Hello from NOLA!

Hello from New Orleans! Posting has been a little sparse lately. I apologize for this. Between babies and work and travelling, it's hard to find time to post, much less come up with a topic. I am writing to you from my hotel room in the beautiful Riverside Hilton. We are in week three of ten on my current production and it's going well. I have a great operator, who I genuinely like, as well as my regular feature DP whom I haven't seen in three or four years, as he's been in Europe doing two movies back to back. It's such a pleasure to work with people you know well and have a history with. The hardest part of this job is getting back into a feature frame of mind after having been in tv for so long. Quick and dirty is not always required and it's easy to forget that I now have the time and the latitude to do things properly rather than just resorting to the easiest and quickest option.  Where I would have recently just thrown down a piece of plywood for a push-in, I now take the time to lay a rail, and no one questions it. As I've said before though, tv makes good Dolly Grips, and I'm grateful for the time I spent in series world to refine my skills a little. I'm so used to having only a couple of takes to nail the shot that I find myself getting a little bored when we do seven or eight because of performance. I've also been doing B camera for a few months to get away from it a little and I have to admit I'm a little rusty. Things that were once second nature (knowing which side is best to mark etc.), I'm having to relearn. I find myself going back to something GHB said in a guest post about crane work. He said he always marks the side of the camera between him and the actors. I used to do this instinctively, but now, after so long away, I have to think about it. It goes for Dolly work too. If you mark the wrong side of the dolly, you find yourself out of position to do the shot. Either you can't see the mark, or you can't see the actors. If you find yourself having trouble executing a shot, change the side of the dolly your marks are on. Odds are, you've marked the wrong side. I know several of you are working in NOLA. Give me a shout and we'll have a beer. Till next time....
D

PS: I've now  registered "dollygrippery.net" so the site should be available there now. You may still visit "dollygrippery.com" for a good dose of crazy from the woman who inexplicably bought it.