Oh, Crap!

I forgot it was Halloween tonight, and didn't get any candy on the way home from work.

Of course, I got ambushed as I tried to get from the car to the front door (I almost made it, too).

"Trick or Treeeeet!" yelled a fairy princess (I think she was a fairy princess - she could have also been Prom Night Barbie with a plastic scepter or a slutty party-going socialite with a misshapen golf club). "Give me something good to eat!"

I rummaged through my paper bag of take-out sushi (some nights I'm too tired even to open a can), trying to stall for time.

"Um.. let me see here... what do I have... You can have a salmon roll or... Miso soup! Yum!"

Dammit, why don't they give you fortune cookies in Japanese restaurants? I could have made a run for it while she was distracted.

"MOMMY! She's trying to give me food that's not in plastic! And sounds yucky!"

Aw, fuck.

Mommy said "Leave the nice lady alone, honey", but still glared at me as she hustled the kids past, and kept shooting me dirty looks until I slunk into the house.

So I guess now I'm the weirdo that tried to give a kid sushi on Halloween.

I should have offered her my wire-strippers. Or a cube tap.

Sort of Friday Photo

N.C.I.S.
Originally uploaded by Peggy Archer.

Well, it was taken on Friday.

This is the lit night exterior shot in an alley downtown.

Hey, that's mine!

One of the things about working downtown LA is rats. Big, fat, sassy rats who aren't afraid of you, chump.

Tonight, I left my light* for a few minutes to pee and make a sandwich (not simultaneously). When I came back, I saw a really big rat.

A really big rat perched on the arm of my camp chair (with nifty built-in cupholder), daintily sipping my coffee (I still can't figure out how he got the plastic lid off the cup).

In case you were wondering, flapping your hands and yelling "Shoo!" does not frighten rats in downtown Los Angeles - in fact, it barely makes them look up from their coffee.

I had to lure him off my chair with part of my sandwich.

We're in the same set-up tomorrow night. I'm going to load up a cup with sugar and milk, hunker down and wait - hopefully I can get a picture of the Really Big Coffee Sipping Rat.

Hey, it beats reading a hand-me-down issue of InStyle over and over. Once I learn which color is the new black, I kind of lose interest.



*When a gaffer places lights on top of buildings or in other hard to reach places, he (or she) usually wants to keep a guy next to the lamp all night - just in case. While this may seem excessive, it's better than telling him (or her) that it will take 20 minutes to get someone across the street and up onto the roof to move said light 12 inches to the left.

What's really behind those doorways

From the set of N.C.I.S, who didn't make me sign anything promising not to take photos.

Damn that Murphy guy.

The drive to Santa Clarita ended up being not so bad - but that's probably because I was going the wrong way. Even at 10 am, the traffic heading towards downtown was bumper-to-bumper.

I don't go to Santa Clarita very often, and N.C.I.S. shoots in a converted warehouse that's jammed into a huge industrial park where all the buildings look exactly the same from the street, so by the time I found the right place, I'd missed breakfast, but they'd locked everyone out to do a 'private rehearsal', so it all worked out and I ended up being able to grab something from the caterer after all.

For the most part, the day was uneventful - we were insanely overmanned for what we needed to do, and this show uses flat lighting, so there wasn't a lot of hustling for us. Most of my day was me trying to get my bearings in a new set and figure out the dynamics of a crew I've not worked with before.

At lunch, they screened this week's episode - I'm glad they did, because I'd never otherwise see this show - I will guarantee that it's on at a time when I'm normally at work; which is why I don't see that much television.

About an hour after lunch, while we were standing there waiting for camera to reload, I turned to the on-set dresser* and asked, "Why, if this is Naval Crime Investigation, is the lead guy a Marine?" He responded "Oh, the Marines fall under the jurisdiction of the Navy." According to him, the first Marines were the guys that sat in the rigging of sailing ships with rifles, and they became their own branch of the armed forces sometime before WW1.

I had no idea.

About 10 pm the power went out. I don't mean just the power to the stage, I mean the power to a large portion of Santa Clarita (all that darkness is odd for city dwellers - it's so freaky looking up to the night sky in LA and seeing stars).

Of course, this happened just as we were getting ready to roll on our last scene of the night - a scene which had all five of our main actors sitting around a table in a set which immediately went pitch fucking black. I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. Most of the crew carry flashlights, so everyone got out okay and there were no injuries (that I heard about, at least). Craft service had just put out dinner, so everyone (except us, of course) got to hang out in the parking lot, munching on gourmet hot dogs (only in California) and chatting in the car-headlight ambiance (in this case, it was a good thing. If they're thinking about food, they're not thinking about the delay - no department ever wants to be the one who's holding up the show).

