Notes from a river shoot

The second week of Dust and Daylight took us off the plains and up into the hills above Kayseri, where the wranglers move their herds for the summer grazing. The camp sits on a gravel bar beside a fast, cold river, two hours from the nearest road you would want to drive a van on. We had planned it for months. It still surprised us.

Pack for the walk, not the shoot

The first decision was what not to bring. Everything had to come in on two pickups and then on foot for the last kilometre, so the camera package came down to one body, two zooms and three primes for the night material. Lighting was a single focusable LED fixture on a battery stand, two bounce boards and a roll of diffusion. We left the dolly in Kayseri and did not miss it once.

The rule we gave every department was simple: if you would not carry it twice, leave it behind. The sound kit fitted in one bag. The art department brought a tent, a cooking pot and a crate, and borrowed the rest from the family.

Build the camp before the set

We put our own tents up first, a hundred metres downstream of the wranglers, and spent the first afternoon doing nothing but getting dry and fed. It sounds indulgent. It is not. A crew that sleeps badly on the first night loses an hour a day for the rest of the week.

Power came from two portable battery stations charged by solar panels laid out on the gravel. They covered camera batteries, the light and the sound recorder, and very little else. Phones went in a box at seven every evening.

Weather is the schedule

Mountain weather does not read call sheets. On the second day we had sun at six, cloud at nine and hail by eleven. Instead of a fixed schedule, our producer Kenji Arata kept three versions of each day on one sheet of paper, a sun plan, a cloud plan and a rain plan, each listing the scenes that worked in those conditions. The call each morning was simply which column we were in.

The rain plan produced some of the best material in the film. The riders shelter under the tent awning while the storm passes, the horses stand in the river, and nobody performs for anyone. We shot it on the long end of the zoom from inside our own tent, with daylight bounced off the canvas for a little fill.

Small crews make better guests

There were seven of us. That was not a budget decision; it was the most people the family could reasonably feed, house and ignore. Everyone had a second job. The sound recordist was also the medic. The camera assistant drove the second pickup. I made the tea.

Being small changed how the family treated us. By the third day we were invited to help move the herd at dawn, which is how the reflection shot near the end of the film happened: we were already standing in the water when the light arrived.

What we would change

More dry bags and fewer clothes. A second battery station. A proper waterproof hood for the monitor. And one extra day held in reserve for the weather we always pretend will not come.