….
John Tunnard, wearing his permit ID - representing his involvement as the director responsible for filming the behind the scene slowly began to adjust himself to the job, assisted by another dude - who carries the camera equipment.
He walked in as a completely clueless guy on the first day of the filming, with no real idea of the kind of world he was stepping into -
Yet by the end of that very first day, the picture began to form.
Call it an intuition - he understood something extraordinary was happening here - something far beyond what he had ever expected.
He is a film school student, and also someone who likes to keep himself updated every now and then.
So he knew a few things about the latest tech being used for the film.
The whole thing is being recorded with RED EPICs riding 3ality Technica rigs - the same combination that had just begun proving itself in the field - because speed and stereoscopy needed to coexist if the film was ever going to breathe.
Also from what he had read, the compact EPIC bodies gave them 5K negative and a small footprint, the 3ality system gives real-time control over interaxial and convergence, and together they let the crew move a stereo rig like an action camera instead of a museum piece.
In practical terms, it meant a camera team could put Spider-Man in the air and still hit their marks before the stunt team's pendulum finished a single arc.
It all started on the first day… The Spider-Man costume was revealed a bit dramatically with a blanket covered.
His job wasn't to shoot the film, he was there to shoot the film being made.
Behind-the-scenes.
The phrase sounded small when he first heard it, but as soon as he stepped in, camera slung on my shoulder, he realized how massive my responsibility was.
His footage wouldn't go to theaters, but it would tell the story of how this world came alive.
….
When Andrew Garfield had just slipped into the suit for the very first time.
He was crouched near the wardrobe area, camera humming quietly, the suit clung to him like it had grown there, red and blue fabric catching the light.
John zoomed in slowly on his masked face as he rolled his shoulders, testing its flexibility.
He caught me filming and gave a small nod, then dropped into a crouch, mimicking the classic Spider-Man pose.
His viewfinder came alive with it, for a moment, even off-set, with wires hanging overhead and duct tape on the walls, he believed it.
Later, in a short interview, John asked:
"How does it feel wearing it for the first time?"
Andrew grinned through the mask. "Honestly? Heavy responsibility, but damn, it's the coolest thing I have ever put on."
Every day was a new battlefield of creativity.
Sparks flying from prop builders welding rig parts, crew members shouting "Quiet on set!" before the clapboard snapped.
His lens wandered everywhere, from the makeup department dabbing fake blood onto Andrew's cheek, to Regal, the director, crouching on the ground, explaining angles with both hands like he was sculpting air.
Sometimes, he would film Simon the line producer on the phone, pacing endlessly about budget approvals.
Or Lena the AD laughing with the stunt team, trying out the harness herself before the professionals launched Andrew into the air.
…and he finally understood why his job mattered.
Over the time, he shot hundreds of hours, from the clatter of catering trays to Regal's quiet, late-night conversations with his cinematographer about lens choices.
He filmed the failures too: Andrew missing his landing, stunt doubles colliding mid-swing, props snapping under stress.
But in those failures, in those real, human moments, John saw the real story: an army of people building a dream frame by frame.
Sometimes he would catch Regal watching playback monitors with his hands on his knees, eyes blazing with something he can't even describe, exhaustion, obsession, and part belief.
He always kept my lens on him during those moments, because years from now, people will look at the movie and see Spider-Man.
But his footage? It will show how Spider-Man was born.
And he will always be the guy in the shadows, recording the dream coming to life.
….
And it didn't end there.
Because this film changed him… As a person and to the core.
The first ten days belonged to tests: lens mapping, focus pulls at varying interaxials, mirror-box flare hunts, and a rolling-shutter war waged with charts and whip-pans.
The crew locked on the 3ality TS-5 handheld beamsplitter rig for run-and-gun work; its weight didn't punish the operators the way earlier stereo rigs did, and its wireless control let the stereographer trim depth on the fly without barging into the operator's rhythm.
Then they would swing the rig past reflective surfaces to find trouble before it found us, then feed those edge-case results to the post team so their pipeline would be ready on day one.
The point wasn't just to make the rigs work; it was to make them feel invisible to the cast and the choreography.
