I just went through the rehearsal footage of 'Los Ojos Rojos', the feature I worked on in 2016/17. This material was shot by me with my tiny GoPro Hero 5 Black. This rehearsal took place on a day in February 2017, on the Canary Islands.
Only days earlier, our camera guy had dropped out of the project, after having been part of the team for a couple of months and having shot footage for one weekend. He also owned the audio equipment that we had used so far. So we did not just use a camera guy and his equipment but also our audio recording equipment.
I tried the best I could, to get a friend from The Netherlands over to the Canary Islands to replace our camera operator. This friend had done camera and editing on a dozen of short films that I directed between 2010 and 2013. He told me thrice that he would come over and help out but - in the end - he didn't show up at all. So, instead of finishing the film with him that month ( we estimated that we needed two more weekends of shooting), I ended up taking up my GoPro and heading out with four actors to go for a rehearsal of half a day or so. A rehearsal instead of an actual shoot.
In the end, that rehearsal would be the very last footage to be shot for this film. Our main actress had to leave the island ( she lived in Madrid ) soon after, one actor was impossible to communicate with ( and, let's be honest, could not really act ), I ran out of money and had to leave the Canary Islands a month later and - no matter how hard my screenwriter/ co-producer on the project and I tried to kickstart the project again, after I had returned in The Netherlands - we eventually decided to pull the plug at the start of last Summer. We worked on the project for 9 months and ended up with just a teaser and loads of unused footage.
Nevertheless, looking back at the footage and remembering all these months, I merely look back on a pretty awesome experience. Even going through the clips that I directed and shot on that last day, I can see that we actually had quite a lot of fun. And, if I may say so myself I came up with some pretty decent shots. Some of those were recycled in a music video ( as mentioned in yesterday's post ).
Yesterday, Theodore ( who wrote the screenplay and co-produced this project with me ), asked me for some footage of this film. To be specific, for a shot that we had used for its teaser, where you see our main character getting out of bed. It has been filmed from underneath the bed. We see her legs dangling over the edge of the bed, touching the floor and her walking away. Ted told me that he's thinking of re-using this footage for the project that he's working on right now and asked if I still have it stored somewhere.
I told him I haven't but that our editor should still have it lying around somewhere. The guy moved to Berlin though, I'm in Portugal and Theodore is living in the USA but we have Internet these days so I'm sure we can work something out.
Long story short. It's exciting to slowly get back into filmmaking, even if it has to do with recycling footage of a cancelled project. Perhaps even more, as it shows that nothing is for nothing. Everything serves a purpose.
TO BE CONTINUED
P.S. I would loved to have shared a longer clip but I'm on 4G and my Internet bundle is being eaten up way too fast.
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