When will these F-countdown blogs end?

When I have a film in the can, of course. Meanwhile, today’s news: Jon the camera assistant definitely won’t be available. However, we still plan to borrow the equipment from the same facility company that trusts him and he trusts me to look after it. I’ll also have this big insurance deal going. Big for me, anyway.

What I don’t have at the moment is a light meter. I need to phone around and dig one up as Jon is a bit loathe to part with his when he’s working. Understandable really. No, really. Okay, it’s not. Gimme gimme–I neeeeeed it. Okay, yes, it is understandable and it’s time to make six million more phone calls until the meter on my line glows red hot and then melts.

Finally, I *do* have a police station interior location confirmed because I got through to the school caretaker (aka. site manager) and arranged a time to do a recce and a time for the crew to arrive next Saturday. I also arranged for the art director to call and visit to check the place out.

Yes, Lionel (the art director) finally got back in touch via email. He’s been completing every freelance writing assignment he had for the forthcoming two weeks to free himself up for next weekend. And his phone had started glowing red hot before burning his ear and exploding. Allegedly. Whatever. He’s on the case.

Now, equipment. Equipment equipment equipment. Strangely, repeating words for dramatic effect doesn’t help. The thing is, I won’t know for sure if I have a camera–a free camera–until Tuesday. Is it any wonder I can’t get to sleep at night? Actually, saying that, I slept thirteen hours on Thursday night. Tonight, though, four. Go figure.

I are a cinematographer

Not quite. But I do have a light meter–£49 from the secondhand camera shop in St Albans. A very nice Weston Master V, as used by good stills photographers.

The camera shop also had a 16mm camera in the window going for £250. I was sorely tempted. Checking revealed it will run at speeds from 6fps to 32fps including the standard 24fps of cinema motion pictures. However, it only takes standard 16mm stock (ie. double perforated). Kodak still appear to make this, although I’ve been buying from Fuji (substantially better discount, 40% versus 10%). It might also be possible to have the camera converted to super16 (single perf). It would also need checking to see if it’s light-tight…

Hmmm…