Testing photo link

Let's see if I can get this thing to work:



Perfect!

This is from the movie "Goal". Just over the crest of the hill is the 'mexico/us border', which our plucky protagonists are trying to illegally cross.

The chain link fence that you see at the top of the photo is the set.

The big white thing in the lower corner is diffusion - this is a 12' by 12' 'grid cloth'. It softens the light, so that it doesn't cast so many shadows and make the actors look like crap.

Diffusion is grip, BTW.

The rule of thumb is that a light (or anything carrying electricity) is electric, and anything between the light and the actor (color, diffusion, flags, etc.) is grip.

Not such a long night, after all.

I hate working nights, but what I hate more is when I psych myself up for a long night and it turns out to be a short night.

Los Angeles closes down after 2 am, so if you get all hopped up on coffee like I did (in anticipation of an 8 hour worknight), and then only work for two hours, you're fucked - sitting at home with coffee jitters and nowhere to go.

I had a midnight call at CBS in the Valley (CBS has two lots - the one on Fairfax where they shoot "American Idol" - yes, I know it airs on Fox, but it's shot at CBS, and the Radford lot in the Valley where they shoot just about everything else), to wrap a TV pilot. This particular pilot was a 'three camera' show, which means exactly that - the sets are all in a line, with the open side facing the same direction and a 'camera isle' right in front of them were the three (actually four - there's a camera on a boom up above the set as well) cameras are. The cameras all shoot into the set from the same direction. Movies and 'single camera shows' don't work like that.. you have full sets and they shoot from different directions. Single camera shows also never have an audience, and three camera shows almost always do.

We got there after they'd wrapped and gone home, which is fine except that all the good stuff at crafty has been taken away - I anticipated this, and had a big cup of coffee on my way over to the lot - I'd gotten a second cup that I was planning to keep in the car and drink about 4 am when I needed a little lift - drinking cold coffee is one of the dubious skills that I've picked up during my time in the film industry.

The thing about wrapping sets is that the faster you work, the sooner you're done - in this case, we got everything struck (we just took all the lights off the pipe grid. The cable's all staying up as another pilots shooting in that stage next week) in two hours.

I didn't know anyone on this crew at all, though. I don't work at the Radford lot very often, and most of these folks have spent their entire careers there - I met a woman who's been in the union for 27 years - she got in the year after they were forced to admit women, and she's a scream.

She's bitter (as are most folks who've been in this industry for more than 10 or 15 years), but she's smart and funny about it.

Her topics for the night were: 'They're screwing us out of our health insurance" (this is true.. the producers can't cut our pay, so they chip away at our health insurance, even though the 'craft' people - grip, electric, and construction - have the most wear and tear on our bodies and are the most likely to be seriously injured or killed on set), "Those men are jerks - they can talk about tits, but we can't talk about politics", and "Women don't ever make it to full retirement, and here's what those fucking men need to do about it" (this is also true - to retire from our union, you have to work 30 years and 60,000 hours. Very few people of any gender get the hours they need to retire. They get the years, but not the hours. What the 'fucking men' need to do is to lower the number of required qualifying hours, but that's not going to happen).
I told her she should run for our executive board (the folks who set policy for the local), and she launched into an even funnier variation of the "Fucking men and their bullshit" speech.

I was entertained, and I did actually learn a few things!


Stopped off at the Vons near CBS on the way home and had a conversation with the checker about our respective fucked up unions, how she'd coped during the grocery store strike here in Southern California, and if the grocery stores really are tracking your spending with those club cards.

Road trips and missed dates.

Got a last minute call Tuesday to go to work (call time 3:30 pm about an hour north of L.A. - I got the call at noon) on "Goal" - the scene was some folks trying to sneak into the US from Mexico - only they're sneaking through a hole in a fence next to the aqueduct in Acton which had been dressed to look like the border.

It wasn't actually a bad day. Yesterday was supposed to be the last night of the show, but because they're working with kids, the clock ran out on them and they had to add the day. It was only a few shots that they didn't get the night before, so we were out of there by midnight (that's including the time it took us to load our truck). The entire crew had moved on to other projects, so they had to bring in all new grip and electric for the last day.

I went home, crashed, and then the next morning, decided on a whim to go up to Death Valley to see the wildflowers - the heavy rains we've had have resulted in the flower bloom from hell, and it's not likely to do this again anytime soon, so I may as well do something on my day off other than stare at a computer screen or run on a treadmill.

Drove out in the morning (okay, I stopped for coffee first), saw the flowers, shot a bunch of photos, sat in the hot spring (I love hot springs), had more coffee, and then headed home just as it was getting dark.

