Friday Photo

This wad going to be a Friday Video, but there’s some sort of issue involving WordPress mobile,  MPEG 4 video, and Droid phones.

So, please enjoy a photo of our BFL turning night into photogenic night.

Filed under: camera, locations, Los Angeles, Photos, up all night

A day for old times’ sake

I haven’t worked a 14 hour day in a long time. I’ve been spending most of my time on a show which simply doesn’t allow days that long (anything that gets even close to 12 hours results in screaming fits from the producer), so I’m not used to it anymore, which means my feet aren’t used to it any more, either.

Guess what I did yesterday?

After a cross-town drive which took forever due to rain and the President being in town (not sure which is worse, traffic wise), I found myself on a set with actual tile floors, instead of just linoleum that looks like it might be tile.

In case you’ve never had to stand around for 14 hours, I can assure you that the harder flooring materials are much more painful towards the end of the day.  I was just about to limping stage when I was walking to my car after we finally wrapped.

This show has pretty small sets (as sets go), which makes it harder to move around with equipment, even though everyone was really good about playing nice and giving right of way to anyone carrying anything heavy – and the folks who move video village around were very good about trying to keep it out of the way – normally, they put up the video monitors and chairs in the worst place possible (blocking doors, blocking staging areas, etc…)

The crew, though are a great group of folks, which is wonderful. I’m back again today – hopefully it won’t be quite 14 hours.

Call time: 10 am.

Wrap time 1:30 am.

Filed under: studio lots, up all night, Work

The Park

Griffith Park in Los Angeles is a weird place for filming. No one will shoot anything there for what seems like ages, and then all of a sudden it’s the hottest spot in town and every show’s got a location there. I think they’re calling each other and coordinating.

After not working in the park for about 18 months, I’ve now worked in the exact same spot twice in two weeks.

Today, there were two productions shooting within spitting distance (we could see the other shoot’s base camp from our cozy little murder scene/knoll), and a third on the other side of the park.

We were in an area called “Cedar Grove”, which was new to me. I had no idea there was a grove of cedar trees in Southern California, but it’s really very pretty and once the traffic noise died down, quite peaceful. Except for, you know, us.

We showed up at the crack of dawn, rigged the first set, then tried to figure out which passenger vans were ours and which were the other productions.

By the end of the day, after we’d rigged three sets and wrapped two, we stopped caring and just jumped in whatever van happened to be passing.

Which was nice, because during a van ride I met some of the juicers from the other show (some gangster movie) and have a day on that later this week.

In the park for a night shoot, of course.

Filed under: crack of dawn, locations, movies, Work

Hello, heat. I didn’t miss you.

It’s time for the annual ‘fry Southern California just when we thought it was autumn’ cruel joke that masquerades as Santa Ana winds.

Temperature today in West Los Angeles? 100F. Of course, we were outside for most of the day shooting dust against a green screen. Said dust was blown across said screen by two Ritter fans, which are so powerful that they created a mini dust storm, so of course my allergies went crazy before lunch.

Heat stroke? Check.

Can’t breathe? Check.

All I needed was some sort of catastrophic intestinal distress to really round it out. Oh, wait…

For lunch, they brought us Tito’s.

For those of you not familiar with Los Angeles, Tito’s Tacos has a completely undeserved reputation for good food.

Well, I suppose it’s ‘good’ in that they can take Grade C meat (mostly circus animal, some filler) and shredded newspaper and somehow manage to make a) the ‘food’ taste only moderately horrible and b) the intestinal after effects wait until just after you think you’re going to get away with it this time.

Every time I’ve eaten tacos from Tito’s, I’ve become ill (sometimes moderately, sometimes violently) within a few hours*, but since I was hungry and there was nothing else to be had I figured I’d eat something with no circus animal.

That turned out to be a bean and cheese burrito – I tried to surgically remove as much of the cheese as possible, but I guess some stuck (or there were remnants of trained zebra in the beans), as of course, a couple of hours after eating I found myself making a very hurried trip to the ladies’ room. Also of course, said intestinal distress hit just as we were getting ready to move inside the stage.

Awesome.

We spent the rest of the day on the stage, which was awesome – air conditioning and proximity to toilets are wonderful things indeed.

As I write this, it’s almost 9 pm and still about 90F. I predict a cold shower in my very near future.

Tomorrow, we’re inside all day, which is good since it’s predicted to still be hot as hell through the weekend.

*Late night Tito’s has taken out entire film crews before. One is hungry, so one eats and hopes for the best, only to end up stuck on the toilet cursing the day Tito was born.

Filed under: hazardous, mishaps, studio lots, toxic waste, Work, dust, Santa Ana, sick, tito's tacos, Work

Rest

I haven’t done very much at all this week. My Wednesday got moved to tomorrow due to the rain (must have been an outdoor location), so instead of being the responsible busy bee and calling around looking for work I opted to just sit.

Also, I slept a lot. I did go to the gym, but just to stretch and sit in the sauna.

Although I have that nagging guilty feeling about not having worked at all and the accompanying fears of potential financial doom, physically, I feel great.

Cough’s gone, wheezing’s gone, tightness in chest (due to crap in lungs), gone.

Sweet.

At least I’ll feel good for my one day of work this week. Hopefully I’ll make up for it by getting lots of work next week.

Filed under: Uncategorized