Night Two

Of course, when we showed up at work the first thing we did was split the crew – some stayed down at the beachside set to work the day exterior, and the rest of us went back up the hill to re-rig the set up from the night before.

It wasn’t as bad, since we were rigging the turn around from the first night – the original shot had been looking down the hill, so we saw (and had to light) much more than we did when the camera was aimed up the hill.

Still, we barely got finished in time, and once the shooting crew landed, everything got changed around, but this time we had more people and I was more emotionally prepared for the hard, long day, even though I started out sore and in pain from the night before.

After they finished the night exterior, the set guys went down to the beach to work the night exterior on the beach, and we stayed up top to wrap.

One of the things that is, in reality, much less wonderful that one might imagine is working on the beach.

No matter if it’s day or night, working on the beach is difficult. Sand gets everywhere, carts are useless, and the big inflatable wheels that are supposed to make lighting stands roll don’t really work as well as they’re supposed to.

Did I mention sand gets everywhere?

So I was very happy to just be wrapping – we got there, got the stuff from up the hill loaded into the truck and then wrapped cable (covered in sand, of course).

The wrap went quickly as we had the entire crew working, then we had to wait for the rental company to show up. Lucky for us, they got there half an hour early, and we were on our way home before the sun came up.

I came home, slept for a couple of hours, then got up and did something. I know I did something, I just don’t remember what.

Today, my legs are incredibly painful and my left shoulder’s stiff. I know the legs are stiff from the hill, but I’ve got no idea what’s up with the shoulder. Hopefully it’ll sort itself out in time for me to go swim.

Filed under: locations, long long drives, up all night, Work , beach, hill, hillside, left shoulder, lighting stands, rigging, sand, walk, Work

Ouchies.

The gaffer and crew on Reluctant Porn Star are some of my favorite people in the world to work with, no matter what it is, but the DP on the show, while a very nice guy, isn’t really used to working on low-budget shows.

He’s used to working with higher budgets which means more equipment and larger crews (and rigging crews, which RPS doesn’t have), so the lighting set-ups are way too big for the small crew that we have.

Our location was a neighborhood of  some very lovely hillside homes in the south  bay – the views from the houses were amazing, but the problem with working around hillside homes, is, well, the hillside.

Our truck was down a very steep hill from the house where we were shooting, so anything that we needed had to be brought to the set in a stakebed (if we could get one. Transpo only had three since it’s a low-budget show), or carried as trying to push even a lightly loaded cart up an 18% grade is hilarious, but ultimately futile.

Our first shot was  day exterior, which didn’t require any lighting, which was good as we had to run cable up the hill and down the hill for the night exterior. Since they were looking at the street, we had to run the cable through the yards of the houses – over the fences, through the ivy, etc.. We also made an attempt to pre-light by placing some lamps in the yards where we thought they might work.

Up the hill, down the hill. Up the hill down the hill. My legs were screaming well before lunch.

Of course, any attempts we made at pre-lighting went out the window when we started actually lighting.

I’ve mentioned before that there’s a difference between actual dark and cinematic dark. The latter requires a surprisingly large number of lights even for a small area, and since we were spread out over an almost-vertical city block, we used pretty much ever light in our truck.

Right after we’d lit and shot one direction of the night exterior, it started to rain. Since there was no way to shoot the reverse of a huge wide shot with rain when the first half had no rain, they told us to wrap everything and they’d come back another time and reshoot it.

Two hours later, right after we’d finished wrapping, we were informed of the plan to shoot the reverse tomorrow, so we’re going to have to re-run all the cable and re-do all the lighting.

I managed to get home just before the sun came up.

Filed under: hazardous, locations, long long drives, up all night, Work , cable, clusterfuck, hill, Work

Time flies when you’re busy

January has been crazy (the good kind, not the drama kind). I’m getting multiple work calls almost every day, which, as I’ve mentioned before, is unheard of this time of year.

Tuesday, I missed a work call for Wednesday as I was swimming when the call came. Since I have yet to figure out how to bring my phone into the lap pool with me, by the time I dried off and got back to the locker the job had been given to someone else who called back sooner.

“Oh, well” I thought “I’ll just clean the house and hopefully I’ll get a day near the end of the week”.

