Got hired to direct a piece in Memphis for a large corporate client of mine, so on Tuesday, I packed up all my gear and drove to TN with Paul Toohey and Chris Walker. It's about 9 hours from Austin to Memphis, longer if you stop off for breakfast, lunch, gas, etc. We decided to take it slow and stop off from time to time to take photos and eat at some cool places. It made the drive go longer, but it was ultimately a lot more fun.
Paul sat up front with me and acted as a de-facto navigator, and Chris Walker sat in the back as our de-facto nap-taker. Chris was very, very good at his job...he even brought his own pillow!
Once we got to Memphis, we unloaded the gear and checked into the hotel. We had heard about a BBQ place called Rendezvous in downtown Memphis, so we grabbed our producer Mark (who flew in from Rhode Island) and headed down there for some ribs, brisket and a taste of downtown...it did not disappoint.
Day one started off with a lot of interviews but we got to head out in the afternoon to shoot some of the fun Memphis landmarks including Graceland, Beale Street and Stax Studios. Our guide also took us by the Lorraine Motel, where MLK was shot (and is now the National Civil Rights Museum), which was really kind of eerie. It's always so strange to stand in a place where something so horrible happened.
We decided to head out that night to Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken for dinner. While the chicken was good, I'm not sure if it would hold up against a lot of other amazing fried chicken that's out there in the world. We were gonna go shoot downtown Memphis that night, but a rainstorm came in and we decided to call it a night.
Day two was a mix of interviews and b-roll and was a fun day. By the end of the shoot, we needed something that wasn't fried or slathered in BBQ sauce, so we ended up at Alchemy where we had a bunch of small plates and beer. Good food, good beer and we were in bed by 10pm, ready for an early start the next day to drive back to Austin.
The drive back was good (we stopped off at In-N-Out in Dallas for lunch!), though by the end of it, I was pretty trashed. It's always good to get home, unload the car and get into my own bed.
I'm currently transcoding the footage and it's looking really good. We ended up shooting some GoPro stuff that's going to be fun and we managed to get a very cool close-up, slow motion shot of a guy dunking a basketball using my 8mm lens. I'm really hoping it makes it in the final cut as it's pretty awesome,
Comments