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Cybel Martin Blog
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Yesterday I moved into my hotel room. This will be my home away from home during production. I love shooting on location and “living” in hotels. I tallied up how many days I spent last year in a hotel room and it amounted to about one third of the year.
We were not working today, so I spent a good amount of time shopping for items to make this more homey and clean (dish detergent, candles etc). I was delighted to find a nearby Trader Joes so I could stock up on my veggies and soymilk.
I also stocked up on items that help me when working on features, primarily Immunization Vitamins. I swear by them. A combination of echinacea, golden seal, zinc etc. I tend to sleep very little and eat even less when working on film shoots and they help to keep my body from calling it quits. Many many (many) moons ago, I worked on a film called “Manny and Lo”. I was hit by this terrible cold. We were shooting during the summer with incredible weather, but I was beat. Full fever. Nausea etc. My Key Grip let me fall asleep in the Grip truck on a pile of sound blankets. A little later, the DP took pity on me and handed me a bottle that said “Chinese Herbs” on the label. He told me to take two vitamins every three hours. Six hours later and I was good as new. Since being introduced to these vitamins, I have never gotten sick during the winter nor during production.
I arrived in Michigan on my birthday. (Shooting a feature film is certainly the best birthday present). So far, everyone I have met on the production is incredibly nice and cool. There is the typical film production drama happening but my joy to be working far trumps it. The first day, I met the team and started going over my camera package. The director and I discussed some films as visual references. The New York Times has become one of my favorite sources for reference material. I showed the director some NYT images that I thought would be a good look/inspiration for our film. The following day was spent looking at locations.
At the present moment, I am watching “Scary Movie” and waiting on some new friends to show me around Detroit some more. Since I have been traveling and preparing for this film, I have not kept up with watching one new film a day, however, what I did see and highly recommend is Woody Allen’s “Another Woman”. Stellar cast. Perfect Edward Hopper meets Hammershoi Cinematography. I also watched Altman’s “Images”. After his death, I put several of his film on my queue and am now proud to say I have seen 18 of his films. It’s a pretty good film. Not my favorite, but some genius moments. Essentially it is about a woman and her nervous breakdown. Those films seemed be very popular in the 1970s.
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