Done. Done? Done
Yes! Finished. Completed. Moving on. Congratulations are in order. Time to celebrate!
People are so nice. They’re always asking about the progress of the film. So it’s finished? When and where can they see it? they ask. I clear my throat self-consciously. I feel inferior, incompetent, sub-par. We’re still editing, I mumble.
Two-hundred forty hours and five years. That’s how many hours of footage we have, and that’s how long we’ve been filming. It takes a bit of time to edit that much into a cohesive film. Actually, you nice people (because you really are), I am referring to the completion of the film shoot, the wrap of production. It is in the can, as they say. 480 hi-resolution tapes with some of the most extraordinary footage you’ll be seeing soon enough shot by some of the best cinematographers in the documentary world: Scott Shelley, Adam Vardy, Sam Henriques, Alan Weeks, Petr Cikhart. Amazing work! You’ll be seeing soon enough. But I must beg your patience.
As a matter of fact, we are close to finishing the film’s rough cut edit, so we determined that it would be a good idea to shoot Left Behind in Louisiana’s epilog. I believed there was a natural tie-in to the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Indeed there is. We headed to Plaquemines Parish in November. The DH rig was just about fifty miles directly south of the parish, and you don’t have to be out on the water to feel the dramatic effects of the BP/Transocean/Halliburton fiasco.
We met a pastor who described the Deepwater catastrophe as a blessing. As he sees it, BP is paying (off -- I just added that) many struggling parish residents, and fish are being caught by the boatful. More money for a post-Katrina economy. We met a fisherman who is driving his fish up to the Arkansas border where he sells to a broker who then sends the fish up to New York. Yes, New York. And we filmed the exact spot where Pastor Lance started his prayer walk up the Mississippi. Very successful shoot, lots of incredible footage. On to Cameron Parish.
We had our best interview yet with Ryan’s wife Julia. She is now expecting their third child. I don’t know if it was the early-pregnancy hormones, but for whatever reason, she was more relaxed and open than ever. We also filmed the skeet shooting preliminary event for the 2011 Cameron Fur and Wildlife Festival, which is honoring the Oil Industry this year. This is Louisiana, after all. And we filmed an interview with Cyndi Sellers on Rutherford Beach, which is probably the most beautiful spot in all of Cameron Parish.
Oh, and then we drove into Cameron proper to grab some town B-roll and to film that evening’s exquisite sunset. The pressure was on. The sun was dropping. I rushed onto the dock and chose a good spot with a clear view of the setting sun. Adam found an equally fine spot. “Run. Get out of the way!” I heard someone call to me. I ran. I ran like a bat out of hell across that dock to clear camera. But my right foot met up with a raised slab on the dock and I fell down. I crashed. I smashed. The pain was so intense that I couldn’t feel it. Yes, I could actually. “I’m all right! I’m all right! Keep shooting!”
Ah, behold the resultant stunner of a sunset shot. What we won’t do for this film...
And thank you, Daniel Brooks, for getting the ice! And for turning me and my patella on to Traumeel.
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