Credit Where Credit Is Due

 

There's no accolades for us. No award ceremonies. We get a pay check at the end of the day. Maybe a little recognition through word of mouth, Facebook or website like this one. The fact we didn't get fired is our reward.  "Credit at Producer's Discretion". This is a statement seen on most deal memos these days. So on any project we've worked on it's great to be able to see your name go by in the credits. (to this day, every year I still get phone calls telling me that someone has seen my name on a Christmas movie that I did 20 years ago). For us who work in network television, broadcasters have trimmed timing down that end credits zoom by with another superimposed box of previews over top, so good luck seeing your name there. But at least it's there, so we do walk away (for the most part) with a feeling of having contributed to the project.

I worked on a major studio motion picture that's just been released in the theatres - "Pacific Rim". An incredible experience in all my years. I was the 'B" Camera dolly grip. I sat for days, while they shot single camera (old school baby!) SteadiCam shots. But a lot of the time I was swinging a telescopic of one kind or another. Trying to cram two and three cameras into places that really only should have one. There was many days that I would be driving home, thinking to myself "I did amazing work today", when most days of my career have been just thinking about getting home to bed.

It is an amazing movie to see. Yes, it's Godzilla vs Robots. If you do go for that thing, and want to go see it, do check it out in IMAX 3D if you can. It's well worth it. I'm not a fan of 3D and the movie wasn't shot in 3D but I feel that it was tastefully converted. For some unknown reason, most the grip and electric crews were not listed in the credits (keys and seconds only). I'd just like to acknowledge those people of the grip dept who worked on Pacific Rim.

Main Unit

Key Grips: Rick Stribling , Robert Daprato
Best Boy: Robert Rice
Dolly Grips: Patrick King, David Erlichman
Grips: Fabian MacDonald, Michael Ohordnyk, Chris Rice, Robert Vigus, Bert Gouweleeuw, Malcolm Nefsky
Crane Tech: Bob Harper
Remote Head tech: Brian Black

Second Unit

Key Grip: Christopher Dean
Best boy: Jim Holmes
Dolly Grips: Philip "Bucky" Lanthier, Ron Renzetti
Grips: Jon Billings, Wilton Higgins, Paul Sheridan

Riggers:

Key Rigging Grip: Bernie Lalonde
Best Boy Rigging: Mark Greenberg
Rigging Grips: Rod Benjamin, Randy Burbidge, Cesare DiGiulio, Mark DuFour, Roland Gauvin, Ron Forward, Guy Gervais, Jim Krauter.

I know I've forgotten names, but literally everyone in the local worked on the show at one time or another in one capacity or another. A larger tip of the robot cap to you folks for your time, sweat and support.

Thank God It's Over

It's a wrap! After four months of car rigs and Technocrane and Shotbusters* and splinter units and hotel rooms and forty degree temperatures and 102 degree temperatures and Phoenix cranes and Giraffe cranes and speedrail and track and people movers and vans and helicopters and stuntmen and traffic cones and green screens and more hotel rooms and stakebeds and crashboxes and pictures of family and phone calls and swimming pools and beer and whiskey and rum and sunblock and fleece and rain and Russian arms and Porsch with posts and lightening, and dirt and sand and coffee and egg whites and burritos and long nights and long days and close calls and stitches and medics and funerals and bandages and Technocranes and four-wheelers and Libra heads and laughs and fights and deserts and asphalt and c-clamps and salt water- and cliffs and dirt and eyelines and cars that won't start and rain and dollies and rum and cokes and sunblock, it's finally over. Thank you to a fantastic and visionary DP and a truly talented Director. I'm exhausted and drunk and elated and sad and happy and totally excited to be a part of something new and fresh. Thank you all. I'm tired and I want to go home.
I love you all,
D

*A special type of process trailer in which the actual driver can be in either front or back. We had two: a front drive and a rear drive.

Repost of an Oldie

I don't have time to write up anything this week. Just too much work and travel. Here is an old one from a couple of years ago. Hope you like it..

D

Catwalk in Stage 18 at Paramount Studios, Hollywood.

