Jamaica, my second home...

I sometimes go a year or two without going to Jamaica.  I sometimes go there ten times per year.  This looks like it's going to be a ten times per year kind of year.

I went down to shoot a commercial for Lime (Jamaica's version of At&T).  It was a 4 day shoot crammed into 2 days.  I used 100% local Jamaican crew and they did a fantastic job. 

There is a new rule (new to me at least).  About twice per year (usually Christmas and Summer) certain cities have embargo's where they prevent people from taking a lot of excess baggage and or any large or heavy baggage.  My experience up until this year was that did not include media (camera) equipment.  When I went to check in for my flight to Kingston (about 3 and a half hours early) I was informed that I could not fly my steadicam into Kingston.  My only option was to fly to Montego Bay (3 hours from Kingston with good traffic).  That added 3 hours to my trip down and 3 hours to my trip home making the whole job feel pretty long with a lot of driving. 

Part of what we get paid to do in the movie business is to improvise, think on our feet and basically get the job done.  This was a good example of why it's important to get to the airport early when you are traveling, particularly when you are traveling internationally.

Here is a rough cut of the spot, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out, especially considering I had no prep, no knowledge of the equipment or locations or crew and we shot 9 locations in 2 days.

Busy!!!!

I haven't had a lot of down time for the last few months. After 'Ring the Bell' I went to Sarasota to do steadicam on 'Spring Breakers', the Harmony Korine movie. I got to do a big night time steadicam oner, gun fight for the end of the movie. Harmony and Benoit Debie (the DP) were both really great to work with and really creative.

Then it was a series of commercials and then off to Jamaica for two weeks of Sandals Resorts:

After Sandals I did a few more higher end commercials (a lot of 35mm film this year)and a live Tony Bennett 'Duets' concert for a week. Tony is 86 years old and still does over 200 days a year performing. Tony is bad to the bone!

I finally had time to shoot some 'Burn Notice 2nd unit' (now on it's 6th season) and got to do some pretty cool stuff with a semi and 3 suburbans, including hanging under the semi while it drove down the street while the suburbans were trying to force it off the road:

I just found the links on line for two of the commercials I did for Acura.  They were shot in 35mm and are actually 4 commercials spliced into 2.  The shots themselves were not that difficult but trying to match the two commercials so that each frame was as close to exactly the same size as it's matching frame but on totally different sets was pretty tricky.  I think the finished spots are really cool:




Worked on 'The Glades' Friday, shooting some more 'Burn Notice' on Monday and then Brett and I leave from set at wrap and head up to Gainesville for a few days to do under water work on a commercial for the Olympics.  It looks like Summer is going to be as busy as Spring.