(I usually publish on Sunday nights when I have something to say. This one is short and just a quickie.)
In 1990 I was working at 3Com, and also taking film-making classes at De Anza college. For my class project, I made this 7-minute silent movie on Super-8. I didn’t act in it, but I wrote, directed, and edited it. It’s been on YouTube since 2006 and it accumulated 60,000 views, until it finally aged out. For a while, it was a “related video” for lots of other videos about software development:
I had four friends acting in it: Larry Baer, Derry Kabcenell, and Jerry Morrison, all of whom I knew from Xerox. The fourth “executive,” Jim Bair happened to be currently working at Xerox, the only one of us who was. It was filmed mostly in my garage (naturally), except for one scene that was filmed in Xerox corporate offices with one of the Big Powerful Executive Guys, without Xerox’s permission. That’s what this post is about. Fast-forward to 4:15
Lighting
By this time, I’d taken the Lighting class in De Anza, and I knew about classic three-point lighting
I went to a theatrical lighting store and rented a couple of real lights. Note I said “a couple.” I didn’t have a back light, a lack which you can see if you look at Jim’s shoulders and head: there is no border there. His left shoulder almost blends in with the paper holder on the desk behind him.
For the fill light, something you really need to eliminate harsh shadows, I used an umbrella with crinkled-up foil inside it. The light was shining into the umbrella, which diffused it onto Jim and his office.
Shooting
I went to Jim’s office at Xerox, which at the time was on Oakmead in Sunnyvale, and set everything up: camera on a tripod, key light, and fill light with the umbrella. We were shooting, and a security guard poked his head in and said,
I’m sorry. There’s no photography allowed without corporate permission.
Panic
I froze. Was I going to have to stage some other setting for his “office?” Surely this guy didn’t have the power to grant permission, so I’d have to go to some committee and wait months for an answer. And anyway, as a visitor he’s not going to listen to anything I say.
But Then:
Jim saved the day. He said,
We’re not shooting any photographs!
The guard said, “OK” and left.
I was speechless. Who’d ever think of just denying that we were doing something we obviously were doing?
No engineer would. But Jim was in marketing. Those guys do have their purpose.
Footnote
OK, to be literal, we weren’t shooting photographs. We were shooting a movie.
I sure hope you didn’t steal any pencils from the central supply room! Someone did after hours and they had lock it after 5pm.