Nature of the business

The freedom of freelance is great and I love what I do but it certainly does have its ups and downs. The ups are that I truly love what I do and if I ever want to go away or do something with my family or whatever, I don't have to ask anyone if it's OK. Also, when business is good, it's really good (if you get my drift). The downs suck, though. While half the time you get booked with a lot of notice, the other half of the jobs come up with really short notice. This is more on the documentary side as reality doesn't always have the luxury of careful planning like commercial and fiction work. So you often find yourself making last-minute changes to your personal life. Sometimes it's not a problem, sometimes it is. It's a balancing act. Ups and downs...

Last week's thing with Clive Davis didn't happen... that was a down.

The Mira Nair thing two weeks ago was interesting to say the least. I liked the people I was working with but there were definitely some communication issues between the Fox Searchlight people and the Indian TV folks. Despite some equipment hiccups, we made the best of what we had and though it wasn't quite what was expected, we got some nice footage.

Tomorrow I'm off to shoot the 3-day Long Island stretch of Lon Blais's charity bike ride. Last night I met up with Elana, who shot him in Maine and is editing the piece. Stuff looks good but it's hard to say at this point if there's anything substantial. There's definitely enough to edit something together but I'm not sure if there's a story this year. We'll see what happens in L.I.

Also, looks like the Babs concert at the Village Vanguard will be released as a DVD. Not sure when, but that's the word from the director. Will update on that.

Stay tuned for a report from the road and more fun stuff (a possible feature shoot on the horizon).