"Sarang Song" - on set

[Zensteve]

I was lucky enough to meet some filmmakers a few weeks ago, and they invited me to drop by the set of their latest film that was shooting this current weekend.

It's called "Sarang Song" (Sarang meaning "love" in one particular African dialect) and it's being made for Showtime cable channel, with some help from Universal.

I won't give away the story, but I will say that the film is set in 1970 and it's about the African-American experience in a university environment while basic civil rights was still an inflammatory issue.

Anyways... here are some pictures and commentary.

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All crew had to pick up one of these walkie-talkies. Some people had two of them. It was a great way for the 1st AD to keep in contact with all the various departments, and to keep the set & art depts quiet when the scenes were about to be filmed.

It was being filmed in a huge hospital wing, that had been converted to many non-hospital sets.

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Even though today's shoot was all interior, they had these massive lights outside to change the light temperature coming through the windows. (Picture taken from 2nd story of the building)

With noone standing next to these, it's not really possible to get a sense of scale. Suffice to say that the wheels on these stands could double for the landing gear of a 747. Each light was almost 20 000 watts.

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Meet Adisa.

He is the producer of "Sarang Song" and a jolly nice fellow.

 

[Zensteve]

Tamika (right) is the Director. She's awesome.

Here she is going over some details with one of the principals (left). He is feeling a call-to-arms that draws from the Black Panther movement.

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In case you've ever wonder what a Varicam looks like... here you go.

The 1st AC is making a minor adjustment to it.

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Here we have the DP on a super-cool dolly, with the 1st AC to his right.

The dolly is like nothing I've ever seen. An electric marvel. It has a built-in jib and crane, and the wheels on it can be turned in just about any fashion one desires... including taking a diagonal path while retaining its original orientation.

 

[Zensteve]

Tamika (left) overseeing a scene setup, with an extra. Note the massive affro.

I have to say... the detail to hair and clothing was fantastic. The prop department had dozens of boxes of whatever one needed... boxes of schoolbooks, boxes of handbags and backpacks, boxes of you-name-it, they had it.

Bellbottoms were a cool thing to wear, back in the '70's.

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Here come the extras!

When they saw I had a camera pointed at them, they started hamming it up and broke down into "jive" and worked on their '70's skills. They were a good lot of peeps... lots of downtime for them, though, as they patiently waited down by Crafts 'till they were called.

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Rehearsal of a main scene, with principals.

When shooting this for real, the extras were on set as well... milling, chatting & crossing the set. They had to be absolutely silent, to avoid ruining the sound of the principals' dialogue. If they had to "talk" to each other, they lipped it silently. Creepy.

 

[Zensteve]

Tamika watches the monitor feed from the comfiness of her official Director Chair.

The red-shirt Script Supervisor (and other person whose position I can't recall) take notes into the Apple laptop next to her.

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End of today's pictures.

The images are kinda hit & miss. I couldn't get the really good ones, as the fun stuff (both crew & actors) was happening during the actual filming... and that meant no flash and no loud auto-wind sounds from my camera, as I didn't want to screw up sound & having odd flashes tends to make a DP angry.

Anyways... maybe I still got some interesting ones.

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Tomorrow, I'm going back for more pictures. I also get to be an extra in the actual movie, at a Black Power/Civil Rights solidarity rally. I get to be a spectator who is filming what is going on, with my Super-8 camera. The home-movie camera of the 70's

There you go.