Trips With James social distance

The Making of Divorce During Pandemic!

Shooting a short film during Covid 19!

When you are a director of either film or theatre, or any other type of live or filmed performance art form, the ultimate excitement is to be able to do your project with a truly excellent group of professionals. Professionals who are dedicated to their craft and actually know what they’re doing. That was my experience recently when I shot the short film Divorce During Pandemic, a short film script that I had written based on real events and I had the opportunity to turn into an actually short film.

Crew shooting a close up of the lead actor.

Of all the types of directing that exist in the performing arts, directing film is the ultimate experience for a director. In any other form of live performance as much as the director wants to control the final product they cannot, because it’s live and the final product will change every single performance. Live performance is up to the live performers not to the person who conceived it or directed it or produced it. Yet with film, the director gets to choose how to tell the story because they control the edit of how the film will look. Now of course they had to get the correct shots and coverage in order to be able to tell that story but once you have that you can tell a story out of sequence, or you can change the narrative of who the story is about, or really the possibilities are limitless given the imagination of the director and the amount of footage that they shot.

Director of Photography Fernando Madero framing a shot.

Divorce During Pandemic is exactly that. It’s a true-life story of what happened when a married couple that is breaking up exchanges divorce documents during the early weeks of the pandemic. That could be sad, but the situation could be surreal as well, because the couple is wearing masks and gloves and practicing social distance. The film could be funny or a comment on not only the breakup of the marriage but the distance that’s created between a couple when they’re forced to wear mask and gloves to deal with each other. So in the editing room I was presented with the opportunity to either make a dark comedy or a sad tale of two people struggling to move on with their lives. I’m not going to tell you which choice was made you’ll just have to wait to see the film. Yet the opportunity to work with skilled professionals – a director of photography, a sound mixer, a camera assistant, a grip, a production manager and first assistant director who were top notch and a team of producers who gave me everything that I needed to shoot my movie under budget was amazing. Who could ask for more!?

The director discussing the next setup with the DP.

Yet we had the added element of shooting during a world changing virus, so we had to be concerned for the safety of the cast and crew who were truly heroic in shooting this short. My producers provided us with all the PPE that we needed and tried to keep following social distancing, but shooting a film is so all encompassing when you are doing it that it is hard to always remember to stand 6 feet apart. Yet, we managed and all are safe and well, and the film looks great.

The talented Laura Walker (The Wife) waiting for her next take.

So the film is currently in post-production as we do color correction, fix the sound, and work on the opening title and closing credits. Hopefully, the film will be on the festival circuit in the next few weeks and we’ll be talking about it more here at TripswithJames.com. I would like to take the opportunity to thank my cast and crew for the outstanding work that they did that day, and to thank them for the amazing ultimate experience of directing – shooting a film with professionals on a script that you have written and watching it all come to life beautifully ! What more could have film artists ask for? My answer – absolutely nothing!

The gifted David J. Phillips plays The Husband.

More to come on Divorce During Pandemic in the coming weeks!

Special thanks to Corbin Timbrook, Shelby Janes, David J. Philllips, Laura Walker, Fernando Madero, Garrett Stone, Reece Miller, Genaro Magana, Kirk Bruner, Attic Studios.

California Snapshot – Santa Barbara, Pismo Beach, Carmel, Monterrey -Where Are the Masks?

Where is your mask?

Leaving Los Angeles on Thursday, July 16th, I drove north on US 101 on a brief road trip to get out of Los Angeles after being cooped up in my house for months. I wasn’t going to go visit anyone or go party, I just needed to see some different environments and to experience what was going on in the world of California during a pandemic.

The observations that I’m going to make are wholly unscientific . I didn’t take any polls or do any headcounts or any interviews. This is strictly my observations as I walked through sections of different communities and noticed roughly how many people had masks on and did not have masks on as they interacted with other members of the public. While every store that I went into required face coverings of some nature, I was surprised at the amount of people in California who were not wearing face coverings at this moment of increased infection rate and a new push by the governor for people to stay home, wear face masks, and practice social distancing.

The Author at Cannery Row, Monterrey, CA

The first place I stopped was in Santa Barbara for lunch. I first took a long walk on the bike path along the shoreline just south of the Marina. It was about 11 AM when I got to Santa Barbara. The sky was overcast and it was a cool late morning. Most of the people that I passed along the bike path were doing some kind of exercise and they are allowed not to wear a face covering while their exercising, but of the mothers is walking their babies, couples casually riding bicycles or people walking their dogs, I would say 50% of them were not wearing a face covering.

