Over the summer of 2010, I wrote a short about a couple playing a game of P.I.G. PIG, in case you didn't know, is a basketball game that involves people taking any shot they want, from any distance or angle. If they make it, the next person has to make it, or else they get a P. The first person to collect a PIG, loses. Writing the short wasn't too difficult. I actually did it all in one night. But, the hardest part with this project was the editing. I learned from this project that shooting any type of sport, and having it tell a chronological story, can be difficult. You never know what angle the basketball might come off the rim, or how many takes needed to capture someone making a shot.
Editing took over 6 months, but school work and life caused some delays to complete it in less time. I started editing it with Jake Freeman, who appears in the film, and a student at Madonna, Brian Kearns. We edited from the first point in the script, chronologically. We went through every take, and really did the editing down to a science. But, the process got exhaustive, and PIG got delayed.
Fast forward to the first week of January, the last week off before Winter classes start. I told myself, I will finish PIG during break. So, I buckled down and started editing it again. However, the process that was originally taken on for the editing had to be changed. Doing it that way took too long. So, I looked at the script, and saw which scenes still needed to be edited. I grabbed every take for that scene, found some good in and out points, and threw it down on the timeline. From what appeared at first glance to be a messy timeline, turned into an actually well-structured sequence of clips that made the editing process smoother. I learned a lot about editing a two camera shot production in this week of editing. It wasn't easy, but I liked how it turned out.
PIG was shot during the last week of July. It was a hot, summer day, and Katie Boomgaard, who portrays Barbara in the film, had to wear a sweatshirt since the script called for it. I give a lot of credit because she did it, she sweated in it, but she didn't complain.
WATCH "P.I.G." ON YOUTUBE
Even though I wrote and directed PIG, members of the Madonna University Broadcast and Film Club came out to help. Whether it was holding steady a ladder while someone shoots from on top of it (Thanks Paula Wilson and Chris Nickin!), or grabbing any runaway basketball (Thanks Jenny Hebel!), it was a team effort. We had two cameras for the shoot, which was good and bad. It was good because we got the action twice from different angles, but bad because it made the editing challenging to sync up both shots. But the good outweigh the bad because it also got the audio twice, which can be very helpful when the talent isn't mic'd. I ran camera most of the time, along with another Madonna student, Jodi White.
We shot it all in one day, and we were very lucky because a thunderstorm did come through in the early afternoon, but it quickly left and we started shooting again. The shoot went longer than I expected, and I thank everyone who helped out. It can be a challenge to do a collaboration with a group of people, but it was a challenge that we successfully accomplished.
