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I’m sitting here with my sound damping Bose headphones on listening to Seether’s "F*** It". I’m tired enough that I’m having trouble focusing my eyes and keep staring off into space at absolutely nothing but the white noise in my own head. Every time I do a photo shoot, or a video shoot I am more and more impressed with people who do this as their main job. It’s a lot harder than it looks, and a lot more tedious. People ask me why I didn’t jump on the idea of an Anita movie years ago, well, today was one of the reasons. There was a lot of hurry up and wait, and a lot of just waiting, and it takes a lot longer to set up for a shot than you ever imagine. Jon and I have done the research, as much as you can on a business this complex, and making films is not glamourous. It’s freaking hard work, and the real trick is while you work your ass off you have to make it look effortless and totally natural. Though I was told today that I have finally mastered being natural on moving camera.

I think I blogged about my epiphany about what made someone look good on camera awhile back, but not sure if I actually did, or just thought hard about doing it, so if part of this is a repeat, forgive me, and if not, then here goes. One of our favorite shows to watch as a family is Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. One night we were watching and I thought, you know Mike Rowe is one of our favorite people to watch on televsion. He’s always fun, always entertaining, and has that near magical ability to be likeable and attractive even when covered in shit, and I mean that literally. He makes it all strangely charming. You just feel like you could invite him for dinner and he’d be fun. He’s managed that balancing act where straight men want to be his friend and the rest of us think he’s cute, and the straight men don’t hold it against him. (You did know that the real test of likeable is to be a sex symbol for one half of the population and still liked by the rest of us.) I actually began to try to figure out why Mike Rowe is so damn personable on camera. Yes, he’s attractive, but there are plenty of attractive people that aren’t good on camera, so what was it. I finally came to the conclusion that he was absolutely natural in front of the camera no matter what he was doing. He never seemed to feel awkward in the most awkward of situations. He just got more funny and charming. I thought, okay, now that I’ve figured it out, what next? I had to be natural on camera. So with Mike as my inspiration I tried, and finally seem to have succeeded, but it wasn’t Mike that capped my on camera appearance. It was our friend Daven.

Daven has this almost magical ability to charm people. Male, female, straight, not, doesn’t matter, he just seems to be able to turn on the glamour and the person he’s aiming at just melts. I watched it all weekend, and finally asked, "How do you do that?" He actually demonstrated putting off an air of welcoming and smiles, and then his very serious face and demeanor where no one that didn’t have a death wish would approach him. Have I mentioned that he’s over six feet tall? When he wants to he can look quite imposing. So today on camera I tried to be as natural as Mike Rowe and any time I started to be confused about what to do on camera I thought, "What would Daven do?" I treated the director/producer and the camera as if it was that person that Daven was looking at, and you know what, it worked beautifully. I must use this new superpower only for good, or when it amuses me. Of course, my version of this new ability was my own version of my friend’s charisma. Years ago I would try to copy people’s behavior exactly, but it never fit because I was not that person. Now I understand that you take the ability and modify it to your own personality. I would be hard pressed to explain how my version differs from Daven’s but I just know that it does. But in the end being good on camera is a type of charm as in the old sense of the word, as in to charm someone. It’s almost a type of flirting this camera trick, but instead of a date or a blush you’re working for something indefinable. All I know is that for the first time, ever, when I watched the play back even I couldn’t say anything but, it looked good. Me thinking I looked good on moving camera, damn near a miracle.