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Photos by Chris Hall |
On
Set In LA
I
usually gauge a production by the amount of excitement in the crew. As
I watched all the different departments going about their jobs this past
week, I could feel the enthusiasm building. My young producer felt at
home again, as we were shooting film for the first time in a long time,
and the pressure was actually fun to experience.
Now
from a technical standpoint, shooting film presents a lot more challenges
than a simple video project. It’s very time consuming, and consequently
makes for very long days, but this did not seem to dampen anyone’s
spirits. Actually, the longer we shot, the more excited people seemed
to become.
As
I watched my crew work, I realized how special this group of film-makers
really is. I really have an excellent team, and they each contribute to
every project. For this particular day, I had made a promise to myself
that I would get though in 14 hours. Call time for make-up was 8:00 a.m.;
cameras arrived on set at 9:30, and principle shooting was to begin at
10:00 a.m.. I wanted to see tail-lights at 10:00 that night.
A
good part of the day would be spent on the Motion Control Rig. Now on
a good day, Motion Control may do 4 or 5 set ups. And we had 17 to do.
By 4:00 p.m. we had shot 11 of the 17 Motion Control shots slated for
the day. I was feeling pretty good about this, but I know better than
to show these feelings outwardly, as too many things could still go wrong.
As
it turned out, at 10:10 p.m. we called it a rap! I would have my tail
lights and a very proud crew. We had shot most of what I wanted to, and
almost everyone would make it home for the 11:00 news.
BTS
Los Angeles
Windows Media
QuickTime
BTS Budapest
Windows Media
QuickTime
Now if you've a mind to take a look at all of the photos in the various DVD Galleries at a little more leisurely pace, we've provided such an opportunity here, at least for the "Glamour" Gallery. You'll need to get the DVD to see the hard core images, sorry.
Some people don't like to just have the pictures just scroll through at a predetermined pace, as Michael likes to do on his normal DVD offerings, so we took a little time and put together the pictures in a more traditional Slide Show format. Feel free to take your time here, and if you've a mind, email us and let us know what you think.
The "Glam" Slide Show
Now we might as well give you a little more insight into MichaelNinn.com in general, and Michael Ninn himself more specifically. We don't want to imply this to be a necessary exercise, and we should clearly point out that this particular portion of this DVD ROM Bonus never actually appeared on the Catherine Web Page that was a part of Ninn Worx' web site. But Michael has been working hard to teach those of us less artistically-inclined folks the value of Good Layout in all things.
Let's set a little groundwork. Without placing too much emphasis on it, you should know that the writers here have about as much artistic ability as your basic cue ball, without the utilitarian function. We don't know from pictures; we know grammar, and sentence structure, quite a few fancy words, and even a bit about plot and telling a story. (At least we hope we do.) A couple of us even know a smattering of Geeky Stuff sufficent to allow us to try to put all of Michael's "designs" into practical application on that WWW thing.
OK. So now you've been warned.
As a practical matter, we're actually putting together this Bonus Section well before some of these pages will ever see the public eye, or whatever body parts the public wants to show off as they look at the pictures around here. Consequently, Michael gave us the outline of this page with ALMOST everything in place. We just had to translate it into code and be sure all of the links linked and pictures showed up and all of that. Apparently, Michael liked a great many of Chris Hall's Black and White photographs he snapped while on set for the Los Angeles portion of the production. Michael liked them so much, in fact, that he felt obliged to include them in the big row you see over to the left.
Well now that would be all fine and dandy if we didn't end up with this big ol' black space here with nothing in it. If you've been a Michael Ninn fan for any period of time, you know that Michael's all about concepts like "balance" and "aesthetic feel" in all of his work. He actually uses the term "ISM" to describe when something really hits the mark he's seeking, you know, like saying, "Now THAT'S got some ISM." This constitutes high praise from Mr. Ninn, and we generally skip merrily about the room for some time should we ever achieve such praise for our efforts around the office.
Looking at an almost completely empty column in his design would not have instigated praise to our refined way of thinking. This happens a lot on MichaelNinn.com too, as a matter of fact. We decided to just do here what we do there: We decided to tell a story, or provide some helpful explanation, or maybe a timely observation or something. Hey, even the people around Michael find themselves picking up some of his mannerisms and ways of looking at life.
Back when Anais was brand new Michael had her on the set with Laurent Sky, starring in the third installment of the Fetish series. Anais was really new to the entire concept of movie-making in general, not to mention finding herself in a position of getting ready to have a large group of people film her having sex for the first time. Ever the Ninn-esque artist, though, Laurent's first setup required Anais to climb a 10' step ladder and submerge herself in a bunch of soapy water filling an oversized champagne glass while she masturbated. Not satisfied with the difficulty of this alone, Laurent then decided to put the whole thing on a giant platform that would spin around.
Ever concerned about his young talent, Michael asked Laurent why he insisted on having this precarious perch spin for Anais' first on-screen experience. "Because," Laurent said simply, "Otherwise it would make no sense." We all just walked away. Michael has this effect on people.
Now don't you feel edified?
And Michael now doesn't have a bunch of black space here. All around this was a successful venture, then. Now, we're going to lunch. Feel free to grab yourself a beer before you continue. God Bless America.
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