This short was shot in the hotel room at one of the conventions we traveled to last year. If you aren’t in the loop, we raise money for each of our feature length films by traveling from state to state selling copies of our previous films. After a long day of running a booth we started filming this short at around 7 p.m. I started sleeping on set around midnight, and the rest of the guys would kick me when they needed my help or needed me to move to another sleeping position. Filming was finished around 6 a.m. and everyone else stuck with it.

Working late into the night can turn into a problem fast. For example if you keep me up past midnight I start to fall asleep standing up, if I don’t fall asleep I start to miss very simple things. As you watch this short, you’ll start to notice camera gear showing up in the background, audio levels peaking out, poor slider movements and other minor problems. Filming through the night is a recipe for disaster.

If you need to film at night, plan ahead, shoot 4 or 5 hours one night and 4 or 5 hours the next night. Take afternoon naps before hand and don’t  try to over do it. When the cast and crew are worn out, it’s very easy to make simple mistakes. This short turned out pretty good considering, but it would have been a whole lot better if we would have had a few nights to work on it instead of filming for 11 hours strate.

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