As I drove up State Street was one of the main shopping streets in Santa Barbara I notice that the street was blocked off in many areas so that the restaurants could move outside to have outside dining. I parked in one of the many municipal parking lots that Santa Barbara has in that part of town and went to a CVS to get some supplies for my trip and get a sandwich for takeaway. Now many people consider Santa Barbara to be a very upscale community and overall that is true , but along State Street there has been a noticeable decline in the quality of the businesses. You see many more homeless people and people who were just down on their luck than you used too. So the population that I was looking at was everything from a homeless person all the way to very affluent people and many tourists. You could not go into any store or any restaurant whether it was ordering inside or sitting outside without having a face covering. Yet, I was amazed at the sheer amount of people who walked around either with a face covering underneath their chin or with nothing at all who were interacting with other patrons or service people who were waiting on them. The strangest situation for me is when a family of four or more people will be walking around and half of them will have masks and half of them won’t. I can’t quite figure that out. The choice of wearing a mask or not wearing a mask seems to cross all ages and all races from very young to very old, from white to African-American to Hispanic and Asian.

Local signs in Pismo Beach that no one seemed to consider.

Back in the car I headed north towards Pismo Beach where I was going to spend the first night of my road trip. Pismo Beach is quite spread out but I stayed in a tourist area known as the motel district off of Price St. This is a four by four block section filled with restaurants, bars, gift shops and hotels that are near the beach and near Pismo Beach Pier. I got to Pismo Beach about 3:00 o’clock in the afternoon and checked into my hotel and went out walking around this area until about 8:00 o’clock at night. The beach was very crowded and all the takeaway places had long lines in front of them since out indoor dining was completely closed off. The three places that offered outdoor dining were jammed with long lines waiting. This part of Pismo Beach has a large cross section of all types tourists and easily 75% of the people that I saw on the streets either had no mask at all or just did not wear them. They would hold them in their hand, in their pockets or wear them underneath their chin. It was like nobody knew that we were in the middle of a very contagious pandemic and that you could infect or get infected by the person standing right next to you. Again the family dynamic of some wearing a mask and some not wearing a mask was very interesting.

Sand Dollar Cove off PCH in Pacific Valley, CA

Next day I drove up PCH through San Simeon and Big Sur. I also stopped at my favorite place along the coast which is an area called Pacific Valley and specifically a State Park that leads down to a beautiful beach called Sand Dollar Cove. I’ve been coming to Sand Dollar for over 30 years as long as I’ve lived in California. It is always been a very popular place but in the last 6 to 7 years it has become exceptionally busy. This weekend was no different with 50 or more cars parked along both sides of the highway and the small parking lot at Sand Dollar completely filled. Now of course we’re in the outdoors at a beach and a campground and social distancing is very easy to practice here but at least 60 to 70% of the people that I saw walking around had no masks on them at all. This was a very white group of people . I didn’t see a single person of color the entire 2 hours that I was there, but it was families, surfers, backpackers, and people who were on the road in vans and large campers so again a cross section of people all ages and not many masks

My stop for the evening was Carmel, California home of Clint Eastwood and a very wealthy white enclave with a much older population. After I checked into my hotel, I wandered over to Ocean Street which is the center of this shopping area of Carmel. I noticed almost everyone had masks on. Of course again no indoor dining but a lot of outdoor establishments for people to sit drink wine and have dinner. All service personnel had masks on and the majority of the people walking or standing in line getting into places had masks on. It was actually noticeable when someone did not. Maybe that’s because they’re wealthier or they’re older so they’re more concerned about their health or whatever reason you would like to come up with, but Carmel had the highest ratio of people wearing a mask on the street that I had seen thus far. It does not mean they like it though. I heard several conversations of people complaining about the uselessness of masks.

The next morning I drove a short distance to Seaside, CA where I was staying the night. This was definitely a working class neighborhood and the percentage of people I saw wearing masks was about 50%. I stayed here so I would be close to the Fort Ord Dunes Park which is located along the Monterrey Bay where the former military base Fort Ord was located. It is now a federally and state protected area with wonderful biking trails and a lovely mostly unused beach which stretches for 4 miles along the coastline. After the spending the day hiking around Fort Ord. I drove over to Cannery Row in Monterrey for dinner. Cannery Row is a huge tourist magnet and here you got a pretty good cross section of races and ages. The very interesting thing that Monterrey was doing was you were required to wear face mask and if you got caught not wearing one by the police, they gave you a $100 fine. So almost everyone had a mask on all the time.

So what is this little snapshot show us? Really nothing definitive. Just that there are still a large contingency of Californians or tourists who visit our state, who don’t wear masks. Also it’s just not when they’re walking by themselves or they’re with their family, they do this when they’re interacting with other patrons, other tourists and service personnel at the height of an incredibly contagious pandemic. Make of that what you will.

Please be safe! Be well! And please wear a mask!!

All photo credits – James Carey, Attic Studios

LA Begins to Open with Uncertainty

The City of Angels is awake.

The City of Angels is awake. It’s not that it’s been asleep, it’s only been taking a nap. For the last three months, we have been doing what is known as ‘sheltering in place’. Meaning that our local government authorities wanted us to basically stay in our house and not go anywhere. And they did make that difficult because they closed all the beaches and the parks, all the bars and restaurants, and all the stores. So really where was there to go?

But finally we are starting to open. Bars and restaurants, barber shops and hair salons, nail salons and department stores are all open for some kind of business. But is it too much too soon or was this all Much Ado about nothing. It depends on who you talk to and what your opinion is of COVID-19. Is it a great pandemic or is it a left wing hoax?

