Session Players

  I'm up in New England doing a TV series. It's lonely. It rains a lot. And it's still cold a lot of the time. I'm going to talk about something that's been on my mind for several years now, which may seem a little strange, but, I've had a couple, so hear goes:

  I have a huge respect for the old school studio guitarists. Stay with me, this does tie in to Dolly Grips. Steve Lukather, Dan Huff, Tim Pierce, I've watched endless numbers of Youtube videos on these guys. These guys showed up for any given session in the 60's through the 90's, often not even knowing who the artist was whose record they were making. And they had to be perfect. Every time. Or they were gone. Just about any record you heard in those days from Micheal Jackson to Boz Scaggs had these guys on it. And their parts were often made up on the spot. The mastery of their instrument assured that they would be called back for the next record. 

   This is something that I've recently tried to bring out in the classes I teach to young Dolly Grips. You have to learn your instrument. Moving a camera isn't about going from one mark to another. Especially now in the digital world where we often roll on the first take. You have to be able to interpret instructions on the fly and make the shot happen the first time you do it. "Move right, boom up, push into a fifty-fifty" with no rehearsal. That's your job often these days. In the last few years, I've often thought about myself as one of those old studio guitarists. Learn it so well you can do it on the fly. And nail it in the first or second take. You're making music. Visual music, but music just the same. Learn your instrument. Learn it.

In the meantime, go to Youtube and type in "Steve Lukather", or "Dan Huff" or even "Glen Campbell" and learn about people who mastered their instrument. Then master yours.

From rainy New England, the Captain has spoken.

  

 

Walk and Talks

   Here is a subject near and dear to my heart. I realized that after hundreds of posts and thinking I had covered just about everything, I never covered Walk and Talks.  I love them. It's a way to knock out three pages of dialogue in one shot ( unless they want tighter coverage). I did a movie last year, Saturday Night, where the first shot of the movie was a seven minute walk and talk on a Peewee with a Matrix head and we covered seven pages in about ten hours.  I love them almost as much as I love stand ups and sit downs. There are a few things to know however. Rule one, no matter what machine you choose to do it on,use a monitor. For years I have preached about becoming overly dependent on monitors. I stand by that. However, in this case they are a valuable tool and I've come to believe that they are really helpful for this particular shot. Before they were widely available, I did what most dolly grips did and locked into a space between the actor's feet and the front of the dolly and held it. And I was pretty good at it. For the last few years though, I have really relied on a monitor to help me hold a frame size. Now, I didn't use one for the shot on Saturday Night. The operator, Matt Moriarity, and I decided to use a combination of dead reckoning and headsets to basically talk our way through the shot. But it was a very unique shot that required a little more finesse than a standard walk and talk. But in general, for a rickshaw or dolly down a hallway, I use a monitor. The technique is simple. Pick a size, base a reference on the bottom frameline (belt buckle, first shirt button, knees) whichever you choose. And hold it. Be warned: these moves are almost always faster than you think they will be. Don't be too proud to ask for help.

Good luck and don't hit any of the extras.

The Captain.

Specialization (or Specialisation, for our British friends)

   Today's motion picture industry is light-years different from even 10 years ago.  It doesn't take a genius to see that. With the advent of streaming in addition to the other outlets (Theatrical, cable, and network), up until 2020 or so, there was more work than there were technicians. I turned down as many jobs as I took. There just weren't enough days in a year to do it all. As a result the industry took in a huge influx of people. Suddenly it wasn't that hard to get started and work almost constantly, even if you hadn't developed the skills you would normally need to be successful. Then, with the collapse of the streaming bubble, corporate mergers, strikes, and pandemics, the industry ground to a halt. People with only two or three years of experience found themselves suddenly out off work. For a long time. This would be a normal correction except for the previously mentioned factors. The business has always gone through periodic purges. Work is cyclical and if you want to survive you put aside money for the lean times. Those that don't, that become heady with being in their twenties and making thousands per week, fall by the wayside.The veterans of the business know this and plan accordingly. This time is a little different. Even the old-timers suddenly found themselves unemployed for months on end. As work is slowly beginning to crank back up (notwithstanding the Teamster contract talks) I decided to speak up on a couple of things.