This week, as part of my current two and three day a week schedule, I got to visit a place I've rarely had cause to venture into. I worked in the perms. For the uninitiated, the perms, or permanents refers to a grid system of wooden beams suspended in the top of most Hollywood stages. The beams are criss-crossed at 90 degree angles leaving roughly 3'x5' openings called ozones. This grid is surrounded and quartered by a system of catwalks and the whole thing is basically just a base from which to rig everything from lighting to set walls and special effects. The whole grid can be anywhere from thirty-five to sixty  or seventy feet above the stage floor,* depending on the height of the stage. It's truly a grip and electric's world up here, as we are usually the only crew members who have a reason to climb the long ladders or staircases into these shadowy recesses. It is from here that the electrics pull up hundreds of feet of cable and the grips hang teasers, green beds (catwalks that are suspended by chain just above set walls), backings, truss, and any of  the other countless things we are called upon to suspend above a set. I've actually never spent much time up here. I came up as a set grip in Atlanta, where stages were mostly empty warehouses in which we would hang a pipe grid. Perms were unheard of. I didn't come up through the studio pecking order where a rookie started out on the gang hanging green beds and backings before finally making his or her way onto a set crew. By the time I started working in Hollywood, I was already a working Dolly Grip with years of set experience and a pretty good resume, but there was a whole segment of grip rigging knowledge of which I was ignorant, that many Hollywood grips take for granted. I still remember my first job in Los Angeles. I was a permit (someone trying to earn their thirty days on a union show, making them elegible for membership in Local 80, the grip local in Hollywood.). As a permit, you basically had to wait until the town was busy enough so that even the most moronic among us had a job and no actual  Local members were available. I got a call at five o'clock one morning from the Local asking if I could push B camera on NYPD Blue, as their guy had called in sick."You can push dolly, right?" the voice on the phone asked. "Yes... yeah I can. Where are they?"  "Fox Studios in Century City," the guy said. "You need to be there by seven."  So I pulled out my trusty Thomas Guide** and plotted a course to the storied Fox Studios for my first job in an actual soundstage after over twelve years as a grip in the film business. I still remember calling my parents from the parking deck and telling them that I was at Fox Studios to work on NYPD. Even though I was, by now, a seasoned Dolly Grip, I was still a little unnerved by the thought of actually being there and wanted to share it with them. Anyway, I've gotten off track here, but I still remember walking in that stage and craning my neck up, and up to the highest ceiling I think I had ever seen. And at the top of it was the perms.
  So this week I did a commercial at Paramount. Now, I've done many commercials, too many to count. But I am still pretty ignorant of the perms. I've just never had much reason to go up there until this week. I should explain that there really isn't a dedicated dolly position on commercials, at least as far as rate goes. As a Dolly Grip on a commercial, you are expected to fall in with the boys when you are needed and especially on prelights and at wrap. So, I showed up to push dolly on a commercial and found myself in the perms pulling up pipe and trying to remember my knots. You know what the perms are? The perms are history. They've seen it all. Many of these stages were built in the twenties and these ancient beams have supported lights and walls, grids, and backings for everything from Sunset Boulevard to Casablanca.***  You can see the notches worn by years of rope rubbing across beams and handrails as it was pulled up by now forgotten craftsmen on these movies that have ingrained themselves in the public consciousness. On the air ducts and handrails, grips and electrics have drawn pictures of everything from women, to (strangely) women with penises (I don't get this one. What are they, twelve?) to dirty jokes or their own names, and sometimes, just the names of shows and a date. The wood is worn smooth by years of the hands of long-gone grips and juicers who participated in the making of everything from Ozzie and Harriet to Star Trek. These guys lived through the Great Depression, fought in World War II, and then hitched up their pants, lit a cigarette, and went to work. They walked these narrow beams without a yoyo**** or a harness. I guess the thought of falling seventy feet came in a close second to getting shot at by the Nazis. And then they went home to dinner with their families. I rubbed my hand along the smooth handrail and thought about them for a moment. And then I waited to hear the voice of the Best Boy say, "3-2-1 Pull!" like so many of them probably did. And I pulled, and pulled, and suddenly the pipe was at the top and I quickly tied it off (under the handrail, cross over, pull back, over the handrail, behind the rope, pull up, under itself and a double hitch. I think that's it). I think everyone who gets a chance should visit the perms at least once. It will humble you. It did me.




**** A safety system designed for high work. You clip it onto your harness. It keeps you from hitting the ground.
For more personal experiences in the perms, check out Michael taylor's excellent blog at Blood, Sweat, and Tedium. He says it best.

