Work can be hectic, work can be stressful, but work can also be fun.
I got the chance to fly out to Arizona for a shoot last week. When we left Milwaukee (at 5AM) it was 0° and a few hours later we were in Arizona where it was about 65°. A nice change of pace from the harsh Wisconsin winters. We also went out to the desert for some shooting while we were there. Sure, it got cold at night (in the 40’s) but we survived.
The first day I think we wrapped just before 1AM, and since we’d gotten up around 4AM to get to the airport, well, it was a loooong day. The second day was a bit more laid back, but we still hustled and got everything shot.
This was our first out-of-state shoot with the Red One and our biggest worry was traveling with it. Scott Bourne’s blog post Traveling? Better Get a UPS Account had me a little worried, and we decided that checking in our baby was not a good idea, and shipping it all was not a good option due to the tight schedule of the project, so what we ended up doing was buying a ticket for the Red One. Yup, it ended up being a passenger, with it’s own ticket, and it’s own seat. (Sadly, it didn’t get it’s own carry-on or snack.)
We had two other crucial pieces of gear, and since we had 3 people flying out there, two of us just took the gear as carry-ons. This let us know where the gear was at all times, and as I said more than once “equipment is more important than clothes!” meaning, we could buy new clothes, but lenses, filters, matte box, etc. would be near impossible to replace if it was lost along the way.
Making sure the Red One could go on the plane took quite a bit of legwork and phone calls. Between the TSA and the airline, we got conflicting information, but eventually we were armed with printouts from the TSA web site and reassurance that what we wanted to do would work… and it did.