That extra manpower really came in handy, as we had to scramble to get our big tractor-mounted** generator (normally used only on location), a spare "tow plant" (we had two units running on two separate stages - lucky they had the smaller generator on hand or one of the units would have had to go home) and run cable to the stages so we could get the lights back on and finish the day's work.

We got it done in about half an hour (very fast). I have to give an 'attaboy' to the actors and production team. They didn't comment on the delay or ask any of us any questions (while it happened or afterwards). They just walked back in and got right back to work like nothing had happened.

About two hours later, one of the guys (who was outside for a smoke) announced over the walkie that the area was swarming with Edison trucks trying to get the power back on.

Although the power came back on about half an hour before we wrapped, we never switched back to stage power - we finished the night on the generators, and they're going to leave the cable runs down today in case it happens again.

Call time: 10 am
Wrap time: 1 am

* The on-set dresser has nothing to do with wardrobe. Set Dressers are responsible for that stuff that makes a set look like, well, not a set. Paper, coffee cups, unopened mail, empty Chinese take-out containers - the general flotsam of life that accumulates in the corners of every room; even the really tidy ones. It may not seem like much, but it makes a HUGE difference on screen.
Sets are 'dressed' well before the shooting crew shows up, but the guy who stays on set and moves things around while we shoot is the on-set dresser. He (or she) also vacuums carpets, polishes grubby fingerprints off glass tabletops and wood furniture, replaces books that crew members have been reading, and generally keeps everything camera ready.

**No, not Grandpa Clampett's rusty John Deere. 'Tractor' refers to the cab section of a tractor-trailer, or semi, or "goddammit, get those damn things off the road before they smash someone flat". Film trucks will have generators mounted right behind the cab - usually two - called 'the twins' (as in "Shit, the power's down to the whole area - start running cable and we'll pull the twins around).

This is the best I can do before I've had coffee.

Normally, when I need work, I have to get on the phone - calling everyone I know and asking if they're working and need guys.

When it's busy (like now), I don't have to work that hard; all I have to do is call our union, register as out of work and I'll be sent out on a call within a few hours.

This won't last, so I'm taking advantage of it while I still can.

Today, I'm off to NCIS (I have zero idea what that is) which shoots in Santa Clarita. Santa Clarita is a suburb about 30 miles north of L.A, and there's only one way in and out - Interstate 5.

I have a 10 am call, and I'm going to have to leave in about 10 minutes in order to make it by 9:30.
(generally, one wants to be there at least 15 minutes early - 30 if there's a caterer who's serving breakfast. Arriving right at call time is considered 'late').

Plus, I have to stop along the way and get coffee so my brain will be working by the time I get there.

I promise I'll be more coherent when I get home.

Just too good for words.

Got called for a job that I can't take because I'm working on something else already - this is unfortunate, but happens all the time.

This particular call was for Fast and Furious 3. The notable thing about this is the rigging department's outgoing voicemail message.

"Hello, you've reached the rigging office of Fast and Furious two... no, three.... wait. Four."
(aside)
"Which fucking movie is this? Two? Four? Oh.. Three. You sure? Okay, then".
(pause)
"You've reached the rigging office of Fast and Furious Three. Please leave a message, and we'll call you back right away. If you need to page us, call XXX - XXXX. Thank you."

Beeeeeep

The Pet Bull

Today, as we were sitting on the lift gate of the truck, waiting for production to finish the two-hour long meeting they just had to have in the set we needed to rig, we started talking about our pets.

One of the guys was waxing poetic about the greatest dog that he'd ever had - which happened to have been a pit bull. As he continued the story, it took me a few moments to realize that he was saying "pet bull" and not "pit bull". It was on the tip of my tongue to ask "You meant pit bull, right?", but I stopped and thought about it for a moment.

"Pet Bull" is, in fact, a very descriptive term. It brings to my mind a big, joyous drool factory of a dog who's always jumping on you to kiss you, trying to crawl into your lap while you're watching TV, wagging it's entire back end when you get home from work, and dropping slobber laden chew toys at your feet in an attempt to get you to play 'fetch'.

Turns out, this is a spot-on description of the dog.