Wednesday  morning at 6:45, the phone rang and the best boy from Doctors in Love* asked if I could come in right then as someone had called in sick.

Normally, I don’t like to jump out of bed, throw on whatever clothing smells the least and haul ass out the door. I like to get up, have some coffee, putter around and generally make a leisurely exit, but since Doctors in Love shoots across town (literally all the way across the city) and it’s an hour drive with no traffic,  I hurried as waiting too much past 7-ish would result in a multi hour stop-and-go nightmare.

It turned out to be an easy day (one set, two actors) with a bunch of really awesome guys. The only bad part about working with this particular group of guys is that they use a bunch of custom rigged lights, and as such have odd names for them.

Normally, there’s a bit of variation in what stuff is called (some people call a 4 foot, four tube Kino Flo a ‘fat boy’, some call it a ‘tall boy’), but it’s all basically the same.

Custom lights, however, are, well, custom, so there’s no frame of reference.

When the gaffer gets on the walkie and asks for a “Long John Silver on a teeter totter**” I have no frame of reference and stand there, halfway between the staging area and the set, blinking rapidly and wondering if I want to ask for clarification on the walkie, thus making everyone think I’m a bit slow, or wait to ask a co-worker, making the gaffer think I’m lazy.

Awesome.

It all worked out well, though (crazy light names aside), and I got picked up for the next day as well, so I got to go back today.

Today as also an easy day with fun people, even if the work was a bit more complex (multiple actors, a stage move, etc..), but I was inside a heated stage all day – a good thing since it’s currently really cold here in Los Angeles. Objectively cold, not California cold.

During lunch today, I got a text from the best boy on Reluctant Porn Star* asking if I could work Friday and Saturday. Both days on the beach, both days splits (afternoon call so the day’s half day, half night).

I predict both nights to be cold and damp (and working on the beach sucks balls), but hey, it’s work, right?

*Not a real show name

** An LED strip in an aluminum housing with the ballasts rigged to hang off of it. It looks like a penis on a surfboard.

Filed under: crack of dawn, long long drives, studio lots, Work , actor, busy, cold, doctor, January, lap pool, lights, long john silver, odd names, phone, pool, swimming, winter

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

By now, I’m assuming that you’ve all heard about the flap over SOPA, a fun, flirty bit of potential legislation that’s attempting to curb internet piracy.

While censorship is, of course, a horrible thing, stealing is also horrible. When you download or stream pirated movies, you’re stealing. From me.

Let me explain.

Below-the-line crew don’t get residuals paid directly as do actors, writers, producers, etc..

Instead, we get what would be residuals paid into our health and pension fund. When people illegally download a movie, that’s lost money that should be going into a fund to keep me from having to eat road kill when I’m old*

Right now, because of piracy, our health and pension fund is under-funded to the tune of some number with a fuckload of zeros at the end.

The criminals, as usual, are way, way ahead of the law.

SOPA is an attempt to give law enforcement a bit more of an advantage.

Except that it’s incredibly badly written. Imagine trying to explain “that interweb thing” to your grandpa and then having him try to fix it.

That’s SOPA.

So. Do I support the legislation as currently written? No.

Do I agree that there’s a huge problem with piracy that needs to be dealt with? Yes.

Since the internet is currently behaving like an octogenarian confronted with a wireless printer setup, do I think everyone needs to calm the fuck down? Yes.

Will I be joining the internet boycott thingy? No.

Unless WordPress does it for me.

*If it’s that bad, I’ll just go skydiving and forget to deploy my parachute. Hey, it’s okay. I’ll be senile. No one will get in trouble.

Filed under: Non-Work, Off-Topic , boycott, congress, dinner, geezer, health insurance, internet, old age, pension, PIPA, residuals, roadkill, SOPA, Wordpress

Crosstown drives and short turnaround

Tuesday, I had a last-minute call on Been Done Before – with a mid-rush hour start time all the way across town (of course), which meant I had to leave home extra early and still stressed out the whole time I sat on the freeway, not moving. Awesome.

They called wrap around 8 pm, and we had to load our truck and then find a van to take us back to crew parking. I got home around 9 pm, and I had a 6:30 am call all the way across town (in the other direction) this morning for a rigging call on Yet Another Cop Show. Why is it that when I come in rested we have an eight-hour day, but when I haven’t gotten any sleep the night before we go long?

