Last week I had the pleasure of joining Will Whiting on his latest project, Turtle Dove. Will and I worked together on Isra and an fun sortie into walking/filmmaking, which I hope to turn into music videos one day. This project was written, produced and directed by Will, and something he’s been keen to develop for a while. Earlier in the year he was keen to just make something (Will’s frustration with inertia is infectious, but he does something about it) and we started location scouting a completely different project. Eventually, he came around to the idea of something that was a bit more manageable, which less production logistics, in favour of spending more time with the actors and working on performances. In this regard, he was really successful.
I joined the project as a versatile, sound/clapper/timekeeper/occasional focus puller role, and was a pig in shit. I really enjoy mucking in with films in this way rather than the cumbersome size of a full crew. Financially, I can’t see me going back to the full crew model anytime soon. No big loss in my opinion.
My only negative experience upon the project was some tricky sound problems created above us for the majority of the shoot. I’m paranoid that Will won’t be able to cut the audio together, and that upsets me a bit. But we’ll have to see. People can do incredible things these days with technology, so maybe there is hope.
I look forward to making more work like this in future.