Okay, you made it this far, now I have a ghost story involving the perms. Two good friends of mine, on separate occasions told me this story. They were both up in the perms on a stage (I don't recall which one, it may have been stage 18 where I was) at Paramount working on a movie called The General's Daughter. At some point, while looking down upon the filming, they noticed they were in the company of a man a few feet away, in strangely outdated work clothes, who was also gazing down upon the activity below. They didn't really pay that much attention to him, other than that they didn't recognize him. Then, as soon as they had seen him, he was gone. They both walked the perms looking for him and found no trace. When they finally climbed down they asked the stage manager if there was another way out of the perms and explained why. He stuck his hand out and said, "Congratulations. You saw him."
Thanks to Dano and Gary for this story.

*No, I don't know exact numbers. Come on, did you read the first part of the post?

** In LA, before smartphones and GPS, everyone usd the Thomas Guide, which was a comprehensive map of Los Angeles. Call Sheets would give the Thomas Guide page for the location.

***Stages 8 and 9 at Warner Brothers.

Alexa Update

   I posted last year about some problems regarding the Alexa that I was having on a show (I would link to the post, but the internet here is slow because the entire crew is on it, so just look it up). In short, we were shooting on mostly zooms, with the 15 mil rods and were having a nightmare getting the bumps out. Shots that I would not have hesitated to do without skates on a Panaflex were showing bumps and shimmies like we were on a dirt road instead of track. We tried wedging under the lens, skate wheels bracing the arm, everything, yet the bumps still showed. We finally switched to 19mm rods and that cut out 75% of the problem, but I was still having to wedge under the lens. The problem is the 4" footprint of the baseplate and not much supporting the rest of the camera. Since this post, I've gotten phone calls and emails from many dolly grips having the same problem with this camera. I got a text just yesterday from another one. I don't know what the solution is unless Arri comes up with a better support system, or if the rental houses at least make sure that all the necessary support brackets etc. come out with this camera. The movie I'm doing now is maybe 20% Alexa and the rest are Canon cameras (a lot of car mounts) but we are still having to wedge the lens. Anyone got any thoughts or comments on this situation? Fire away...
D

Being "Reactionary"

  I'm from the old school. This is the school where you, get marks, watch a rehearsal, set up, do a first team rehearsal (stop and go), and then shoot. This still seems to be the norm in television, where time is of the essence and the understanding of time budgeting seems to be a little more evolved on a day- to -day basis. Features, lately, though, seem to work on a more catch-as catch-can basis, where no time is given to the camera crew to work out the bugs of any given shot. Our old friend Sanjay believes that this is a result of digital filmmaking, which has worn away the old discipline of rehearse-mark-rehearse-shoot. We now seem to turn the camera on and just roll, and roll around, hoping to get good pieces. I agree, and I see it more and more. Pixels are cheap, compared to film stock, and this has resulted in lowering the bar on a technical level for those of us directly related to the final outcome of any given shot. I used to lament about the editor using the one bad take out of four that had a bump or bad boom in it. Now, there's just one endless take that we extract pieces from. In a way, it's actually raising the bar. You have to be right every time, but in a different way. It's like auditioning on the first take every time and having to sight read music. I've heard this called being "reactionary," or reacting to what unfolds before you and finding the shot within it. To a certain extent, this can be fun (given that your operator trusts you). On the other hand, it's total crap. I've got to get well around six hundred pounds of dolly  or four thousand pounds of Technocrane arm moving on the whims of a twenty-something actor who never does the same thing twice. My competitive nature says, "Bring it on!" and my common sense says, "You people are out of your mind." Not too long ago, I spent twelve weeks working this way on a huge movie and it made me almost ready to go back to TV. Believe it or not, the talents of the dolly grip seem to be more respected there. In the feature world of today, stuff just gets done and you either roll with it or you're replaced by someone who does. In either case it comes down to this: spending a little more prep time and getting a spectacular shot, or doing it on the fly and half-assing it. I'm not a half-ass kind of guy. It all comes down to trust. If you're doing this kind of reactionary show, you have to have the trust of your DP, Operator, and Director. WIthout it, you're gone.