The dog also loved everyone - the mailman, the cops, the guy reading the gas meter, muggers - with equal enthusiasm.

Since most people who get pet bulls - er, pit bulls - want them as guard dogs, the coining of a new phrase for a happy friendly pit bull seems perfectly logical.

Pit Bull + Pet = Pet Bull.

Makes perfect sense to me.

Tragically, the pet bull disappeared one night - stolen by robbers who broke into the house, took the TV, the stereo, the dog, and all the dog's food and toys.

Good pet bulls make bad guard dogs, I guess.

You didn't see nothin'.

Okay, let's try this without the Vicodin (I tweaked the wrist at work yesterday, and then made the mistake of trying to update the blog last night - which resulted in one hell of an incoherent entry):

Yesterday, I was back on the Bones rigging crew (and thank heavens for that - the shooting crew had a 5 pm call, which means they probably called wrap at 7 or 8 this morning).

Most of what we were doing was wrapping out a courtroom set that we shot yesterday (the set was part of the recently cancelled show Head Cases: Bones shot in it Thursday, and House is shooting in it Monday).

One of the things that's not so great about the new, evolved, safety-conscious film industry is that we have a ton of restrictions on what we can and can't do, and all of the studios now have 'safety compliance' departments - which consist mostly of people who wander around and bust you if you violate that particular studio's written safety policy*.

For work on elevated walkways (the permanent catwalk system or 'perms', and 'greenbeds' which are walkways hung just over the top of the sets), people not trained on and certified to use fall arrest systems ("yo-yo"s) must stay within the confines of the handrails at all times.

Someone (like me) who hasn't got this certification may not stand on the knee or hand rails (to increase reach), crawl out onto the beams of the perms to retrieve objects, or go for a stroll on top of the set walls (which are outside the confines of the handrails).

Of course, we end up violating these rules on a fairly regular basis.

The trick is to violate the rules as quickly as possible to make sure that one doesn't get caught. You can't use the walkie to ask where the safety rep is, because production usually monitors walkie conversations, and if they hear a request for the safety rep, they'll call them and send them to your stage.
For obvious reasons, it is unwise to use the walkie to announce intentions to break the rules - "Hey, I'm going to climb up onto the handrails of the walkway - somebody make sure the coast is clear."

Naturally, there was one stubborn stinger (that's what we call an extension cord) that I couldn't get from the greenbed (despite my pulling really hard), so I had to go out onto the ceiling pieces of the set (not such a big deal if you know where to step, big problem if you don't) in order to retrieve it. Of course, because I was in flagrant violation of Fox's written safety policy, the damn thing had been taped down every few feet, requiring me to walk out further and further away from the greenbed in order to free it up. By the time I got the damn thing coiled up, I was standing on top of a set wall which was at least 20 feet away from the walkway.

Generally, among crew members, there's a policy of turning a blind eye towards that sort of thing - it's assumed that you know what you're doing and are doing it for a good reason. If it becomes clear to a crew member that whomever's violating a safety policy doesn't know what he or she is doing, we'll report it to that person's direct supervisor ("hey, Bob - your new kid's about to get himself killed. You might want to check on him.").

Luckily, I didn't get busted - although one of the painters looked up at me as I was WAY far off the greenbed. I just looked back at him and said (with a smile, of course) "You didn't see nothin', pal" to which he replied (also with a smile) "Wow. It sounds like there's a voice coming from up there, but I can't see anyone."



*I wholeheartedly support the industry's attempt to make the job less dangerous, and I applaud the safety program for basically forcing producers to pretend to give a shit about my health and welfare. I also do not condone or advise in any way, shape, or form violation of established safety procedures.

Rules, however, were sometimes made to be broken, and I'd just love it if they'd trust my judgment and knowledge of what's safe and not safe - for myself - in any given situation.

Waiting

I get asked the question "What made you start this blog?" a lot.


I started this blog to prove myself right.

After years of hearing "Wow, your job must be so interesting", "People really would eat this up", and "You should write a book" I started the blog - if only to prove to everyone that I'm really a complete bore and no one wants to read about me or my job.

I guess I've been proven wrong, as folks do seem to be interested, but I'm still afraid that I make my job seem a lot more action-packed and fascinating than it really is.

I blog about stuff that happens to me - but there's a lot of time in between that stuff, and most of it's spent waiting.

