Make-a-Wish Make-a-Film

My final film shoot with Evan took place on Tanque Verde Ranch, which is at the eastern limits of Tucson. I helped film as the ranch and Make-a-Wish crew granted 10-year-old Gabriel's wish to be a cowboy. Unlike other shoots where I was there to mostly observe and move equipment, I was given the responsibility of manning a camera this time. Of course it was a go-pro mounted on a stabilizing rod but it was my first chance to capture some of the footage myself, rather than look on footage others had gathered and evaluate it.

My job was to get wide shots of Gabriel as Evan maintained a tighter and more focused frame. Furthermore, whenever the crew had to move locations, I would run alongside Gabriel and his cowboy guide to capture different footage of them moving to and from the various activities of the day. My role was supplementary but I did get a taste for how hard it is to have no time to plan a shot. All of the angles I captured were only ones that appeared to me as immediately viable. This type of work rewards professionals that can scope out good angles quickly. This is something I admittedly struggled with in the beginning of the shoot but I managed to improve as I got more of an idea of what kind of shots Evan was looking for.

The nature of the shoot wasn't that different from the other promotional shoots that I have been on set for. The main goal was to get a lot of footage of the day's activities to make sure that Evan would have enough B-roll to use as a backdrop for the interviews with Gabriel's mother and Make-a-Wish representatives. However, it was the smallest scale shoot I have ever been privileged to attend. Evan and I were only accompanied by a single photographer for the whole shoot.

Because of this the interviews were not as large a production as they had been in the past. Evan equipped the subjects with a simple wire microphone and had them talk about the day's events.

The interviews were extremely informal. Evan had no script but because we filmed the interviews after filming everything else, Evan had an idea of where to steer the questions.

Then Evan moved on to interviewing the day's star, Gabriel. Gabriel was a bit shy so it was difficult to get him to talk about the day's events but it was evident that he had really enjoyed himself. To make sure he still had clips that he could use, Evan would egg Gabriel to talk through his experience and he would have Gabriel repeat segments that he thought would be useful.

I was glad that I got to film the fulfillment of Gabriel's wish for my last day on set.