Weekly (monthly) Update

   Hi everyone. It's been a busy couple of weeks so not much time to post. We are sprinting toward the last three weeks of our fourteen week show. After a couple of weeks of mainly car mounts (which were a lot of fun), we had some days of actual old fashioned movie making with dialogue and everything. This DP (who I really enjoy working with) likes to go big on the cranes. He also loves to set up really intricate shots with the fifty-foot Technocrane. I find myself doing a lot of fun moves involving circling around actors, "scraping the paint" off of hundred thousand dollar cars, and hitting over-the-shoulders at sixty feet from the camera. Thanks go out to Mike Howell and Jeff Curtis, two really good pickle operators. Our DP and director excel in coming up with some really cool and challenging shots, so I often go from days of literally doing nothing but turning a wrench, to suddenly standing at the business end of fifty feet of arm wondering if I can still pull it off. I've had to become more adept at finding sightlines where there are none, and then suddenly changing them all as the shot evolves. We also get very few rehearsals (almost none with first team) so it can be a little nerve wracking. I think I'll do a refresher course on sightlines for cranes when this is over. Thanks for hanging in there. I'm still here even though you don't hear from me as much. One more week here and then we are on the road again. Keep the Need.....
D

A Moment From The Set...

DP: "You're starting too late."

Operator: "We started when he entered frame. You want to be moving already?"

DP: "Yeah, you should be moving before he comes in."

Me:  "You want to text that to me next time?"

The Thing (2011)

  Or as they should have called it, Shit (2011), is a simply horrible movie. Every lazy filmmaking mistake you can make was made in this piece of crap. Sigourney Weaver lookalike? Lazy filmmaking. CGI creatures that were done BETTER thirty years earlier by Rob Botin with stop motion animation? Lazy filmmaking. Bland Swedish (Nordic? Norwegian?) character development ? Lazy filmmaking.The last twenty minutes when the characters are suddenly on the planet from Aliens? Lazy filmmaking. American hero (?) with a raspy voice? Lazy filmmaking. As a huge fan of John Carpenter's The Thing, I really was looking for something special out of this movie. What I got was bad CGI, worse acting, and even worse filmmaking. Blah blah blah and I'm done with it. So if you have nothing to live for or have absolutely no taste in movies, rent Shit (2011), or as it is marketed, The Thing (2011). 
  The Captain has spoken.

Better Early Than Late

  We are doing a lot of blind* Technocrane moves on this show with a very exacting director (and DP). As a result, I've recently become reacquainted with one of my old rules that I had almost forgotten: generally, it's better to be a little early, and fudge it in the feather-down, than late, because you can never catch up. This is a principle that usually comes in handy when you are trying to match to a certain passage of dialogue or land on a specific word in a piece of dialogue. As long as you don't get too far ahead, you can always stretch out the move in the feather to make it almost unnoticeable. If you're behind, there is almost no way to catch up and you end up just stopping short when the dialogue ends, running the risk of ending on too loose a frame. Usually, this is a function of actors getting faster in their dialogue as they get more comfortable with a piece of dialogue. Especially off camera dialogue. This happened earlier this week when the writer/producer (whom I've known for years)was reading off camera to an actor supposedly watching him on an iPad. Another actor was cued to walk in on a specific word in the off-camera dialogue and I had to be in a certain spot to see him walk in in the background. He read faster and faster until the camera was flying around to reach the specific point in the dialogue. At this point, the only way to not be late was to get there early, and slow it down into a creep to the number two spot before wrapping around the actor who walked in. It worked (although we still took around ten takes to get it right. So remember this: better to be ahead and slow down, trhan behind and rush to catch up.

* A blind move is one in which you can't see all the actors or set pieces because of your position on the bucket. Also called "flying blind." It often involves a little on the fly calculating combined with desperation and luck.

Technocranes

  Let's talk about Technocranes for a moment. I generally love them. As long as you have the right size (not too large, not too small), they make life a lot easier. You can hit multiple points in any shot without laying floor or track, and the shots generally become more creative just because you have the ability to go any direction in space (assuming you have the room). On exteriors, usually the bigger the arm, the better. It gets a little trickier on interiors. I have found that often you have more arm than you need. By which I mean you sometimes end up trying to thread a fifty footer around in a space where a thirty, or even a twenty would work much better. Here's the crux of the problem though: too much arm, and you are forever fighting the bucket end hitting walls, etc, and too little, you end up laying track for an extendable crane. Today, we had both situations. A large space to swing a fifty around in, but it wasn't quite enough to get us the reach we needed. So we ended up laying forty feet of track to do an extremely technical series of moves in a space where a thirty footer would have made life easier (because of the shorter bucket end swinging through doors etc.) By the end of the day I was exhausted. No, utterly exhausted. We swooped and circled, and dove in and quite literally missed the walls on the bucket end by sometime a half an inch. With a Technocrane, it's always a game of variables. On a normal dolly shot, you have a Dolly Grip, an operator, actors and a focus puller. With a Technocrane you add another: the pickle operator. So now you have six variables that all have to work together in a ballet of movement. When you add the extra variable of an interior shot dodging cars, and support beams, and lighting fixtures, it can become a little daunting. The only good thing about an interior Techno shot is the plethora of sightlines. Outside, you generally start high, which gives you nothing but the sky as a sightline. So I'm forever trying to remember that the matte box is straight up from the church steeple, and the sidebar is at hipbone height. I don't use lasers. I've got enough to watch for without trying to calculate if the laser is off the tape mark because the extension is off or I'm too high or low. This reminds me of a story, which I've told here before, of the dayplayer who informed me that I "shouldn't use the sun as a sightline because it will move." And with that, I'm out.
D

