Stress

I haven't been sleeping well lately, just in fits and starts, because I haven't been able to stop stressing over the shoots for the short film I'm working on. I think it's taking a toll on my ability to think, and I might have to scale back my involvement. We had plenty of crew show up both days, but it wasn't very smoothly run and it's partly my fault. The weather played a pretty big role as well, with rain both days for brief periods, and the steer didn't help anything either by not cooperating with us. All in all, this is one of the most difficult short films I can imagine working on, short of animation (and there's a little of that in this, too). Shooting different film stocks and video, along with computer animation and green screen, just seems like too ambitious a project to me, especially with no pay. At least the UT students can get credit for working on it. For me, the only thing I'm getting out of it is the experience, and that's been mixed so far. "Never work with kids or animals" is the Hollywood saying, and we've got both on this film, in addition to bad weather. Not a recipe for success. This is going to be a slog for the director, and I can't help but wonder how much of a help I can really be to him. One lesson I'm taking from this for sure is, I never want to work with film again. Video is a hundred times easier all around, and looking better quality all the time.