Having been on both sides of the "I'm so busy" coin I think it's absolutely abhorrent when freelancers complain about having a ton of work. That being said: last week was incredibly busy.
Being busy with paid work means having invoices out and not taking an angry backhoe to our savings but also balancing "man, it's great to stop and process the last few days." You'd think that as a semi-adult I'd have worked through the "grass is always greener on the other side" thing – nope.
A text message Tuesday evening this past week led to me being on a job in Chicago the next few days. Just want to make it clear that work situations like that aren't incredibly unusual, but it's by far an outlier for me. I'd been out on the west coast for a good part of the week before so jumping back on another plane to somewhere else was crazy exciting. Freakin' kudos to Saint Anne the Wife for putting up with me and my atypical work schedule.
Through a connection I'd made here in New York via Filmsupply I got to DP an additional unit on a project shooting in Chicago. After getting there late Wednesday night I got to quickly meet the director, producer, and 1st Unit DP and go through through some early edits. My footage needed to blend with what they were already doing so having that time to connect and get an idea of what they were expecting from me was incredibly helpful. Again, crazy thankful I got to be part of their project.
Thursday's shoot went well and I got to try out some visual ideas via the 1st Unit DP that I'll use again in one way or another. The project leadership had a rad team/crew in place and allowed me to jump into their already well oiled machine to shoot in a way that will cut well with the footage from the other units; can't wait to see the edits sometime down the road. Bonus points for randomly getting to work with an AC that I actually worked with 10+ years ago in Oklahoma at my last full-time job.
Friday had me flying back to New York but that was a bit of a hot mess. Our flight out of Chicago was delayed and then we ran into some weather issues that diverted us to Syracuse to re-fuel. We got stuck there due to even more weather problems and instead of getting home around 7p I stumbled into our apartment around 2:30a the next morning.
At this point it looks like I'll be shooting at least a day or two here locally on top of a few other pojects that will be wrapping up this week.