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Chasing Fate (2005)
Production Notes
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The film was shot over three consecutive nights at the end of July 2004. Exteriors made up most of the film, which required late night shooting. The first two nights of shooting went from about 8:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. All the exteriors and the interior coffee shop scenes were shot on these nights. The hospital scene was shot on the last night. That scene took about five hours to setup and shoot. Locations in Albany and Cambridge, NY were used for the shoot.
The film was shot on MiniDV at 24fps with the Panasonic DVX100. Two dollies were used on the film. A doorway dolly was used for the two long tracking shots in the hospital. All other tracking shots were done on a dolly that was constructed by Director of Photography Keith Andrews and Grip Tom Wieschenberg. This dolly consisted of a wooden platform with skateboard wheels attached to the bottom. The platform then rode along two PVC pipes. Tom had used this dolly on one of his films and drove three and a half hours from New Jersey to Albany, NY to bring the dolly to the set.
About three hours of footage was shot. The final cut of the film is 11 minutes, 21 seconds. The film was edited by Jeff Burns over a period of six months using Adobe Premiere Pro 1.5.
Natalie Bain and Shawn Schaffer were chosen to play the lead roles of Jess and Collin out of about 100 actors who auditioned.
The film cost approximately $1,500. Director of Photography Keith Andrews and Unit Production Manager/Assistant Director Al Halstead were paid nominal amounts. Everyone else on the cast and crew worked for free.
This film is the third collaboration between Director Jeff Burns and Director of Photography Keith Andrews. Keith, who prefers drinking Mountain Dew on set, worked his regular shift at Channel 13 in Portland, ME, then drove over four hours to the shoot in Albany, NY, and worked on the film until five o’clock the next morning.
Finding a hospital for the last scene took some doing. Jeff Burns contacted every hospital in and around the Capital Region of New York. After many calls, he learned of the Mary McClellan Hospital in Cambridge, NY. This hospital had closed in 2003 but much of the equipment remained. The film was shot in the hospital’s old Emergency Room. The maintenance staff of McClellan Health System was kind enough to put all the medical equipment back on the walls, so it looked like a working ER. The hospital proved to be a popular location for shooting last summer: a NYU film shoot took place in a different part of the hospital the week before.
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