Waiting for talent.
Waiting on camera.
Waiting on lunch.
Waiting to see if they're going to move on.
Waiting for the AD's to call 'cut' so I can turn the page of the newspaper.
Waiting on the sun to go down so we can light the night exterior.
Waiting for no fucking reason at all.

Even rigging (setting up for the shooting crew) involves waiting:

Waiting to be let into the location.
Waiting for equipment to be delivered.
Waiting on the truck to show up so we can load it.
Waiting for the rigging gaffer to tell us what to do.
Waiting for the guys 'up high' to send the rope back down so we can tie on another load of cable.
Waiting on paperwork from the rental house.

I'd say that, on average, about 70% of my day is spent waiting.

When we have to wait, we take the time - even if it is just an attempt to stave off boredom - to talk to each other, find a common ground, and make friends of people we'd otherwise never speak to. I once had a 20 minute conversation with one of the biggest producers in Hollywood who never, ever would have spoken to me if we hadn't been trapped on a set - waiting, of course - and both been huge Futurama fans.

No matter who we are, where we come from, or what job we do, the beast that is the film industry forces us all to wait - locked on a sound stage, trapped on a location with no cell service, shivering on a night shoot in the dead of winter - and thus we find a strange sort of equality.

Okay, maybe it is kind of interesting.

The Five Dollar House: A bedtime story.

I know the following story to be true - it was told to me (a long time ago) by the location rep of the house as we were standing on the front porch, watching the sun set and wondering when the hell they were going to call wrap.

Once upon a time (okay, late 1990's), a then-wealthy foreign businessman decided to give his wife the mother of all anniversary gifts - a hillside home in Malibu with stunning ocean views and huge walk-in closets (or whatever it was that was trendy in the late 1990's).

He bought a gigantic parcel (I seem to remember it being at least seven acres), and hired a contractor to build his dream home - where he and his beloved would spend the rest of their lives in opulence and bliss.

One fine day, standing in the middle of his breathtaking ocean-view property, he held up a five dollar bill and said to the contractor "I want a house that looks exactly like the one on the back of this bill."

The contractor, being a working man, probably said "Sure thing, boss", while thinking what the hell would these wackos ask him to build next.

But the contractor, being a working man, gave the wealthy businessman exactly what he asked for - A huge, gaudy white marble house that, from the front, was a dead ringer for the Lincoln Memorial.

The businessman spend who-knows-how-much on the house and elaborately landscaped grounds (sort of Versailles-like: topiaries, garden paths, fountains and a pool that looked like it belonged at Ceasar's Palace), and then, on the big day, drove the love of his life to the new house to surprise her.

As they came up the winding driveway, and the brand-new house came into view, his wife said "Ugh - it's horrible! It looks like a mausoleum! I could never live in such an ugly house!"

I have no idea what he said next, but I do know that he turned the car around, went back home, and put the property on the market the very next day.

While he was trying to sell it, he allowed a bunch of rap videos (and rock videos, and infomercials, and anything else that would pay him - as the whole process apparently ruined him) to shoot there, and that's when I heard this story.

Speaking of stories, the moral of this one is that the next time you drop a few million dollars (which I just know you have lying around - admit it) on a house for your wife, maybe you should be very, very certain that she'll like it.

Like maybe ask her first.

Just a suggestion.


I was not working at the five dollar house today, but a few miles up the road in northern Malibu, just south (by about 100 yards) of the Ventura County line (for non LA-based readers, this means it's in bumfuck).

Everything about the day was unremarkable, except for the views. Good Lord, the California coast is beautiful at sunset.



Okay, the layer of smog's not so pretty, but otherwise it's stunning.



This is the guesthouse. I love the warm tones of late-afternoon sunlight.



This is the last of the light and the first star in the sky at the same time.

And as I was walking to my car, I noticed this sign on the neighbor's gate:



That's not very neighborly, now is it?


Oh, and I have no idea what happened to the five dollar house (which I seem to remember being above Trancas market, which is a few miles south of where we were shooting today).

It's probably been torn down and is now more than likely a condo complex called "Lincoln Estates" or something like that.

I love my chiropractor.

Actually, he's my former chiropractor - he closed his human practice and started working on show horses (the pay's better and the horses don't talk back). He's exceptionally talented (he's the sole reason why I haven't had to have knee surgery), and since he stopped seeing patients I've not been able to find another chiropractor that seems to know his (or her) ass from a hole in the ground.

This morning, I dragged my pain-killer hung-over self out of bed and went back to the doctor's office to have him pop the wrist back in - only to have it pop (audibly) back out less than an hour later as I was making a left turn.

