Happy Monday!

Our crew spent today loading first unit's truck (they're on set, someone has to do it) - although this show's shot mostly on a stage, they do go out on occasion and when they do they have to have a truck.

Our boss managed to browbeat production into giving us a 40 foot trailer - he told us that they'd wanted to give us a 10 ton, but our lighting and cable package would not have fit into such a small truck (a 10 ton is about the size of a large moving van, and a 40 foot trailer is the back portion of those 18 wheelers you see on the highway. While such a big truck might seem excessive, we really do have to be able to keep the equipment readily accessible so we can work - this means the stuff can't be jammed in too tightly, because then we'd never find anything quickly, and no one -absolutely no one- wants to be scrabbling through the truck trying to find a piece of equipment that's been buried while the gaffer's screaming "Hurry up, you fucker!" into the walkie).


It took us all day to load the truck, as we were waiting on first unit to wrap their first scene (they were scheduled to finish it at lunch, which would have been 1 pm, but they actually finished at 4 pm), so we could go and pick up the HMIs off that set - they had to go into the truck. The time was well-spent, though, as we all got to watch my boss take a sledgehammer to the old grip racks* in the front of the trailer.

Heh, heh.. Destruction is cool, man.


* Our truck used to be a grip truck, and now it's been reborn as a lighting department item. Grip equipment and set lighting equipment are different (natch, as we do different jobs), but grip have a lot more small items that need grip department-specific storage areas than we do - so when we get a truck with lots of cute little cubbyholes that are perfect for those grip items, we see it as space that could be put to better use for stacks of cable. Enter my boss and his sledgehammer.

I'm sure it made some of the grips cry (they were really nice racks), but that's the way it goes, and I have to admit that it is a hell of a lot of fun to watch a grown man smash something to bits at 8 am.

Ain't life grand?


Couch of the Day: