After the rain

Line drying

Since it’s almost never a good idea for lighting equipment to get wet, when there’s the threat of rain (or heavy dew overnight) we have to cover, with plastic, any carts and loose equipment not under some sort of cover.  For a long time, we just cut chunks off big rolls of landscaping plastic and wrapped that around the carts (and no matter how thorough a job one thought one had done, water always leaked in somewhere), but then someone invented these giant sandwich bag things called Bag-its. They come in all sizes and are super awesome, but are far too expensive to be considered a throwaway item, so they get re-used until they’re so battered that they fall apart (this takes a surprisingly long time to happen).

For obvious reasons, we can’t fold them up and put them away when they’re wet, so we have to dry them. The best way to do this is to suspend them from two stands like giant lines of plastic laundry.

We had to keep the sidewalk clear so that the nice people who live in this neighborhood could pass through, so we couldn’t just line them up like we usually do, and we only had enough space to dry three at a time.

Lucky for us there’s no rain predicted for the rest of our very short (due to the Thanksgiving holiday) week.

Filed under: camera, crack of dawn, locations, Photos, Work, Bag-its, carts, equipment, film, invention, lighting, location shooting, movie, plastic, set

It’s seven PM and I’m going to bed

Although long days are normal for me, there’s a huge difference between a 12 hour shooting day and a 12 hour rigging day.

On the shooting crew, there are times where one isn’t doing anything and can sit and rest (or go to crafty, or read the paper, etc…). On a rigging crew, there’s no rest except when one is on one of three designated breaks throughout the day ( coffee, lunch, and afternoon) or when one can sneak off to the restroom.

Since we’re working 6 am to 6 pm on a lot that’s all the way across town (no, really) from my place,  and I’ve got a commute on either side (about 40 minutes in the morning and an hour at night), I get up (at about 4:45), go to work, come home, shower and go to bed.

No time for much else, although last night I did sacrifice some precious sleep time to go stand in line at my polling place and vote.

I’m off to bed.

Filed under: crack of dawn, long long drives, movies, studio lots, drive, early, movie, rigging

Crack of dark

Over the years, I’ve gotten used to getting up early. Five am is pretty common, four am sucks but is doable, but yesterday I got up at 2:45. In the morning.

In a flash of foresight unusual for me, I have the alarm placed all the way across the room so I have to get up to hit the snooze button. In theory, this means if I get up, walk across the room to turn off the alarm I’ll stay up.  Most times this just means I get up, hit the snooze button and climb back into bed, but the shock of seeing the alarm go off at such a disturbing hour kept me up.

I then shuffled into the kitchen, made coffee and had some breakfast since I correctly assumed there wouldn’t be any food options at 4 am at our location – a high school in the Valley at which I’ve worked many, many times.

The good part about starting work at 4 am is that it’s not hot yet, which is a big plus in September in Los Angeles.  We ran out our cable in the pre-dawn coolness, and although I forgot my headlamp (took it out of the work bag to change the battery, and when I got home I found it sitting right there on the coffee table where I’d placed it so I wouldn’t forget to put it in the work bag), I still managed to see well enough to not trip and fall.

We changed some tubes in the classroom and the hallway, and when the caterer opened we had breakfast.

I couldn’t figure out why I was so hungry, then realized I’d last eaten at 3 am and it was now 7:30.

After wolfing down various egg products, we rigged some lights, ran some more cable, wrapped the first location and then ran more cable in a thankfully not very smelly gym.

Also, we were very lucky that the school had no students that day. It’s not that I don’t like teenagers, it’s just that it’s incredibly difficult to work around them since they tend to form packs.

The other nice thing about really early calls is getting released early. Since this particular show doesn’t want to keep the rigging crew on for more than 10 hours, we were on our way home at 3 pm – before the traffic got bad.

Once I got home, it was a struggle to stay awake until 8, when I gave up and went to bed.

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, long long drives, Work, early, food options, high school, lights, location, movie, rigging, snooze button, vacation

Wait, there’s a 4 am now?

It’s been a thin year and not looking to get much better, so of course I’m eternally grateful for every day of work I get.

Even tomorrow, with a call time of 4 am in west bumfuck (take freeway until it ends, drive another 10 miles), which, since it’s a long commute, will require me to leave my house at 3 am, which means I have to get up at an hour I don’t want to think about.

Which means I should be in bed right now, except that it’s not dark yet and for some reason I have a real problem falling asleep when it’s still light out.

Also of course, I have zero idea of how long a day tomorrow will be, so I have to assume that I’ll need as much sleep as possible – which, if I’m lucky, will be about 6 hours.

Lucky for me I’m working with a group of guys that I really like so even though I have to be there at the crack of dark, I’ll still have a great time.

I’m off to bed.

Filed under: crack of dawn, long long drives, movies, Work, am, Commute, drive, early, Los Angeles, morning, movie, production, television

Yay work! Pass the ice water.