Through history man has always dealt with pandemics before with diseases that could not be cured and that killed hundreds of thousands of people through the ages. There’s the Spanish flu of 1918, polio, black plague, measles, and one of the greatest diseases of all time although not many people think about it anymore is tuberculosis which for centuries all the way back to the Greeks was the greatest killer of humans on the planet. Of the five diseases that I just mentioned only two of them forced humans to change their lifestyle to such degree that it caused people to leave cities or to stay inside. That’s the black plague and the Spanish flu. The other diseases that I mentioned plus many others while horrible did not cause society to change. People caught these diseases and many died but the general population just went on living their lives. So which approach was the correct one? Well we’re told that the difference between this disease and other ones is that it’s so contagious and it has never appeared before on the planet. That we possess no natural defense for it. That’s why health officials said wear a mask, wash your hands, social distance and stay inside.

Bartender Jennifer Priddy, left, and bar manager Kandis Conner of The Blue Door Bar in Fullerton (Photo by Leonard Ortiz, Orange County Register/SCNG)

People want to stay well . They don’t want to go out in public and get sick. But people also cannot stay home forever. It’s summer in Los Angeles and the sun is shining and the weather is perfect. And everyone in the city is suffering from Lock Down Fever. Even before the ‘shelter in place’ order was lifted since Easter you could already tell that people were beginning to disregard the laws. Gone were the empty freeways and the empty side streets and the empty parks. People began coming out more and more and driving places and riding bikes and getting out in the weather and just trying to find some normalcy in a time where there is no normalcy

For 2 1/2 months I stayed inside. I faithfully wore my mask, washed my hands and rarely went out except to go to a grocery store or pharmacy. I sanitize my kitchen every other day with Clorox wipes and every time I stepped back into the house I used hand sanitizer. I also carried hand sanitizer with me everywhere that I went . And I got it! I got a very mild case of it, but it got me. So, I am very scared of COVID-19. The idea of going to a restaurant or a bar is now almost frightening. While I understand that people have to get back to their daily lives and make a living, the casualness with which some seem to deal with COVID-19 to me is mind boggling.

The bars and restaurants in Los Angeles opened on June 5^th, and I ventured out to see what would happen. I live not far away from Culver City which for many years was a very sleepy little town that would close up at about 5:00 o’clock in the afternoon but now is a happening crossroads with 20 to 30 restaurants and bars in its downtown district. Culver City for movie aficionados is the home of MGM Studios which later became Sony Pictures. The area that I went to investigate was where Culver Blvd. crosses Main Street in Culver City.

In this area there are 25 bars and restaurants, a Trader Joe’s, and the world-famous Culver Hotel with its jazz club lobby all in a six block radius. The rules were that people had to wear masks as they came into the restaurant, sitting was limited to only 25% capacity and people needed to maintain social distance. Every place handled it differently but the idea of socially distancing when people have not been out in public for 3 months is kind of silly at best. People who wanted to come were doing so to see their friends and eat in a restaurant. Some were coming out in groups of 10 to 15 people and sitting at large tables. One restaurant known as Public School has a very extensive patio but they were only seating 4 tables on the patio at a time so there was immense space between those customers. However, you went around the corner to Roscoe’s Tavern where you were met at the door by a man wearing a mask who took your temperature and told you to wait until a table became available based on social distancing rules. Yet seated right next to the maitre-d’ and potential new customers less than two feet away was a table of 15 people all day eating, drinking and nobody had a mask on, so at best the results were mixed. There were new restaurants that had just opened few months before the COVID-19 fiasco hit and somehow they managed to hang onto their spaces for 2 1/2 months with no business and now they were just trying to make as much money as they could. There is a new Irish bar that had just opened about six months before COVID-19 hit with the social distant rules posted at the door but there was no one practicing social distance. In an Irish bar it’s impossible, it goes against the very fabric of an Irish bar.

(Photo by FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP via Getty Images)

I have taken an informal poll of my very good friends here in Los Angeles to see who was up for going out to grab something to eat or meet somebody in a bar for a drink. Well the results were pretty much 85% of those polled were not ready to come out because they were afraid of catching the virus in public, the other 15% couldn’t wait to go someplace where they could actually socially interact with other people.

Myself I’m kind of on the fence. Staying at home for 2 1/2 months and missing social interaction and the daily activities of my life was very difficult for me. I would honestly say that it affected my mental state. Yet the fear of catching this disease in a social setting when there is no cure and no vaccine scares me even more.

So, Los Angeles is open! But we are open with uncertainty! There is no clear path to the future, and it causes dismay and restless nights about what the future will hold for you as an individual, your city as a community and our country as a whole. New cases of COVID-19 , new hospitalizations and a rising death toll are concerning to health officials here while to others it’s just the price of living your life. Which is the right philosophy? Well that’s up to the individual but as we try to return to something that resembles normal life before the pandemic we’re actually looking at a whole new reality with no conclusion and no clear solution.

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