Film makers are pretty cool!

I tagged along with the girlfriend on a filmshoot for a documentary project for Habitat for Humanity. She volunteers there as an interviewer, scheduler, transcriptionist, and as of today, a film productions assistant. The filmmakers were Lisa and her good friend Murray (sorry if I spelled your name wrong!), who hailed all the way from Canada. They hauled their $100,000 worth of film equipment in her Toyota SUV.

I've never been around a lot of artists, much less filmmakers, which are like artistic technicians, so today has been quite eye-opening to me. We helped them unload/load equipment,I helped with the lighting, and Beth helped with the above tasks, as well as a notetaker on Lisa's trusty laptop while Lisa interviewed two households that benefitted from Habitat's projects in this very city.

Both families involved were single-parented families, and both matriarchs were people who had rough lives and were a kind of down and out, to a certain degree, yet with strong religious belief and some helping hands, were finally able to obtain their own houses and stabilize their lives. The documentary is trying to document how the Habitat organization has helped the community.

We chatted a lot about how Lisa and Murray became filmmakers, neither of them were graduates of famous film schools, rather, they had done many other things before getting involved full time in film production. I really do amdire the "jack of all trade" characteric about them. None of them confused us with long and incomprehensible filmmaker's jargons. I joked to them about making porn with the girlfriend and what advice did they have for us! (Not that we'll be IN the porn, just filming it!!)

If you look at it this way, filmmakers and research scientists usually have long lifespans, because, just by matter of observation, their work are usually very detail-orientated,in most cases, interesting, as well as very time-consuming. I think anyone who works in something that they're passionate about is a very lucky guy or gal!

Murray was so nice to take us out to eat dinner, we introduced him to Shiner Bock beer, and Texas country cooking! Man, if all film shoots come with free food and drinks, sign me up! Also, if anyone wanted a lighting person for their porn production, ring me up only if you have pie and punch waiting!