Week 3

It’s interesting the way that time passes when you are intensely working on one single project. I have spent the last three weeks in Connecticut working on a low-budget feature. I know and have worked with 90 percent of the crew, and even before we started there was a sense of camaraderie. The production staff basically eats, works and sleeps on one floor of a dorm room-complete with one bathroom and a sign on the door that flips “Girls/Boys inside.”

The first six days felt like they would never end and every little thing was a struggle. I didn’t know if I would be able to stay or not?a prior commitment loomed in the distance. I worked it out and by Week 2, we found our stride as a crew.

Although each specific day does not get easier, inevitably time speeds up. It’s amazing how quickly one can become accustomed to a new routine. Today was day 17 of 24. In the blink of an eye, the shoot will be over. New York is a distant memory that rarely enters my mind.

My position as the assistant director is to run the set; almost everything that happens goes through me. I basically facilitate everyone else doing his or her jobs, although I don’t actually do anything except talk on a walkie-talkie.

It’s a pretty intense job and with the power comes the pressure. It can be fun, when things are going well and everyone on the crew has momentum. But at times, it seems impossible: the faster I try to move, the slower the shoot goes. I’m constantly looking at my watch in horror as the minutes tick away. (Six hours after the crew call time is lunch?six hours after that we have to be done working and eating dinner.)

Unavoidably at some point, we fall behind schedule and I’ve taken to pacing, wondering if we are going to make the day. At lunch, as the crew relaxes in the sun, it’s almost impossible for me to sit still, and I constantly click my black Pilot ballpoint pen.

There are two favorite parts to every day. The first is the five-minute walk to set in the morning and the second is the walk home after the wrap. The house that I am living at is right on a prep school campus where the entire film takes place. No matter where we are shooting, it’s an easy commute. I walk and look up at the school, my morning coffee steaming in my hand as I walk briskly through the morning breeze or my after-wrap bottle of water literally dragging behind me as I stumble back home still in a daze.

In the morning, the mist rises low over the baseball fields in the distance and the ivy glistens against the red school brick buildings. The campus is literally breathtaking and has just about everything you can think of.

It’s exactly what I imagined college would be like when I was growing up. NYU has no campus and I definitely missed that part of the college experience. At NYU, the classrooms are all in different buildings scattered throughout Greenwich Village, Starbucks and random bodegas interspersed.

Here, there are no reminders of my own high school or college experiences and in the morning I wonder if I would be different if I went to school at a place like this.

The classrooms and hallways are spotless, before we show up with our equipment. The facilities are state of the art and we are given free reign to just about everything.

Today was spent in the school library. Some crew members worked two hours after we wrapped, trying to put the books back in order, because like most of the people we encounter during our shoot, the school’s librarian had no idea that the day would be so intrusive.

“I didn’t realize that you’d take the books off of the shelves,” she said early in the day, and then we really got started.

The camera was placed on a 12-foot ladder, shooting a student working at a desk on the second floor. We hung portraits 14 feet up on the opposite wall; we moved everything. And the window of the front door was accidentally broken by “Senior #3,” one of our extras.

I should say very clearly that none of this was out of the ordinary. It was literally a very light day. It’s amazing to look back and think about how much we all have accomplished; film really is a collaborative process and without everyone working as a crew, it’s nearly impossible.

I think that one of the things that I like about my job is putting together all of the pieces. I feel like a conductor in front of a huge symphony-not actually doing anything, except waving my hands in the air, trying to finish on time.

- Zachary Stuart-Pontier