor cameras, lights, and other studio equipment. Despite this limit we pushed ahead and did the best we could under these conditions.

The script was only five pages long so were able to do all the shooting within four hours, which is light speed compared to most shoots. It would have taken longer if we shot in the conference room because I would have been able to shoot from more angles, but I might have also ran into defections as the cast and crew left for other obligations. When we were done in the studio we shot one more scene at the front of the building, then went to the real Santa Cruz County jury assembly room to get an establishment shot, also the featured image for this post.

This upcoming Sunday September 17 I’ll edit all the footage at a colleague’s house who has a complete editing system at her home. After that I’ll premier Escape From Jury Duty on Phil Nasr’s live show on Community TV of Santa Cruz which broadcasts locally on cable 27 and online at communitytv.org so it can be seen worldwide. I’ll post an update with link before air date.

All in all this was a positive experience and I look forward to doing it again. I might even return to Sunset Memories, the short movie I attempted to make earlier this year but has since gone dormant for scheduling reasons.

Until next time, 💡 🎥 🎬!

©️2023 Robert Kirkendall