On the way back, I managed to have a decently long phone conversation with Mr. Movie Star - in which I had to confess that a) I've never seen any of his movies and b) I had no idea who he was until someone told me.
He thought this was hilarious, which was a good thing given that most actors I know are insecure as hell.

We were supposed to have dinner tonight, but I've been called into work last minute (again - some TV pilot called "When I Met Your Mother"), and so I've had to postpone.

He says he'll give me a call after he gets off set tomorrow.

Okay, I'm not insane. "Enterprise" is still a wrap.

Back on "Enterprise".

When I got the call on Friday, our call steward told me it was a rig, which threw me into a state of confusion.

Confusion cleared, though. They're not starting back up, as they have to be out of Stage 8 pronto as Mission Impossible 3 is rigging that stage soon.

6 am call, which was fine, as it gets us into the commissary for coffee and lunch before the crowd hits. The breakfast/coffee crowd hits at 8:30, and the lunch crowd hits at 1:30. With a 6 am call, you have breakfast at 7:30 and lunch at noon.

There wasn't a lot left to do - it was pretty much just clearing the cable that was up in the perms. There were four guys upstairs dropping cable out, and four on the ground wrapping it as it came down to avoid the previously mentioned 'fucking mess'.

One of the guys pissed off the rigging gaffer, though - well, actually he pissed off everyone. Right before lunch, the producer walked on set, and this guy marched up to him and announced that the rig was coming out fast and we'd be done in 'no time'.
This resulted in the producer cutting the crew, so 5 of us (including me) got laid off.

Generally, crew members don't speak (beyond small talk or the occasional sports conversation over coffee) to anyone who 'outranks' them by more than a notch or two.
If you are having a sports conversation with a higher up, and they ask you a work question, you generally refer them to your supervisor ("Gee, Bruce, I have no idea when that's going to be done. Why don't you ask Chris? I'm sure he'll be able to tell you that. Say, how about those Red Sox?"), but most producers know better than to ask questions of anyone except department heads - it's a waste of time, as information is parceled out to us on a 'need to know' basis.

The worst thing you can do on a crew is go over someone's head like that (and he did it right in front of the department head, too). It's seen as brownnosing folks who normally wouldn't speak to you anyway, and it's disrespectful to your supervisor. And it doesn't make you any friends.

The surprise of the day was Mr. Movie Star calling me about 2 pm 'to see what I was doing' - I told him I was glad to hear from him, but I was about to get brained by the crap that was falling out of the perms (the grips were taking out the 'greenbeds', which are temporary walkways hung from the perms - they're heavy wood flats about the size of a door that hang on brackets suspended by 30 feet of chain - they swing like crazy when they're being lowered to the ground, and it's best not to be anywhere near them when the grips are dropping them in.) and asked if I could call him back - only to notice, after he'd said 'no problem babe' and hung up, that his number reads as "Private Call" in the phone's received call log.

That is a serious blonde moment.

D'oh.

Some friends from New York are in town tonight and their band (Slunt) is playing the Roxy tonight, so although all I really want to do is sit home and stare obsessively at my cell phone, willing Mr. Movie Star to call back, I have to go see the girls play.

Getting out of the house will be good for me.

Finally! It's over.... Maybe.

We shot the last bit of this short Sunday morning, which is the only time we could get The Drama Queen.

Of course, our call was 8 am and everyone forgot to set the clocks forward, so everyone was an hour late - we still got done by noon, though.

It worked out well. We had a couple of extra actors that The Blonde wanted to add, and they were terrific. Hopefully, the entire mess will cut together.

On my way home from the shoot, I passed a Coffee Bean in Beverly Hills, and decided to get some coffee (I stressed Saturday night and didn't sleep at all, so I needed a boost). Miraculously, I found parking right in front of the Coffee Bean, and as I opened my back door to get my purse, the box full of prop vodka bottles fell out and rolled all over the sidewalk.

Did I mention it was noon on Sunday?

I wish I'd looked a little more disheveled. That would have been even funnier.

They call it "Double Dipping"

It's working two jobs in the same day - i.e. working one job during the day, and then going to another one and working at night - it's generally not allowed (if you do it, and the boys at the union find out about it, they'll fine you), but when it's busy, the union will let you do it..

I wrapped a music video (Green Day - I hate them and hearing the damned song over and over and over didn't help) Thursday night ( 11pm - 6am), and then went to rig some TV pilot ("Halley's Comet") today (8am - 2pm). Thank God it was a short day.

