So rather than stay in Bozeman last weekend celebrating my birthday by hanging out with my friends here and doing some much needed studying for a test on Tuesday, I opted to take off to a city I’ve never been to with people I’ve never met. Overall it was pretty fun, but being a production assistant (aka, bitch) on a student film is fairly dull.

Thursday evening I joined a crew of about 10 film students (mostly juniors) heading to Billings to shoot a short project called “Human Business”. The story is kind of Twilight Zone-esque: It takes place in the present, but society is slightly different. Humans are now a stock option, with investors buying and selling stock on individuals based on their relationships with others, as well as their personal gains or failings. The plot follows a girl who believes she’s doing well, only to see her life come crashing down in a series of events triggered by the people around her caring solely about her monetary value.

Shooting started bright and early the next morning around 9 outside of the First Interstate Bank tower. Our producer ran into an interesting situation though: Apparently Bush is coming to visit sometime in November (I’m assuming as part of the elections), and Secret Service was in the tower that morning, setting up or something. They seemed none to happy that we were shooting that day, but they didn’t try stopping us since we had permission.

After we finished up there, we moved on to our director’s house, where the first scene with the lead actress took place. I really can’t remember her name (Marie something), but she was nice enough and had some interesting connections: She went to school with/knows Bryce Howard (daughter of Ron Howard, an awesome director who also played Opie on The Andy Griffith Show as a child), one of her instructors at NYU played Rafael in the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, and she knows Leonardo DiCaprio personally. It was cool hearing stories from somebody who’s “in the business” so to speak (even though she hasn’t done anything bigger than television), since up until last week I’d never met any such people.

There’s not a whole lot to say about the actual shoot really- that day dragged on forever, since there wasn’t much need for myself or the other freshman who signed on to help. We pretty much just sat around and watched them go about their business for the entire three days. However, things DID get interesting on Friday night. We were shooting a scene outside of a bar & grill downtown, when out of nowhere a fire truck pulls up. Now, we had fog machines (bought at K-Mart for $15) going so everyone kind of went “oh shit”. But when the producer went up to them to tell them it’s ok, they walked right by and went inside. Apparently, someone inside had stopped breathing- how this warrants a fire truck is beyond me, but 15 minutes later an ambulance showed up to haul the guy off (who was yelling and very clearly wasted). So, we resumed. And I got to do some “actual” work by pushing around the makeshift dolly while they filmed on it, as well as appear as an extra that gets shoved out of the way when the main character runs off (kind of doubt that bit will make it in though).

Saturday was my birthday, not that anybody knew. Given that we weren’t eating meals per se (the occasional sandwich, junk, etc), I felt like hell when I woke up and was generally somewhat sullen- I mean we spent all morning shooting on a bus, where for 2 hours I did nothing but sit out of the way. Sort of made me think, “Wow, I’m missing out on actual fun for this?” But, it got better. That evening we ate dinner at our cameraman’s Aunt’s house- though he himself was busy with half the crew, so it was only 4 of us. After that we shot a scene in a gym, where the producer threw a pair of running pants at me and said “wanna be an extra?” This time I should actually be visible… Working out. Oh yeah.

Sunday went by insanely fast. The first half of the day we shot in a damn nice restaurant downtown and we spent the second half in a hospital, which was by far the most comfortable location (we lounged around in the administration conference room between takes, mwah). Wrapped around 7, and went to KFC for dinner.

The ride home was slightly terrifying. Halfway to Livingston, the snow was coming down so fast that we had to pull over- briefly contemplating sleeping in the car for the night if it didn’t let up (we couldn’t see 2 feet in front of the car while moving). But a convoy of semi’s drove by and we followed them until it cleared up. From there it was back to Bozeman without incident, though by the time we reached town there was 3-4 inches of snow and it was still coming down pretty good.

So that’s about it. As far as the crew themselves go, most of them were great (which is good, given that 5 of us were cramped into one hotel room). The director, however, was fairly incompetent. It’s pretty bad when even a freshman MTA major can tell you’re failing at your job, but she wasn’t interacting at all with her actors and it was very obvious she hadn’t done any sort of visual preparation for the shoot (storyboards or even a decent mental picture). But otherwise, all cool people. I probably spent the most time hanging around the sound guy (Jim), who was somewhat of an ass but very funny (don’t imagine too many people spend their time between takes playing StarCraft). The director of photography (I think- it was a small crew, so everyone was doing several things), Ryan, was equally hilarious and cool, and the producer (Jay) was one of the most down to earth guys I’ve met in the department so far (which is why I signed up on his shoot in the first place- he seemed “sane”). All in all, I’m glad I did it… Gave me a better idea of how to run my own productions. And, how not to direct.

Pictures here.

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