  It's not enough to just show up anymore. If you really want to continue in the business you have to be exceptional. For Dolly Grips, this means, if you are still developing your chops, you have to practice. There are a lot of dollies sitting around rental houses gathering dust. It's a prime opportunity to get some practice in. Most rental houses are happy to let you come in and play around (at least they were when I was starting out). Call them. Ask for a couple of hours to go in and mess around with a dolly. Claim a space, put some marks down, and do some compound moves. Get a friend and a chair and practice stand-ups and sit-downs. The moves seem daunting at first. With practice and experience (a lot of it) you will reach the point where the setup of a shot, or finding the best most efficient way to do it is the most challenging part. The moves, you'll just walk up and do. Take some classes from your union local if they are offering them. I teach a   couple a year and sometimes the majority of students aren't even Dolly Grips. To succeed in this field you have to specialize. That means you aren't a best boy one show and a Dolly Grip the next and a rigging grip on another. Specialization is something I've harped on for years and you'll probably find another post on it somewhere in the archives.  Work towards it. Become a master of your craft. Any decent set grip can lay track and go from one to two. It's the Dolly Grips who can effortlessly do a six point move with two booms and land it by the second take who will be in demand. Anyway, I'll step down off the soapbox. I hope everyone is hanging in there.

The Captain has Spoken,

D

One Fire At A Time

   I have a philosophy called "One fire at a time." It started with doing dance floor moves. Basically, it states that when faced with a seemingly insurmountable set of problems, you don't look at the whole daunting pile at once. You break it down into a set of smaller problems to be solved in sequence. A dance floor shot with multiple floor and boom marks can be terrifying to a new dolly grip. But if you don't think of the whole, and separate it into individual moves based on actor movements, it becomes much less daunting. Once you have put down marks and get into the actual execution of the shot, you just think of it as separate dolly moves based largely on actor movement. He moves to there, you look and see where your previous mark is, and it makes sense. After a couple of run throughs, it starts to become clear. This mindset has helped me get through a lot of complicated shots, and a lot of life problems that seemed huge upon first look, but when broken down, become manageable. Put out one fire at a time. Believe me it will make a huge difference in how you not only approach complicated shots at work, but complicated problems in life.

The Captain has spoken

Have a good one.

Next Dolly Grip Q&A.

 

Here is the link and times for the next Dolly Grip Q&A. Please join us!

Topic: Darryl Humber/Matt Moriarty, Dolly Grip Q&A

Time: Oct 3, 2023 01:00 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada) 4PM Eastern.

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8

I've Got Nothing Better To Do

 Hi all! I see we are all back in the same boat we were in three years ago or so. Once again, we were told to go home in the middle of a job, uncertain and a little anxious about what the future holds. I'm trying to figure out ways in which whatever skills I have translate to the real world and so far all I can come up with is one of those people who shop and deliver groceries. I may not be good at much but I can drive the shit out of a shopping cart. In the meantime, we do have some things coming up. We are going to start up our Dolly Grip Q&A zoom meetings again soon, so be on the lookout for the first one. We are in the process of lining up guests, so if there is anyone in particular you would like to see, shoot me an email. I had a fairly busy year up until the recent shutdown. I spent most of my time on the 45' Scorpio crane, except for the couple of times I was on a 50' Techno. Going from the smooth as butter Scorpio to a rather aged Technocrane is quite a change. Those older cranes just don't stop and start as smoothly as the Scorpio.I don't think I've been on a Supertechno that was under 20 years old in a while and forgot how much of a monster they can be to get moving or finesse a slow correction up or down. The bearings tend to break loose all of a sudden which makes a small correction at full stick a little tricky. Add a rain cover to that and now you're doing it partially blind. Once the rain cover gets put on, I'm constantly switching sides of the bucket, sometimes mid-shot just so I can keep my eyes on the head.

  I did do an actual film job shot with a Panaflex for a week, filling in for a friend. It was amazing the difference in set discipline that automatically seems to come with just shooting film. The rhythm of the set that we all remember was back and I wasn't constantly clearing people away from the crane. There weren't people standing in front of the lens scrolling their phones as is unfortunately the case these days. I asked the operator if he had noticed the difference and he said, "Absolutely."  It would be nice if we could get back to that.

Anyway, that's all I have for now. I hope to get back to posting more often now. Stay tuned.

D

Time flies when you're having fun!

No, we're not dead.

Has it been over a year already? What’s changed? Nothing. If anything things may have gotten worse. Long hours, nights, Fraturdays… the list goes on. Coming out of the world wide lock down it was as if a gun had gone off. Studios and streaming services needed new content as we had binged watched EVERYTHING. And what? Now? A writer’s strike? Who’da thunk…

Long and short of it. Please be careful and look out for yourself. If not for you, but for your loved ones that want you around to tell them how you did that amazing shot you’re forcing them to watch.

Thank you to the American Cinematographer Magazine’s Jay Holben for his “Shot Craft” article on “The Dolly Grip’ in the February ’23 issue of the magazine. Tip of the hat to Ralph Scherer for being featured.

Speaking of featured - a big congratulations to our own Darryl Humber for being the Society of Operating Camera People’s “Dolly Grip of the Year”! If you have to opportunity to go to the awards dinner in Los Angeles in February please stand and give him a huge cheer from all of us.

That is all - be seeing you!

 (anyone know how to delete all the spam comments on Blogger?)