Life imitates art—a fire!

Since I got the C-stand I've been using it to hold a scrim (really a sheet) to create soft light. It works great and accounts for the fact that the shots I've been taking lately look a lot better. I finally realized that the reason you need high wattage is to shine through diffusion material because you lose so much light. So I was shooting a shrine interior pick up using the 250 watt Pro Light direct to create shadows and the 1000 watt Tota through the sheet for fill. Just as I was about to start shooting I smelled smoke and turned around to see the top of the sheet engulfed by orange flames about a foot high. Apparently it touched the Tota which set it on fire. Thankfully, after losing it all morning, I had clipped the garage door opener onto my pocket so I was able to open the garage door, throw the sheet, the C-stand and a plastic lighting box, also on fire, onto the driveway and put the fire out with the rest of the sheet. The blaze was really going. Even after I thought I put it out, I found tiny orange flames licking the the inside of the plastic box. I didn't know plastic burned so well. I hosed everything down and now I'm sitting outside the garage, watching it while the burning smell dissipates. I'll probably hose down the inside of the garage too.

The meaning of the story probably changes depending on who you ask. Erik might say that it's the curse of the movie, a case of life imitating art (noise film ends with Ben's house catching on fire). He's already afraid to lend me the truck because whenever we shoot it, it breaks down. Ben would say this is a story of poor work habits and two-dimensional thinking. In spite of cleaning it over the weekend, the garage was a mess and I was tripping over cords. Earlier in the day, the Pro Light tipped over and fell into a wall when I closed the garage door (I didn't realize I had extended it so high).

I see it as a matter of mindfulness. I've been trying to get Sean to be more aware of himself. He walks around totally unconscious of what he's doing. It seems like when I tell him not to do something, he goes ahead and does it anyway (like the time I told him not to play in the kitchen when I'm cooking). It's not that he's disobedient. He just has no idea sometimes of what his body is doing. No doubt he gets it from me. This morning while setting up the shoot I had to hunt around for the garage door opener every single time I went out there. I kept putting it in various places without remembering where. Strangely, when I was running for the hose, I put the star prop in my hand on a cement pier and remembered exactly where I left it—the mindfulness of a heightened awareness to danger. Ironically, I had to remake the star prop because Ben mindlessly lost it during our shoot at the equestrian area.