Actually, thank God they were both short days. When I was in my 20's, I used to double dip all the time (I think I worked 24 hours straight more than once), and I'd just sleep the next day and be fine. Now, it hits me hard - I can tell when I'm REALLY tired and shouldn't be driving when I see animals that aren't there running across the road. It's really freaky. I'll see some brown furry thing running across the traffic lanes, I'll freak out and slam on my brakes, and then it'll disappear. That means it's time to pull over and take a nap before I kill myself or someone else.

We started out in Van Nuys at a crappy warehouse stage (no 'permanents' - the wooden walkways in the ceilings of a real stage - the warehouse stages just have 'pipe grids'. That's exactly what it sounds like - a grid of pipe hung from the ceiling to rig hanging lights from. Pipe grids are a pain in the ass as you have to use a lift to get to them, whereas on a real stage you have a walkway to get to the lights. I'll be able to explain this better when I'm not insanely tired).
We were "off production" - just taking the lights and cable out before the next video came into the stage at 7 am this morning.

Rock and roll lighting is similar to movie lighting, but different. It's rigged differently - they don't use stands - everything is hung from the ceiling, and they cable differently than we do. That's fine, but it means that you have to think when you're wrapping. If you pull rock n' roll rigs out the wrong way, you end up with a big fucking mess that takes hours to sort out (you know how Christmas lights get all tangled up? Our cable does the exact same thing. It's just a LOT heavier than Christmas lights, and you can't get pissed off and throw it in the trash. You have to untangle it - so it's better not to let it get fucked up in the first place).

One of our lifts died, and the stage manager had to call a condor mechanic to come out and fix it. I had three 'new guys' on my crew, so someone had to babysit them all night - they did fine, though.

Then, after the Starbucks version of a "Big Gulp", I went out to Pasadena to put this TV pilot rig in. It's shooting in a closed hospital (there's a bunch of those in Los Angeles, and they all have film crews in them all the time), so we just had to change tubes in the fluorescent fixtures (actual fluorescent tubes photograph green as the proverbial ' fucking shamrock'. Movies use special "color balanced" tubes. Light is measured in degrees of Kelvin. Different degrees of kelvin results in a different color of light. Again, something I'll have to explain when I've had some sleep), and run a small amount of cable.

It's still busy as hell - on my way home, I called the union hall to register as 'out of work', and got sent right back out for Monday. I'm back on "Enterprise". The call steward said it was rigging, which confuses me, as I thought that show was done.

I'll find out 6 am Monday.

I'm off to bed.

My First Angry Letter to the Editor

Well, it's not an angry letter, but it's a letter..

"Us Weekly" Magazine reported that the crew of Mr. and Mrs. Smith were replaced due to their gossiping about Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

What a crock. Most of the time, we're either working our asses off, or trying to set stuff up for the next shot so we don't get said asses kicked by not being prepared.

There's always commentary on the walkie talkies, but on "Mr. and Mrs. Smith", the only snarky comments that I heard on the walkie were aimed at the director.

Anyhow - here's my first letter to an editor. We'll see if it gets published and in what form:

In your April 11 issue, you reported that the crew of the upcoming movie "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" were replaced for reshoots due to their 'gossip and speculation' about actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

This is untrue. The reason there was a new crew during each successive round of 'additional shooting' (this current round wrapped Thursday, March 24), is that like all crews, they had moved on to other projects during the film's multiple hiatuses, and were not available when shooting started again - hence the need for a new crew.

Contrary to popular belief, film crews generally
don't care about the antics of celebrities.
We are usually too busy trying to get through the day's work to worry about who's doing what to whom in the trailers between shots.

Ladies who Lunch!

Last minute lunch with The Blonde and The Drama Queen at The Ivy - They called me, said they'd gotten a table, and did I want to come and have lunch.

For those of you not familiar, The Ivy is a celeb infested, over priced 'eatery' in West Hollywood.. there are perpetually photogs planted outside, and the food's okay - given my druthers, I'd go across the way to Chaya - still overpriced, but much more interesting food.

There wasn't really anyone good there except - Mr. Movie Star.

I couldn't believe I saw him there, and The Drama Queen couldn't believe it when, after a few minutes of him staring at me like he couldn't figure out who I was, he came over and said hello.

He's still short, and still very, very charming.

He got my number again as he said he'd 'lost his phone'.

I managed to not giggle quite so much this time.

Some light reading for your perusal

There's a fake Michael Bay blog here on blogger (Those of you who've read my entire blog will know my thoughts on M.B.).

It's hilarious, and whoever's writing it is a fucking genius.

Go check it out!

Downloaded the truck for Mr. and Mrs Smith today. It's finally over!

