Misconceptions

What I did on my last vacation

                                     


Hello from Vacationland...which is really just my house.  I've had a lot of time on my hands to do nothing  but play with my children, spend time with my wife, and lay on the couch which is what I needed more than anything. All this time on a person's hands can lead to boredom, which leads to internet searches. Out of sheer idleness last week I did a search for dolly grip in the hopes that it would lead to an idea for a post. It did. What I found was some good and some bad. On the good side, I found several posts on blogs by young dolly grips talking about a particularly cool shot they did or how much they enjoyed the job. I also found some articles on how important dolly grips and grips in general are to the process of filmmaking like this one. Dan Gold SOC really nailed it on this article and pretty much summed up all four years of this blog, thereby making it nearly obsolete. And this one, in which yours truly actually has a small paragraph. On the bad side, I found this one. This one was the worst of the bunch, although there were several which accused us of everything from holding the boom mic (clearly a mixup with the Fisher boom, which while operated by a "dolly grip," is a different animal), to carrying heavy stuff around. Unfortunately, I believe that often these misconceptions may extend out of the mind of the casual moviegoer and travel like a missile all the way into the above-the-line world, leading to lower wages, and generally being treated as an afterthought like we have often been for so long. A key grip once told me a story of a UPM he was working for who asked him why he needed so much dance floor because, "there wasn't any dancing in this movie." I've personally had equipment (crane bases, plywood, etc) unceremoniously cancelled because the office didn't understand what it was for and didn't bother to check, leading to a mad scramble to get it in before the day. Hopefully, this little corner of the internet can help dispel some of these ideas. Yes, I know we're not doing heart surgery and in the scheme of things none of this really matters, but it is our livelihood and we have to protect it as much as we can. And also I needed an idea for a post.
   I noticed that the Moviebird website has a nice blurb and a link about us. Thanks Moviebird!
Till next time,
D

PS- There are a few of you I haven't heard from in a while. Just check in to let me know you're OK or are still out there. Alexa- miss hearing from you, Megamoose- you too, Acraw- Say hi once in a while. I know many of you read without saying anything, but just let me know you're still around.

That's Our Phone booth

 Back before cell phones, at least before cell phones were smaller than a shoebox, the landscape was dotted with glass and steel cubes known as phone booths. They were a necessary part of life and I remember many a lunch hour spent looking for the nearest one so I could return a call or check my messages (see "answering machine"). Thus, phone booths were also an often seen set in movies and tv shows. They were portable, easily dressed, corralled actors into one small 3x3 space, and you could throw one up on any corner and shoot two pages of dialogue with minimal fuss. Being the easiest scene of a movie to shoot, it was often put off multiple times. It would be scheduled and then, as the day went longer, bumped to some other later day when it could be erected in any nearby parking lot. Thus a common sight in the caravan of trucks, honeywagons and vans that make up the production transpo pool would be a stakebed with a phone booth strapped to the bed. It would follow us from location to location, just waiting for that spare couple of hours when it could get unceremoniously retired as a location and released from it's stakebed prison.

 This pretty much sums up how the last two weeks are going to be.  Anyone who has done TV sees this coming. The last two weeks of a long season are almost always drudgery. The hours are long and the schedules are insane as the studio tries to tie up all the loose ends, pick up any missing inserts, or reshoot any unsatisfactory scenes (like we did last night, five pages worth).  In the midst of this cleanup work are the actual pages from the current episode that have to be shot, giving rise to the old Hollywood saying, "Chaos breeds cash." There's always one scene that gets put off over and over until finally, it has to be shot. I call those our "phone booths." We are now into two weeks of knocking out our phone booths which makes for some long days.

 We've also gone from a month or two of relative ease (a lot of steadicam and handheld) to suddenly every shot being on the dolly. Monday night we built not one, but two exterior dance floors, made infinitely easier with the aluminum bucks, but  still more of a pain than you want to get into at the end of a seven month run. At least tonight we have a Moviebird so hopefully there won't be any need for exterior dance floor. We are beginning the first of about six splits at our ranch out toward Malibu and it promises to be the typical two week battle toward the finish line. So I may be an infrequent poster for the next few days but I'm still around. Out in Malibu. In a phone booth.

