As one of my very first assignments of the summer, I had the opportunity to work on a professional music video shoot. The artist in which the video was being made for was a Danish solo artist named Alice Rose. My second night in the city I attended a gathering for my internship, Adelphia Films and made contacts with quite a few people. One of them being Bill Bowles, who offered me the opportunity to work on the set a couple days later. On day one, I took off at about 5:30am to meet up with the cast/crew about 20-25 blocks away from where I'm staying at the University of San Francisco. This was just the beginning of getting to really explore and become familiar with the city. I arrived at the location and met director, Paul O'Bryan as well as a number of other crew/cast members who were instantly welcoming and interested in the fact that I had just arrived in the city. The first shooting day was a blast and left me totally wiped by the end, but I had no problem with that at all. As production assistant, they had me running all over the city to do anything from picking up a lens to getting lunch, and this really allowed me to become familiar with the city in a way that would not have been possible otherwise.
While on set, I was constantly snapping production stills as well as assisting the Director of Photography with any and all requests he had for me. It was quite a refreshing experience to see how professionals work differently from students, even if the production's budget was minuscule. We shot the entire first day in beautiful Golden Gate Park, which I quickly learned is one of the many gems of San Francisco. The park seemed virtually endless in beauty and nature, while still being quite accessible for shooting a video production.
The second day was spent in two separate locations, the morning at an apartment location in the Mission district of SF and the late afternoon/evening back at another location in Golden Gate Park. Again I was instantly put to work running errands and becoming even more familiar with the city, which was awesome. On set I had a number of small tasks ranging from altering a costume piece to clearing out spaces for equipment and preparing shots. Once we wrapped production for the day, I was overcome with an instant feeling of gratification and feel confident that my experiences on professional will only get better and better every time.
One of the best parts of this experience for me was not only being able to begin navigating a brand new city for the first time, but actually going out and beginning to market and network myself in a setting where much work opportunity is present. I feel that although the shoot was only 2 days, I learned quite a bit and have definitely grown as a filmmaker through this experience.
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