Today, we were shooting on an $18 million yacht. No, that’s not a typo. A lovely sweep of fiberglass that you, my friends, can charter for a measly for 75 grand per week (including fuel and crew), and television shows can shoot on (for an undisclosed sum, of course).

After putting those paper shoe covers on so that our dirty toolbelt feet wouldn’t soil the white carpet or mar the marble flooring, we were allowed in.

Since it’s a bad, bad idea for the boat’s engines to be running while we’re shooting, we had to run power to said boat. Since the entire planet has apparently decided that boats need 480 volts of power we had to get two generators – one for the boat power, and one for our 120 volt power.

Do I need to tell anyone that plugging anything that’s normally 120 into 480 is going to result in a hilarious and expensive explosion?

Once we got the boat powered, we set up our balloon light on a barge (since they wanted the balloon to be right out in the middle of the harbor), and then got off work just in time to hit the rush hour traffic going home.

I’m off again tomorrow, which is good because I’m still coughing.

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, long long drives, movies, Photos, Work , cop show, marble flooring, rush hour traffic, television shows, undisclosed sum, volt power

It’s Saturday Night and I’m up in the air. Sort of.

In addition to Been Done Before and Yet Another Cop Show, I’m now picking up days on a movie that’s crewed by some wonderful people who I like so much I’ll happily come and work on a low-budget clusterfuck from hell.

Let’s call it Reluctant Porn Star*.

The one thing that low-budget movies do to cut costs is cut manpower. Which is fine, except that the smaller the crew, the longer it takes to light big, wide shots where we see the entire world (or at least the entire pool and courtyard of a motel that hasn’t seen a remodel since the Carter administration).

The solution? Use your condor operators!

Normally, going up in the condor means that you stay up all night, even when your light’s not in use, because it takes longer than most gaffers want to wait to raise the boom arm, get back into position and have the light come up to full strength (HMI lamps take a few minutes to reach full brightness). It’s much faster to leave the person up there all night with the light burning, but panned off the set so when the light is needed, it’s ready instantly and the gaffer looks like a rock star when the DP says “Wow, that was fast!”

Except when you’ve got an enormous night exterior to light and production won’t give you the manpower that you need, letting the condor operator sit up there doing nothing doesn’t seem like such a great idea any longer.

So, I had to come down and work the set.

Which turned out to be a good thing, as right after lunch a really heavy fog rolled in, and if I’d been up in the air, I would have been soaking wet – which would have been just fucking great for my cough.

Unfortunately, since I’d assumed I’d be up in the air all night, I didn’t take a nap before work, so I was really sleepy, especially since the coffee machine broke right after lunch.

When I die, if I go to hell, my personal torture chamber will be a night exterior with no coffee available.

I got home from work around 6 am Sunday morning, slept for about four hours and then stumbled through the day. I think there was a bike ride in there at some point, but really the whole day’s a blur.

After struggling to stay awake until dark Sunday night, I slept a good 12 hours and then went to the gym to sit in the steam room in an attempt to encourage whatever’s living in my chest to move out.

We’ll see. I’m back on Been Done Before tomorrow.

*This is not actually the name of the movie.

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, movies, up all night, Work

Saturday Photo

My view tonight from a condor. 

Yeah, I’m working Saturday night. 

In Long Beach.

Filed under: locations, long long drives, Los Angeles, Photos, up all night

A Contagious Christmas

This has been the busiest December I’ve had in a long time. I worked almost every day, which was great, and thought that I’d managed to avoid the Holiday Death Plague currently being passed around here in Los Angeles.

Said plague featured a combination of the worst head cold one could possibly imagine and a tubercular cough that, like house guests, just won’t go the fuck away.

I was feeling pretty smug – I had three days of work the week before Christmas, no days of sickness, and one day off before I had to get on a plane to go visit the family and overeat.

Wednesday promised to be great – due to the slowest director in the world, we were going to get a hefty check, production were buying lunch, and holiday cookies were plentiful.

Mid-morning, one of our extras started to cough. I didn’t think much about it – after all I’d not gotten sick yet, which must have meant I was immune to the Holiday Death Plague. Throughout the day, her cough got worse and worse, and by mid-afternoon almost 20 people on set (including me) were starting to cough.

