Jimmie Jones and the lost footage (how a student lost and found his project)

Well, this being my first project, I wanted it to be a good one.

So I went back to Mississippi, and rounded up two friends and we headed for Downtown Memphis. We got all the things out of my trunk that I needed and set our journey for the top of a building we explore. I needed that to be my location, because I like being up there.

We went through hell, going up.

Both days.

The first day, we got close to being to the top and in the stairwell a big pigeon was flying around trying to scare us off. We got lucky and got passed it.

Minutes later, we made it to the top. Finally, fresh air.

I looked around for perfect battle spots, which you see in the pictures. We begin the project. Me giving every detail of how I wanted things done, and I also worked out the choreographing, which was a little hard memory wise, but it all turned out good the first day, which took 3 and a half hours.

The next day heading into the building we encountered a sleeping homeless, we ran off and found a different way up.

This day was tough, I had to re-do a lot of things and we were already tired from the day before. Also in the middle of the shoot the Sith[red] lightsaber prop broke on us, we had to fix it, and it was not in good condition. So pretty much towards the ending after they jump the brick ( if you have seen the project) we had to fake the hits, and instead of the fight being longer I had to end it quickly.

Before the pictures had the saber effects added, you can clearly see the prop break in mid-air.

But that's the shoot in a nutshell.

Now, two weeks of my brother adding the saber effects to the pictures the project due date was coming up.

On a saturday night I turned off my mac.

I went to sleep, woke up the next morning and it was gone, all of my pictures and everything.

Hard drive died.

Then on top of that I got sick.

I took mac to mac authority. They fixed it.

I went back to mississippi to start a new project.

And after first day of shooting, my brother tells me that he found the pictures before the fight, so I figured I could have a smaller story with those, so I put those onto a disc and thats when I started feeling better about the project.

I reinstalled Final Cut that week before thanks giving. And edited my project the whole break.

It's not how I wanted it to be, but it's better than nothing.

There's two versions, a fast, see how it really was version. And a slower more long version. Epic journey of the photostill project.