Ugh, still trying to churn out this short script; the fifth one I’ve written in the past three weeks (only two of them are decent). Here’s the deal: I want an easy dialog piece. No artifice, no heavy exposition. Just simple conversation between souls. Inside a car. That’s it.

Because I like bothering Sean, I drove the thirty miles to his house and tested the camera in a place I had picked out, a parking lot. Sean had to park at a certain distance and at a peculiar angle from the two street lamps, each of a different color temperature. Then I busted out a twenty-dollar portable LED lamp and wrapped it with a gel. There’s a tiny bit of extra light from a fluorescent I placed in the backseat.

For the ten minutes it took us, the resulting shot isn’t too awful. There’s a Wong Kar-Wai meets Michael Mann vibe to it. And yet, before I pat myself on the head, it needs plenty more coordination. That nasty shadow on his neck could be flagged out of the way. I’ll likely buy another LED to provide more fill. I believe the ISO is at 1600.