By the end of week two, Regal's stunt crew had already turned physics into a design language.
They studied high-bar gymnasts frame by frame to get the timing right - acceleration peaking at the bottom of the swing, weightlessness arriving at the top - and then built rigs to honor that cadence.
What had been a computer's constant-speed arc in earlier films became a pulse you could feel in your knees.
However, for John - it wasn't just about the film shot, or how many people were working on the special effects.
The whole process felt otherworldly, as if every corner of the stage hummed with a kind of electricity he had never known before.
Each sunrise brought with it a new challenge, and each challenge seemed impossibly complex.
At one point he even muttered to himself, half in disbelief -
"Are movies really this difficult to make?"
He had thought he understood the process, but what unfolded in front of him left him grasping for answers.
Every scene demanded something different, and every day rewrote the rules of what he believed filmmaking was, and at the center of it all - steady, commanding, tireless - stood the captain of the ship: the director, Regal.
John couldn't help asking himself, silently, over and over:
What is this man made of?
Did he even sleep? Did he even eat?
How could anyone carry that much weight on their shoulders and still walk onto set with such relentless energy - sometimes more charged than the day before?
It was like watching someone defy the limits of being human.
While this was one thing, something else that gnawed at him.
Because despite all this… the strangest part wasn't just Regal himself.
It was the crew.
The cast.
What was wrong with the rest of the people here? Was there something broken in them too?
Because somehow, impossibly, they managed to keep up with Regal.
It made no sense.
Everything about this place was absurd, impossible, almost laughably unreal.
He couldn't see a single way all of this chaos could ever come together into something great.
And yet - it was happening. Right in front of his eyes.
Every frame, every scene, every long night that stretched into dawn was proof that denial wasn't an option.
Whatever it was, he realized one thing quickly: he had stepped into something bigger than a film.
He had stepped into a world where passion burned so fiercely it refused to die out - and Regal was the flame at the center of it all.
So what did that make him?
At one point, the thought slithered into his mind, sharp and terrifying, a thought anyone who ever had a dream dreads more than failure itself:
"Did I ever try hard enough?"
He hated it, he wanted to run from it, but it wouldn't leave him.
If this were the him before stepping onto this set, he would have answered with conviction, without hesitation:
Yes. I gave it everything before I walked away.
But now… standing here, watching Regal tear through impossibility like it was nothing, seeing everyone else sacrifice their bodies, their time, their sanity to keep up - he knew the truth.
In the end… it was him who gave up.
That conversation stayed with him in a way he didn't expect.
During the shooting process he grew close with Regal…
So he just decided to confront him straightforwardly.
He thought Regal would either laugh it off, or give him the classic pep talk -
Never give up.
Believe in yourself.
- the usual clichés people say when they don't really mean it.
But no, Regal's answer cut straight through, like a knife that didn't hurt but opened something inside him he hadn't dared to look at.
The young man sat there, a bottle of water half-forgotten in his hand, staring at Regal as if he had just rewritten the laws of gravity.
"Just because you don't give up doesn't mean you will make it." - the words rolled around his head.
At first they sounded harsh, almost dismissive, but then, slowly, they reshaped themselves into something else entirely.
A truth no one had said to him before.
Regal wasn't romanticizing the dream. He was stripping it bare.
And yet… There was something strangely liberating about that.
Because it wasn't about guarantees, it was about ownership - about making a choice, and standing by it, no matter the outcome.
"Life is always about choice, options and paths." Regal said again, calmly, as though he were explaining the simplest of equations. "You gotta make one in the end. Right or wrong - face the consequences. In fact, even now you have a path ahead to choose… and take."
The young man looked down at his shoes, silence pressing between them.
For the first time, he realized it wasn't about whether he could have made it, but whether he truly chose to fight for it.
Maybe he hadn't.
Maybe he stopped because it was easier to believe fate had closed the door, rather than admit he had let go of the handle himself.
He wanted to ask Regal what kept him going, how he still had that fire after endless hours of work, how he never seemed drained.
But as he looked up, Regal was already on his feet, heading back to set, his stride carrying that same relentless energy.
The conversation was over.
And yet, for the young man, it had only just begun.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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