Refusing to believe that I was getting sick, I attributed it to dust from when I had to go up into the perms to drop out some power for a new set, but as I was driving home I finally had to admit to myself that the Death Plague had, in fact, won.

So, I spent the holiday sniffling, hacking and wheezing while stuffing my face full of fatty food and sweets. The day before I was to leave, my sister started coughing.

Whoops.

As of now, the head cold portion of the program is gone, but the cough is still lingering and frightening anyone who comes anywhere near me. I hope it’s gone before the middle of next week, which is when I have to work.

Filed under: studio lots, Work , Christmas, cold, cough, fatty food, food, holiday, holiday cookies, mid afternoon, mid morning, sickness

Scheduling

One of the things that directors never, ever think about but really should is how long it takes to move a 100+ person crew (and the associated equipment) when a show’s doing company moves (starting the day’s work at one location, then packing up and moving to an entirely different location).

Once the ADs call “we’re on the move”, we have to gather all our equipment, pack it onto our carts, walk the location to make sure we didn’t lose anything expensive, push the carts to the truck, load the carts, find a van and then travel.

All of this, as you might imagine, doesn’t happen instantaneously.

Today, we started out at one of Los Angeles’ many abandoned hospitals – we were shooting in the basement, and because the DP likes to see the whole world, we had to rig our lights into the dropped ceiling (not that difficult, but time-consuming).

Our intrepid director shot right up until lunch, and since we were just a teensy bit undermanned we couldn’t go eat lunch and then come back (after lunch, we would be needed to work the new set) so we had to wrap, load our carts onto a stakebed and then download before we could eat. Which was fine, except that the company broke for lunch about half an hour before we did.

The problem with this became apparent when it was time to go back to work and start lighting. They rehearsed, blocked and were ready to light, and all of lighting and grip were still at lunch for another 20 minutes.

The solution proposed by a very frazzled UPM was to have grip and electric take a half hour lunch (as opposed to the hour everyone else had), so we’d be back to work along with everyone else.

So that’s what we did.

We cut our lunch short to keep the day on schedule – because we’d all rather have that time at the end of the day when our feet hurt and we’re tired and want to go home.

Filed under: Work

Wow, things got busy!

There I was, expecting the usual not-so-busy December, and out of nowhere suddenly work is going gangbusters. Not that it’s a bad thing, it’s just… unexpected.

I’m bouncing back and forth between two shows crewed by awesome folks that I love to work with – a one-hour ensemble drama (let’s call it Been Done Before) and Yet Another Cop Show.

The two have been syncing up nicely. This week, I have four days rigging on Been Done Before, and Friday working the set on Yet Another Cop Show.

Since BDB is rigging, the hours are shorter (normally not over 10 hours), except today which was a bit longer because we had to rig at the world’s smallest loft.  Had we a cat handy, there wouldn’t have been room to swing it. Seeing a largish production trying to cram a crew into the space was probably hilarious, but I’ve very glad I didn’t have to work the set.

After helping the shooting crew move to the loft (the day’s second location), we went back to wrap our first location at the old LA Times building.  We were shooting in the currently unused Chandler-era executive offices on the top floor in a room called the Round Table – which features, unsurprisingly, a big round table. You’ve seen it in about a bazillion movies.

I really do believe that being honest (within reason) is the best way to live one’s life, but I have to tell you all – had there been a way for me to sneak the original Paul Horiuchi painting out of the building, I’d have done it. It’s just hanging on the wall in an empty office, making no one happy instead of inspiring joy and general well-being, which is a painting’s job.

Oh, well.

Once we’d gotten the shooting crew moved and wrapped, it was right in the middle of rush hour, so a co-worker and I went and had some Pho at a place around the corner from the Times building. Hot noodle soup is perfect on a cold night.

By the time we finished eating, the traffic had died down enough for me to venture onto the freeway towards home.

Tomorrow, we’re wrapping the world’s smallest loft, which shouldn’t take very long, and then Friday, it’ll be a split on YACS.

Five days this week! Yay!!!

Filed under: locations, Work , artwork, downtown, LA Times, Los Angeles, office, pho, traffic