Rome Wrap Up

With one day left in Rome I finally found time, albeit briefly, for a blog update. Shooting a documentary might be the toughest job I'll ever love but with it comes crew conflicts, personality strains and creative differences.

Every morning begins with a crew of sleep-deprived zombies buzzing my apartment door, shuffling up a flight of stone steps, squeezing through a door no bigger than a fallen mine-shaft and snagging the gear needed for a 12 hour day. From there we hop into the producer's rented van and take to the city streets where mopeds, buses and taxi's weave around us like a formula-one race. That tends to wake the crew more so then a steaming hot thumbnail of black espresso (as if we have time for that). Once we park, the car is unloaded faster than I can say Por favore.

Regardless if shooting begins inside another basilica, where some of the most ornate but foreboding imagery exists or on the outside, where ancient ruins and crumbling cobblestone transport me back 500 years, I'm immediately in what I call the "zone". Nothing else exists but what I see in my viewfinder. My eyeball locks onto history: political, judicial, cultural, architectural and obviously religious history. Little details that most tourists and even the locals miss are captured and inflated on camera for maybe the first time on television. Details like the soft features of a cherub's wings outstretched over the church entrance door or the 3 round mounds of stone that symbolically represent the Pope atop a cuppola. It's the small stuff that garners the most attention.

And if the sky cooperates then the church lights up like Christmas tree; a crisp white marvel standing tall against a deep neutral-density blue. It's absolutely Bellissimo! The colors scream for attention and so my trusty Panasonic HD promptly pleases the forces by recording every tone and timbre. And when that's all finished the inside murals, frescos, paintings and statues are next in line to show off their attributes.

Oh sugar - no more time for poetry, the boys are at the front door!