First Shoot - Ft. Lauderdale, Florida - April 2006

It has been brought to my attention that during the course of filming Red Tail Reborn, we had a couple adventures of note. Now, I just view these as things that happen during the course of independent filmmaking. Well, people who don't usually do this insane occupation might like to read about it. If nothing else, to persuade them not to do it and to pick a less stressful occupation, like bomb disposal for the Israeli army.

As a first installment, I'll tell you about the first hitch I had in the whole plan. It came on the first day, of the first shoot of the whole movie.

Our first location was in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. We were on our way to the Ft. Lauderdale Air & Sea show. "We" was my crew, consisting of my co-producer Hallie, my audio man Kevin, and myself. I splurged on crew, instead of my usual documentary compliment of two. A good show, with all of the performances playing off the coast, 1000ft from the beach. Wanna see the show? Just go to the beach.

Anyway, we were on short final for Ft. Lauderdale on a United Airlines jet. United would go on to lose my luggage no less than 5 times that year. More on that later, though. Just before the United plane drops her gear, Kevin turns to me and says, "So...did we check the Varicam, or did you carry it on?"

The Varicam was our primary camera for the entire shoot. I shot my first doc on film. But for this one, I knew my footage count was going to be quite high, so I opted for HD. Cleveland being a Panasonic town, I opted for the Varicam. Anyway,, back to the plane...

I turn to Kevin, with a very strangely calm manner, and proclaim that I did neither check nor carry on the Varicam, but that I left it sitting on the pool table at home, 1200 miles away.

In the past, I would have flipped out about this; and judging by the faces of my travel companions, they were expecting this. I just sat there, rationally viewing the situation. We were flying on a travel day, not to start shooting until the next day. I simply had the camera fed-exed down at a fairly large cost.

Expensive? Yes. But not a tragedy. After working so hard on hotel bookings, lining up interviews, booking crew, rental cars, tripods, steadicam, clothes, tape stock, HD down converters, sunscreen, media passes, and cash for food, I forgot the camera in the bright yellow case on my pool table at home. Hey, it was 4am when I was packing. You organize my shoot next time