After probably traumatizing the pre-schoolers in the next car by screaming "Fuck fuck fuck fuck!", I called the chiropractor and started to beg.

He finally agreed to see me at 5 pm, so I had to run around all day (film festival deadline snuck up on me) with only one fully-functioning arm. Thank god the P.O.S. has an automatic transmission.

When I got to his house, he took one look at my wrist, rolled his eyes, sighed, and said "It's not your wrist, it's your elbow."

Me: "But I heard the wrist pop."

Chiropractor: "I'm sure you did - the wrist bone's not in the right place, but the real problem is with the elbow. Shit rolls downhill, you know."

Me (confused): "Okay."

Anyways - it's not totally back in yet (he says it'll take a few days to move itself back, and it's still sore, so I'm keeping this post short), but it feels about a thousand percent better. I've got an ice pack on it, and he told me to take Advil for the next few days to keep the inflammation down.

It hasn't popped back out yet, although I was extra-careful on the drive home.

This is exactly as painful as you'd imagine.

Had an interesting day, and there was something that I really wanted to write about (someone remind me to do a post about the 'tier system')...

But my number came up in the' injury lottery' today.

After lunch, as I was tightening the bale* on a light we were pulling off the shelf, I heard a 'pop'.

It took me a moment to realize that it came from my wrist.



The doctor popped it back in; but, of course, after I got home it popped back out. Also of course, as soon as I got home, I took the pain medication and now can't drive back to the hospital (it seems to be having little effect on the pain, but is very effectively screwing up my motor skills).

I don't want to call in a favor (for a ride) to sit in the ER for 5 hours. I just want to go to bed.



*I'll explain it later. Typing is excruciating.

Friday Photo

This was on a dusty shelf in a dark corner of Universal's lamp dock.

I had no idea what the hell this thing was (I stood and looked at it for a while, with my head cocked to the side like that dog in the old RCA ads) - I ended up having to hunt down one of the older guys to tell me.

It's a DC (Direct Current) underwater light from the 1950's. There's not a good sense of scale in the photo, but it's about two feet (60 cm) tall.

Back in the days before specialized underwater lighting systems, electricians would take a bare 10k (10,000 watt) globe, epoxy (the gooey looking grey stuff) the connection to make it waterproof, drop the bulb in the water and turn it on. This was how they lit the pools on all those old Ethel Merman movies.

This one is clearly an attempt to build a better mousetrap, and has a metal reflector to magnify the light, a steel cage to prevent bulb breakage, and a weighted plate on the bottom to keep the whole contraption near the bottom of the pool (light bulbs - even big ones - float).

Wacky. I can't believe the lamp dock still has these things. I'm almost positive they're not allowed to use them anymore.

I was right about that one.

As predicted, I ended up working on the lamp dock all day. Lamp dock duty involves typical warehouse stuff - putting away equipment, testing stuff that's going out, sorting, repairing, etc...

Hey, it may have been busy work, but it was in the air-conditioning - and that was a good thing, as my other prediction also was true. It was approximately five thousand degrees on Universal's back lot, thanks to the Santa Anas.*

I've known the guys on the Uni dock for a long time, and they're a nice bunch of folks. I got to catch up on what's been going on (I mentioned in a previous post that Universal's dock is gossip central), saw a few friends who are loading shows, and got to see a new baby for the first time (well, the baby's almost two, I just hadn't seen her).

Before lunch, I was working on the cable side of the dock (cable on one side, lamps on the other) with a proselytizing Jehovah's Witness and an observant Muslim (who's fasting for Ramadan). These two have worked together for years and get along fine - at work, at least. If they hate each other, they're doing a damn good job of hiding it.

After lunch, I got moved to the lamp side of the dock and spent a few hours test burning HMI's**, and then it was time to go home.

As leaving for the day, my walk to the parking lot took me through the extras holding area for "The Good German". There were at least 300 extras milling about in 1940's costumes. I couldn't see any AD's, so for a minute or so, I was the only person around not in period costume.



*For those of you not familiar with Los Angeles; this time of year we get hot, dry winds called the Santa Anas. The temperature rockets up, the humidity drops to single digits, and anywhere outside feels suspiciously like a blast furnace - even the beach areas, which are normally cool and overcast.

** HMI's are electronically controlled lights, and must be tested to be sure they start, burn at the correct color temperature, and don't flicker.