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Story Details
Picture this; I am standing on a ladder chest deep in the ocean shooting with a $30,000 rented digital camera system. The camera is cabled to my Macintosh laptop, which a production assistant is lifting up every time a wave comes in to keep the laptop from getting wet. Overhead are 4 helicopters announcing that there are GREAT WHITE SHARKS in the water, and everybody to stay on shore! But I have a shot to get, and a permit to be here, and I keep on shooting!
The call came in on a Tuesday evening about 7:00 pm, asking if I could do the shoot and have the images complete by Thursday night. The images were for a movie being produced by Media 8 Entertainment called "Love Wrecked" and 40" x 28" posters had to be in Paris the following Monday morning for the Cannes Film Festival.
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I had 36 hours to find a location, get permits to shoot, find two models with the right feet, get 2 million dollars in liability insurance to satisfy permit requirements, rent a 16 megapixel digital camera, find a clothing stylist and two production assistants, and gather the props. I worked until after midnight that night calling location scouts, clothing stylists, and researching modeling agencies that had images of model's feet.
My location scout was on the beaches the next morning at 6:00 a.m., and had a web site up for the art director to look with photographs of the beaches by noon on Wednesday. I called 10 modeling agencies, but nobody have photographs of model's feet. Ford and Elite modeling agencies had some full body shots showing feet, and we choose several models from each agency to request close up of their feet. Ford and Elite shot Polaroids of several models feet within hours of the request, and we were able to pick our models.
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The permit agency told me on Wednesday it would take at least a week to get the permits, and that each of the three beaches my art director had picked already had movie production crews using them, and I had to get permission from the movie crews to use a spot on any of the beaches. I kept the phone lines hot, took flowers to one of the ladies in the permit office, and after spending 3 hours in the permit office got our approval.
We did the shoot on Will Rogers Beach in Santa Monica Thursday afternoon. I shoot three different types of images; one of the words in the sand, one of the models feet, and one of the waves. I was in the advertising agency until 11:00 pm Thursday night editing images, giving the graphic artist images as fast as I could finish editing. The three images were combined Thursday night, and the poster was printed Friday morning, and was put on a plane for the Cannes Film Festival for Monday morning.
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Results
I loved the Phase One H-20 16 megapixel digital camera that I rented for this job, so I bought the newest Phase One model, the P20, which creates up to 97 megabyte 16-bit RGB TIFF files in fantastic, rich color. I learned that shooting a movie poster can be just as complicated as shooting a movie, and the importance of having talented, professional people on your team.
Love Wrecked staring Amanda Bynes (What a girl Wants, Charlotte's Web 2), Chris Carmack (The OC, Bring it On Again) and Jonathan Bennett will be released late 2005.
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