We shot six cans of film at home over the past four days, and came away with some very exciting footage. I chose to focus on mom's therapy, on the texture of her skin and scars, and tried to get more candid moments on camera. I also composed some more stylized sequences and inserted myself more in the film. Mom did great and was a real trooper. Sinisa was here as DP and Joel came down for a couple days as our Gaffer. I'm hoping this is the last filming I'll have to do; I feel like the story of the doc has a good arc now - not to be confused with closure, but I feel like there's been a journey that I can turn into a decent 15-20 minute film.

I leave today for San Diego for two weeks. I will (hopefully) complete filming during this time. I'm not entirely sure what our approach to shooting will be, but I've got plans for lots of pool therapy, some sort of staged re-telling of my mother's fall, and another stab at the underwater Super 8 filming. I usually don't approach filming with such a casual plan, but at this point I'm just trying to acquire as many emotionally meaningful images and am having faith that I will find my path in the editing.

On Friday night, I was presented with two awards at the annual SFSU Film Finals show. I was awarded the Leo Diner award for Innovative filmmaking and was named SFSU's nominee for the Princess Grace award, a national competition for up to $25,000 in production funds. 

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/business/11hip.html?em&ex=1210824000&en=d62f373bea4e635a&ei=5087%0A

Panavision has agreed to donate their camera package for a second round of shooting, which is great news. Their lenses are so nice, nothing I could have rented would have matched up with what we shot the first time. Shooting is scheduled for May 22-27. Mom is walking without any assistance and her therapy is going well. The house is finally put together, so we can shoot downstairs. Smaller crew, maybe just me and Sinisa for a good chunk of it. Marina Shoupe generously donated another underwater camera mount, so we're going to give the underwater Super 8 stuff another shot, as well. I think this will finally be the end of shooting...