Winding Down

  Well, we're reaching the end of another six month run. I'm starting to develop that "last week of school" mentality (along with everyone else) which is ironic because now is when the work really ramps up. It's the climax/cliffhanger episode, so the action gets more intense, the moves get faster and more intricate, and the hours get longer. My show is inherently dance floor-centric. I rarely lay track except exteriors and for really precise effects shots anyway, so this week at least I was lucky to be on one of our few dollyable set floors. It's funny how after so long on a show you  become really familiar with what you can and can't get away with. For instance, I know which sets I can get away without a floor on lenses wider than 50mm and which room entrances are 7' and which are less, and can immediately decide what I need (that sounds pretty easy until you realize we have 6 stages, each with at least two sets, and at least three standing exterior sets that we regularly return to. Knowing these sets as intimately as I do saves a lot of time in setup and allows me to often bring along only what I know I'll need or what I know will fit. If I was really organized, I would keep a notebook of all the sets and their dimensions as well as floor ratings, but, as I said, at this point it's drilled into my head so it would be redundant. Maybe next time.
  To go along with Azurgrip's recent viewing of the new X-Men, I recently saw Super 8. Pretty much what you would expect, especially if you were raised on a steady diet of Steven Spielberg (he produced it) movies. It definitely has his fingerprints all over it. I actually didn't care for it that much although it's easy to see how much work was put into it. It looks great and the camera movement by Mike Wahl was, of course, beautifully executed. A lot of great crane work. Some of my favorite shots to do are basically dolly shots that are done on a crane where you swing around low following the action as you would on a dolly, then go into a rise. There's a lot of this on Super 8. The train wreck sequence is spectacular although it's the longest train wreck in history. Like I said, I personally didn't care for it, because it's nothing you haven't seen before if you've seen ET or Close Encounters. Hats off to the dolly work, though. Nicely done. Which brings me to another point...
   I did a show a couple of years ago with an operator who was really unhappy with his previous dolly grip. He said he wasn't very good, although he was such a nice guy that he let it slide and powered through. I recently saw the movie he was talking about and everything looked fine. Moves were consistent and smooth and I didn't notice any bad booms etc. But, I don't know how many takes were needed to get the shot, or how the shots may have been compromised to make them doable for the dolly grip. The moves were pretty standard, nothing like the fairly technical work of Super 8. This brings me back to the point I've often made that the dolly grip often makes his money and proves his worth in set up. Making quick decisions, insulating your operator from having to make decisions for you, and getting the shot in the least number of takes possible is something that only someone who was on set would ever know. I try to always keep this in mind that I'm here as a team member with my camera operator. If I can't carry my weight, he has to carry his, and part of mine for me.
  Picked up a feature in August, so I'm headed back to Atlanta in late July.
   If anyone has anything in particular they'd like to discuss, shoot us an email or comment. Alfeo, I haven't forgotten your question about remote heads, it just keeps slipping my mind. I'll get to it.
D

Dance Floor Update

My show involves a lot of dance floor work (for those of you not in the industry, dance floor is just a surface that you put down when you are doing a move in more than one direction) This week was dance floor helL. Strangely, a lot of our sets have rooms that are weird measurements. A lot of the spaces measure out to be 7'6", or 3'9" wide, which most of you know is an incredible pain. We also have a lot of 800lb dressers and 400lb oddly shaped sofas. I have spent the week piecing together floors and frankly I'm exhausted. The easiest solution in a floor situation is always just to lay a "pad" which means basically lay a square (or rectangle) that covers all the marks you need to hit. My lumber package generally includes five 4x8's, two 4x4's, two 2x8's, and two 2x4's. I hate pie pieces and think they're useless. I also had some doorway pieces made at 28" and a 1' by 8' piece. There's always one set, though, that just beats you up and during the blocking as the DP holds the finder at one spot you're thinking, "No. not there, just go one more foot left." I even had to do one shot that the operator started on a slider as I pushed in and then he finished it on the slider (window seats suck).The thing is, I actually relish the idea of the challenge. It's really making a better Dolly Grip out of me and it's good in a way to sharpen your skills on the old tv grindstone again. I realize that I've really gotten soft on feature work where you have a lot more time to set up and plan a difficult shot as opposed to the DP asking you,"Can you get the camera here?" after one half-ass run through. My stock answer is, "Yeah, we'll figure something out." So far, I haven't had to have any special cuts made (other than shaving an inch off the bottom of a door). I've been riding a lot of edges on one wheel this week. Please forgive any spelling mistakes as I am now 3 vodka -and -ginger- ales into my weekend. Don't judge me. I earned it.