Work Doodles Vol. 4

Hey, kids! I drew this for you at work today. It's Borat. I hope you like it!

Hell On Wheels, On A Trailer, With A Dog

Hey, kids!  As I take a long awaited and greatly needed moment to breathe, I want you all to know how my film shoot went this past week.

Monday: We get to the location and all seems well.  Actor's there, cab showed up, Belo let us in; good-times, right?  Oh, wrong.  As we were getting set up for the wide-shot of the old E Street Alley, a cop was coming around and ticketing ill-parked cars.  No problem, I was at a meter with plenty-o-time.  For some reason, our cab driver (the real one, not the character) started to wig-out and insisted on leaving.  No problem, a little more work for Tuesday but doable.  So we continue to set up.  Meanwhile, Matt is talking to our cab driver on the phone and the guy isn't coming back, ever. 

WHAT?!  My thoughts exactly.

I guess he had too many parking tickets already (which is why he left in the first place) and then he had a class at SDSU on Tuesday (which would've been nice to know during the scheduling process, or beforehand in general).  In my mind, if we're paying you, fuck yo' class!  But alas, no dice, this guy's out.  Matt semi-frantically tries to get another cab as Isaiah, Andrew, David, and I attempt to roll with it and set up the shots that don't require the cab.

And then the breaker pops.  Fuck.  Now what?  I call the Maintenance Manager for Belo and he's not coming down to reset the breaker.  He points me toward some more outlets we could access and I call my Uncle Johnny for his generator, which I'd earlier in the day told him we didn't need.  So an hour later we get the generator running most of our lights but it is loud as all hell.  It could wake your mother.  So definitely no audio recording now.  Yay, more work in post...

So we get rolling and the lighting is looking really good and our lead actor is doing great but we're behind schedule.  And then the dog arrives.  Oy...  Facially, the dog looks great but he's over half a foot taller than I was expecting.  But he rolls with it (he being me, not the dog).  To say that the dog was difficult to direct would be a gross understatement.  I honestly believe it would have been easier to rope a bull from a 3rd story window.  The owners didn't seem to have much control either.  Yippee...  At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers and hoping we can cut it together and make it work.

So we wrap-up the night around midnight (instead of 10:30, which was probably unrealistic anyway) and after I get home and unload the gear, I get to bed around 1am.

Tuesday: The Big Day: I wake up at 4am and do my morning thing and load the gear into the '06 Expedition we rented and I hustle down to U-Haul to pick up the car carrier.  No major problems besides heavy traffic.  I get to our base camp behind Petco Park at 8am and we plan our moves.  We shoot the exterior of the cab shots first.  These probably take a little longer than necessary but we hadn't planned anything specific to speed up the process.  We finished and headed back to basecamp and prepared to load the cab onto the car carrier.  That takes close to an hour as no instructions were given to me by U-Haul. 

We notice that now the cab is sitting higher than I thought it would on the trailer and it looked kinda funny.  Add to that that you couldn't open the doors so our actors had to enter via the windows like it was the General Lee.  We attach the car mount and our police escort arrived and we headed out.  We weren't entirely sure which streets would be best to film on so Isaiah and I got into the cop car and drove around first.  I rode shotgun, which I now realize is much more literal in a police car.  We decided to film in a loop pattern going down E Street, turning left on 11th, left on B Street, and then left on 4th Ave.

So I'm sitting in the back on the Expedition, getting audio levels, when my monitor dies.  Now I can't see what the camera sees, to know whether I like it or not.  We press on and do a few takes before I realize that I'm watching the audio levels and I'm not even looking at the actors.  That's bad, yes?  Yes.  I fix that brain cramp and I think we get what we need.  But time is against us.  We're probably 2 hours behind again.  We grab some lunch and head back to basecamp where we bid farewell to our actress and say hello to the dog again and our bank robber character. 

Oh yes, did I forget to mention that the battery on the cab died?  Apparently, rolling the windows up and down for entry, as well ventilation, is bad if the engine's not running.  I knew that but had no control over it.  We need the battery to start the cab to get it off the trailer so that set us back a bit as well.  So we painfully get our dog in there for the final shot of the script and then we all pile in and race the sun to film in our loop with the bank robber character.  People had been staring at our production all day and this time of day was no exception.  We finished up at 5pm which is exactly when we needed to to have any shot at returning the car carrier before the Expedition was due back.  Yay for deadlines...

So we pile all the gear into the my car and head back over to the alley to shoot what we hadn't the night before.  Our crew was down to 3 people and that didn't help us for speed.  But we got all our shots, minus the lone last shot of the dog because the owner didn't feel like coming down again.  Gotta love that committment...  We finished around 10:30pm, which was on-schedule, sort of.  Matt and I dropped off the equipment at Wednesday's location and I got into bed around 1am.  Yay for having the opportunity to sleep-in...

Wednesday:  Despite my best efforts to sleep-in, I was up at 9am.  I got to the location at 2pm and we began what turned out to be a welcomed problem-free night and we were done by 8pm.  We had more help from Gerry and we had a sound guy (Erik)!  I knew this would be the easy shoot and it felt good to end with it.  We bid a skeptical farewell to our lead actor and went to transfer the footage at Gerry's house. 

And that didn't work out.  Final Cut Pro HD and HDV apparently are not as close a-friends as I thought they were.  I didn't end up getting home till 3am and about 1 shot got captured.  We saw the footage though and it looks great.  HD... Mmmmm yummy...  We have to get a couple more shots but I think we can make it all work.

Thursday: After an early morning to return the equipment and another failed attempt at capturing the footage, here I am, give or take.  I ran into my directing professor after dropping off the gear and I told him about how it went and how hard the dog stuff was, and guess what he tells me?  His daughter is an animal trainer for the Humane Society!  How would I have known...  Oh well.  We can make it work.

I want to end this blog by saying that my actors on this film are heroes.  They were beyond patient and I never felt any negative energy from them that could have so easily been there under the circumstances.  Lesser folks might have pouted, not these folks.  They are stars in my book.  And Abdi, our cabbie was equally patient and enthusiastic. 

Another special shout-out should be paid to my family, who came through for me huge.  How will I ever find the words, you guys...

Thanks to the select group who came and helped.  You are Grade A: USA Prime.  "You're so money!"  Now, I gotta roll into bed and try to take my mind off of cabs and trailers and dogs.  OH MY!