Finally, Something To Do

   I've been a little lax in the posting duties lately. Mostly it's because we have not only gone into straight nights, but also have entered a dialogue phase of shooting where the camera isn't mounted on a car, so I actually get a chance to swing a Technocrane around, or push a dolly. As a result, I'm a lot more tired than I normally would be, so forgive the rarity of posts.
   Don't forget the Fisher Open House on May 18th from 9AM to 4 PM. have a beer tell Frank Kay hi for me.
   Well, it's pissing rain (a continuation of the rain I stood in all night). I've got cheeseburgers from Five Guys, a jug of Captain Morgan, and the beginnings of a six day work week starting at 11AM in the morning. Life is good.

Help Out!

   A student at UC Santa Barbara recently contacted me about a three part workshop they are having on Sunday April 28th. They have a Fisher rep, and an SOC operator lined up, but are looking for a dolly grip to come in and take part in discussions with the camera operator about their working relationship. They also would like the dolly grip to give a short how-to on basic things like marking and track laying. I don't know if there is any financial remuneration, but if I was available, I'd do it just to help out. Shoot me an email if you are interested and I'll put you in touch with the interested parties. Thanks.
D

Hello From Northern California!

   I'm two weeks in on a fourteen week show and I've had....one day of dolly work. Since it's a movie about a cross-country race, most of the work is, as you may have guessed, Interior Car. Since we have, not only the regular grip crew, but a crew of three car rigging grips, I don't have a lot to do. I've never felt more like a Steadicam operator in my life, (or a Standby Painter). Although they have been sending me to splinter unit a little more lately, I spend a lot of my time just trying to be useful among the nine or so grips we have rigging cars already. Today was a little bit more excitement since I got sent off with the second unit to do some introductory dolly shots of actors and beauty shots of cars. After that, I spent a lot of time waiting. Mostly on this show I wait. So, here I am....waiting. Who needs a wrench?

Wheels. Wheeeeeels.

  I recently was asked a question on Twitter about wheel setup. As a Chapman user, you have a few options and the questioner wanted to know what works best where. Well, things are always changing and what is in favor at one time is out of favor a few years later. Back when the Hybrid was Chapman's signature large dolly, I would always put on the pneumatics and leave them on for the run of the show. By design, they work on both track and floor. Later, when I became a Hustler 4 user, we would combine both the track wheels and the pneumatics (I always put the air tires on the outside and the track tires on the inside) which seemed to give the best of both worlds. Although I doubt there is much difference in where you put them, the pneumatics on the outside seemed to make more sense to me. My good friend GHB does the opposite and sets up the track tires on the outside. I can't argue with success 'cause he's done well for himself. As far as the Hybrid goes, a lot of Camera Operators I work with began to complain about the bouncy nature of the pneumatic tire on floor, while some thought it was fine. After using the medium softs, which I found to be very good on dance floor, I began to agree. As far as the Pewee goes, I always switched out the hards for pneumatics for floor, but switched back to the hards after the shot because the air tires make the dolly so much wider and hamper maneuverability. I think it boils down to communicating with your Camera Operator. He/ she is your best source of feedback for what is happening in the lens. If the pneumatics are causing problems, try the medium softs. I do what I know until I'm told it isn't working. Unfortunately, now that we are doing more and more HD work, the little bumps that we used to get away with seem to show up much more vividly than they did in film. It's a more unforgiving medium in every sense.
   As far as Fisher dollies go, you have two choices: the standard air filled or the round track wheels. I also have no idea why Fisher refuses to let go of the old square track/ bogie wheel setup. I haven't seen, much less used square track in at least fifteen years. Who are you catering to? The music video market? If I'm wrong, please fill me in Fisher users/ insiders/ Wick?