They Don’t Teach You That In Film School

First shoot with reading glasses, November 2017. Not sure I’m doing it right…

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Ithaca College for film back in the late 1980s. It’s a gorgeous city on one of the Finger Lakes, and has one of the top film programs in the country. We were hands-on with a camera from day one, and were encouraged to be creative along with learning all the technical aspects of the craft. 

I made a handful of short films, and also was part of a student-led sketch comedy TV show that shot every weekend. We all chipped in to move gear and do “set design” and anything else that was needed. I learned almost as much from that as I did in my classes. 

After I graduated I left filmmaking behind for a few years, mainly because you actually needed a film camera (expensive) and film stock (not cheap) and a place to get the film stock developed (pricey). Then the digital revolution in film hit in 2000 and I got back into it. 

I started making short films again, got some corporate work and even made a low-budget feature film called Hellphone in 2010. My video production career has led me all over the country to shoot a myriad of different subjects. 

What does any of this have to with fitness? Well, they don’t tell you in film school that you really ought to be in shape for this line of work. You are on your feet for 10 hours a day. There are heavy bags of gear that need to be moved. Holding a camera (even a small one) for an extended period of time is exhausting. You often have to contort your body to get the perfect angle for a shot. 

I mostly work as a “one-man band” one my jobs, which means I’m the one hauling all the gear out of the attic to my car, then out of my car at the site, then back into my car and finally back out of my car into the attic. 

Or if I’m flying to the location, often I have a fairly heavy bag of gear to move between gates. I usually try to carry-on as much of the gear as I can just to be safe. (It wouldn’t do to show up at a job and your gear get re-routed to Tulsa.) I remember one trip I had a very narrow connection window and was booking across the airport with probably 70 pounds of gear in a bag and thinking to myself how glad I was that I did Cross-fit. If I hadn’t been used to covering a lot of ground while carrying something heavy, I don’t think I’d have had a prayer of making my gate.

Another time I needed to get a shot of a plane taxiing from ground-level, but then catch it taking off from the top of a building. I found myself sprinting up six flights of stairs carrying a camera on a tripod over my shoulder. 

The upshot of all this is that you never really know what situation you will find yourself in on a shoot. I’ve found that being in shape helps me to be able to adapt to whatever is going on and not have to worry about whether I will be able to get a shot or not. Careful preparation can help you anticipate the physical demands of a job, but the unexpected often happens and having a good level of fitness can help you when that occurs.