Ring The Bell

So I just finished ‘Ring the Bell’ in Deland Florida. I was originally told the Director wanted to shoot ‘Clint Eastwood’ hours (like ten hour days) and immediately knew I was in for painful 16 hour days. It was a lower budget movie and a faith based film. Basically a friend had asked me to do the film and I was going to help out my friend.

Well I expected torture and it wound up being the best experience I’ve ever had on a motion picture set. It was so good in fact that I should probably retire now as I will likely never have a better experience on a set or get better shots.

It would be really hard to describe what it felt like to work on that set but I could give some examples of things that made it so good… First we had a crew that was very good at what they did. While the movies total budget was low, they paid pretty much commercial rates to the crew. So we had a talented team and everybody was happy to be there. We also worked not 16, not 12, not even 10 hour days. I think our average day was about 8.5 hours. We also made an effort to wrap early on the last day of each week so the crew could spend time with their families. Instead of having one caterer, we had a different restaurant cater our lunch every day. The weather was amazing, the script, cast and the director were great, and the producers were the nicest people you will ever meet. What made the producers so great? There are so many things that did that let you know they actually cared about you and the movie, not just the bottom line it’s hard to pick one. But when was the last time you filled out your time card on a Thursday, included Friday (knowing full well you would work less than your guaranteed minimum hours) and got your check (for the week you were still working) that Friday at breakfast!

Great movie, great people, great experience… Thank You may I have another!