Bloody Mary...

To finally put an end to a seemingly endless day, one that began at seven in the morning and involved a failed attempt at getting my driver's license due to all the license-makers being out on election duty, which went on to a hassle-wrought shoot involving three guys cheering up their newly-single buddy by taking him out in the car for a 'singing-therapy' session, our final project for our sound unit that kept me in college until 6,and which will undoubtedly keep me there tomorrow too, for the edit...
Oh, except for the fact that three out of the four of us had upset stomachs and didn't have the inclination to do the last two shots, which would undoubtedly have kept us in college for another hour or so, so we have to carry the shirts we wore the previous day to ensure continuity in the shoot... but what about Sweaty? The big, salt-patch guy among us... is there continuity in the previous day's sweat-salt patches? and what about us... having to bear that... Yeach...
Now Sweaty's an annoying bitch... he causes the bottoms of cars to scrape the sainik farms speed breakers, a particular breed of speed breakers that are of abnormal height and refrain from any markings to distinguish them from the rest of the road. Speaking from experience, when I flew a foot off my other buddy's motorcycle gliding over one of those... luckily I landed back on the motorcycle... the same one... But I digress, I shouldn't bitch about Sweaty, I'm sure he hates me just as much, for not bringing a fourth spoon with my gelato the other day...
Now I'm a picky picky little bastard... I want each of my shots to look good, so bearing a bedroom in mind, I'll try to convert my classroon into one by moving around tables and tv trolleys, keeping random doors slightly ajar to resemble bathrooms, and fiddling with the tripod incessantly to get both the phone which my newly-single friend isn't allowed to make the call with, despite repeated attempts to pick it up and dial, oh and to avoid MEDIA written on the edge of the table.
Couple this with the fact that they decided to hand me the college's new hdv camera. Now this is a slightly complicated piece of equipment. Not only does the little whore have a wider screen, ensuring that even using a tele lens gives us much more of a frame to worry about, such as a lapel mic taped to the edge of the table, the fact that it's hdv means higher quality, so even if we could've ignored the lapel mic taped to the edge of the table before, this camera has to display it perfectly with all it's individual pixels and make it look beautiful... and so wrong placed on the edge of the table... well taped to the edge...
Don't get me wrong, I like the hdv... it's lighter than the pd 170 which runs dv/mini dv tapes(which the hdv does too, along with the nicer, sharper hdv tapes), has a wider perspective, something considered to be a good thing by most cameramen, well at least the ones who aren't still going to college and worried about how every inch of the frame in a 22 second clip looks, and it's got more options for playing with light, or well, a lack of light. This basically means we can throw open a window and not get the frame washed out, and we don't even need to make use of a light porta-kit, something our college's too damn cheap to afford. Unless they have one and don't want to give it to me... bastards...
To put the icing on the cake, our professor's this insane dude who used to handle sound for an independent film company, who hoots and screeches at random intervals for reasons unknown. Well to maintain sanity I tell myself he does it to keep us on our toes. This guy can't walk in a straight line, and will keep turning 60 degrees in a random direction while talking, expecting the person he's talking to to anticipate his choice of direction and keep up. The first time this happened, I was listening to him harp on about the benefits of final cut pro for editing over adobe premier, through an interesting analogy involving touching your nose. I noticed his voice to be getting softer and more distant for some reason as I walked straight out of the cafeteria, and upon turning around, noticed him to be walking towards the college parking lot, still talking to the space next to him he expected me to be taking up at the time. Of course the guy's brilliant. He might not know what each mic's called, but he knows everything there is to know about sound, and how to get certain sounds you want and how to cut out others you don't want. Of course he won't just tell you how to do it. He'll hint about it, and say oh you know, this mic cuts out ambient noise, but it also picks up engine sounds, and expect you to figure out that it's not a good mic for the cafeteria because of the motor attached to the water purifier. I like him for that. He gives us a whole lot of independence to work and figure stuff out for ourselves.
All in all, a good shoot. I can't wait to see the scene where we were all sitting in the crv with our camera mounted on a tripod in the boot of the car, with each of us singing an atif aslam number horrendously. Of course since we used both the singing mic and the lapel, something went wrong. Something I'll only find out tomorrow.
To bed I go, perhaps I'll drench my shirt in some deo overnight. Harping on about Sweaty, I might be there on a minor scale myself. Hell I don't leave salt patches, but it is really really hot...

Oh and Mary's our professor's ex-wife... he hates her... so he keeps calling the 'fucking ass computer, work' as he puts it so politely, a Bloody Mary. The man actually told me to change the mouse so he could work the 'Bloody Mary'. I didn't ask, and it took me a while to get it...