I’m always happy to get a day of work, but lately I’m downright joyful, even if I’m working somewhere that’s going to make me very, very uncomfortable, such as Pasadena.

In case you’re not familiar, Pasadena is east of Los Angeles, and, in the summer, is hotter than the surface of the sun.  No, I’m not exaggerating.

Our call time was 6 am, which meant there was no traffic, so I got there in about 20 minutes, and then had another 20 minute van ride up to the top of a hill in a park I didn’t know existed.

Of course, the director changed the location of the first shot to a part of the park that hadn’t been scouted at all – so right when they were ready to start rehearsing, the sprinklers came on.

Then, the sun came up.

The heat was tolerable as long as one stayed in the shade, but any venture into the sun resulted in a very uncomfortable frying sensation.

After the first half of the day in the park, we moved to a home in Pasadena. A very lovely hillside home with a very lovely view of the city.

A hillside home, though, means that we have to push our carts up a hilly driveway and fight with all the other departments for level ground on which to stage equipment. In this case, it was a parking deck which, on the scout, it was determined we’d never, ever see so it was, in theory, safe.

Of course, as soon as he walked on set, the director decided that the parking deck was the best looking part of the stunning mid-century modern home and that he absolutely had to have the shot include it.

So, we pushed our carts back down the hill.

The good news is that the home was on an east-facing hill, so the yard was out of the worst of the sun. The bad news was we were shooting day for day so the east facing home would lose any usable light far earlier than we were going to finish shooting.

So, when we were finished shooting in the direction of the parking deck, we pushed our carts back up the hill.

Which was a good thing, since as we lost the light we started pulling out the HMIs to create light that was dissapearing behind the hill.

Once the light started to go, the director kicked it into high gear and we finished just as it was getting really, truly dark.

Then, we had to wrap out of the house – which was fine as the heat, finally, was gone.

Cruelest moment of the day: The pool. One can never, ever, EVER jump into a pool at a location. Firstly, because the homeowner doesn’t want a sweaty film crew clogging up the filters, and secondly, because one doesn’t want to work in wet clothes, but when one is really overheated the sight of an empty swimming pool is pure torture.

Oh, sweet cold water.. how I want you.

Call time: 6 am:

Wrap time 7:30 pm.

We closed our truck doors at 8 pm.

Yay work!

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, Work, home in pasadena, outdoors

More good news and bad news

Good News: I’ve got two days work – tomorrow and Thursday. This is extremely good news, as every little bit helps.

Bad News: It’s on the complete opposite end of Los Angeles county from my apartment. No, I’m not exaggerating. Hello, two-hour commute. If I’m lucky.

Good News: The crew I’m working with tomorrow are the nicest, most wonderful folks ever, so I’m guaranteed to have a fun day.

Bad News: When the best boy booked me, he warned me “wear your walking shoes” which means there’s going to be an awful lot of moving stuff from one end of the lot to the other, so I’ll probably be in horrible pain by, oh, say, lunch.

Good News: Episodes of the old A-Team TV show are on Netflix.

Bad News: Episodes of the old A-Team TV show are on Netflix.

Good News: After about a month of trying to live off my bi-weekly CSA box, I’ve lost about 15 lbs.

Bad News: It all seems to have come off my boobs. This is unfair.

Good News: My now quite elderly cat is still alive and very healthy.

Bad News: The shedding is out of control. I woke up this morning with cat hair in my sinus and both eyeballs. Gonna be a hot summer.

Good News: My newish digital camera is safe from harm.

Bad News: Because I don’t know where it is, so I can’t take it to work or on bike rides. Damn.

I’m sure it’ll turn up.

Filed under: crack of dawn, life in LA, locations, long long drives, Work, healthy-living, weight-loss

You’re driving us where?

One of the tricks productions use to avoid paying mileage is the bus-to.

One reports to the lot, and then gets in a van and is driven for an eon or so to some place that isn’t featured on modern maps.

Generally, this means showing up at work at the crack of dawn in order to beat the traffic.

Tomorrow, my call time is 4:30 am. In case you’re keeping count, that’s before the sun comes up.

We’ll then load a stakebed with either too much equipment or not nearly enough and get driven out to the location were the ADs have promised they’ll have breakfast for us.

From McDonalds.

Which I won’t eat*, so I have to get up early enough to make breakfast before I leave, which means I’m  going to set the alarm for an hour I don’t even want to think about.

Which means I have to go to bed right about now if I want to have even the slightest hope of being even semi-coherent in the morning.

*I’m certainly not implying that you shouldn’t eat McDonalds if you like it, but I think it tastes like boiled cats prepared with water from a Superfund site.  Plus, it makes me shit out stuff I ate three weeks ago, which isn’t fun for anyone.

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, Work, call time, eon, mcdonalds, mileage, stakebed, superfund site

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

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