I may have mentioned a few weeks ago that I had accepted a small role in a small film. Well for lack of a better description, it’s an X-Men clone movie. The creators have been filming the web series for quite some time and they even filmed a full length film already. All low budget of course – but even at a low budget, it takes a lot of effort to produce one of the web episodes, nevermind a feature length movie. Except they’ve already done all of that.
That’s part of the reason I agreed to help out and be in this next one – because I’m sure that they’ll finish. No matter how it turns out in the end, they’ll finish shooting, and finish editing the movie. Plus, it’s still entertaining to hang out on set and see stuff happening. For this film, they actually found a small budget – so along with costumes and other things, they’re also going to the effort of having everyone get a little fight training and some arguably good fight choreography. It’s being done at a Saraiva MMA near Buford Highway. (Buford Highway is where you can get the best Korean/Chinese/Vietnamese/Thai/Asian food anywhere in the city.)
It’s a good a training facility with the proper amount of sweat permeating the air. Even though the equipment is in pretty good condition, you can tell that it’s being used well. They teach Muy Thai kickboxing and Jiu Jitsu there and during our fight choreography, a beginner’s Muay Thai class was going on. It was easy enough to ask the owner/Master if I could shoot and he let me shoot anywhere I aimed my camera. This was also when I learned that hey, I really need to use a much higher shutter speed if I want any of these photos to come out.
I am VERY happy with my new lens – a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D AF – it’s a manual lens on my D40, and it’s the reason I’ve actually started learning how to use my camera – as in, getting away from AUTO. There is a bit of grain in these photos that is much more noticeable on the larger prints, but I think I can get less of that with a few adjustments. Still, it’s been nice to have all of these opportunities to really see what I can do with my camera.
See the rest of the photos here.
muay thai is SO much fun