Since I got off work early, I met my friend Rebecca for lunch. Rebecca is a costumer for just about everyone (she's making costumes for KISS and the Pussycat Dolls right now). She's going to make me a purse when she's got some time - I gave her a really rank Louis V. handbag that I bought at a thrift store (one of those cylindrical ones with the spikes), and she's going to take it apart and make me a knock off out of something cool (I'm thinking of turquoise and green patent leather. I like the idea of having something that no one else has).

I'm so glad I got to see her - she's one of my favorite people in the world.

There's about two weeks left in pilot season, so I'm taking tomorrow off to try to get my taxes done, and then I'm back to scrambling for work before it goes dead again.

I still can't figure out this fucking picture program, so I'll just post photos on MySpace.
Here's the URL for my profile:

http://www.myspace.com/peggyarcher

Yay for Double Time!

We got a nice wrap day today..

Good Friday being a union holiday, we got 8 hours at double time! Yay!

We had a nice, easy day as well. All we did was get our equipment onto our truck (as opposed to the 'drop loads' and the rigging package which is HUGE), which took about six hours of easy work, and since there was no production there (no production = no panic), we could do things like speculate about how much money we could get on eBay for a door handle that Brad broke during a take - I think not much, as there's no way to prove that it's an actual item from the movie. The boys disagree.

It's a moot point, as none of us care enough to actually go to the trouble to try to sell the thing.

We got done early, and I went to the gym that's across the street from the Ikea and swam for an hour, and then I went to Fry's (how is it that whenever I'm not going to be able to get there, Fry's will have a phenomenal deal on something I've been wanting for ages.. but on the one Friday when I get off early and have to pass right by on my way home, they have nothing good.. why?) for a bit, and then went home - while it's still light.

Oh, the joy!

Rule #1 - Don't get killed

The official last night of shooting on "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".. This is just stunts, there are no actors (they were 'picture wrapped' last night).

The night started off badly - we had a 5 pm call, which meant that we all got stuck in the horrible traffic on the way out to the Ikea in Puente Hills (our location, on and off, for the past few months. It will thankfully be torn down as soon as we're done with it).

The "best boy" (sort of the second in command) set the tone by -right at call time - announcing over the walkie talkie "Rule number one is this: Don't get killed by the helicopter". This set off the inevitable wave of John Landis/Twilight Zone jokes, but everyone was very, very nervous.

The first fuck up was that one of the 'condors' (these are lift platforms that go about 80 feet up in the air - there's a light in the basket and a guy up there with it to make any changes - it simulates moonlight) was in the flight path of the helicopter which, during the shot, will be swooping down, chasing our stunt doubles who are running for cover into the building.

To move the condor required that locations secure permission to move it into the parking lot of a business about 100 yards down the road from where it was initially set up - not an easy thing to do at 6:30 pm in a largely industrial area. When they finally got ahold of the guy who owned the building, he said "NO". Finally, they got permission to use another lot and got the condor, all it's cable and the generator that was powering it moved.

To move the generator, transportation sent a 'stake-bed', with some of our lights in it, over to the condor (which was about a quarter mile away from the Ikea). Needless to say, while the truck was over there dealing with trying to hitch up the generator, our boss decided that he just had to use one of the lights that was in the stakebed. They had to unhook the generator, put the condor move on hold, and send the truck back over to us so we could offload one light - we then sent the truck back over to finish the move.

The second fuck up involved one of the other condors (we had a total of six- only four of which were ever in the air at the same time) that was placed in the parking lot of the Best Buy next door. Each condor weighs about 16,000 lbs, and they have big tractor tires on them. The asphalt in the Best Buy parking lot started to crack under the weight of the condor - while the basket (with big light and guy) was in the air. Once that was down, and moved (to a spot that the D.P. didn't like as much, but had firmer asphalt), we started to shoot - until the main generator went down.

The entire production staff was getting very, very tense, as all the shots were outside at night - which means that they can only shoot until the sun comes up, and then they have to stop. Since the director is the slowest fucking person on the planet, this delay sent production into a tizzy.

As many bad things as I've said, typed and thought about this particular director, he did put the petal to the metal and make up for lost time. We ended up getting our last shot just as the sun came up.

After we did our hour or so of work to get everything ready, of course we got stuck in traffic. I slept in the back of my truck for two hours and then went home, where I passed out until I got the call to come in on Friday (Good Friday - it's a holiday so it means double time) and wrap the truck.

Sweet.

Call time: 5 pm.

Wrap time 6:15 am

We were out at 7:15 am

Machine Guns are Loud

I've never been afraid on a set before.

Tonight we shot the big gun battle between Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the commandos who are trying to kill them. ALL of the actors had machine guns, the store shelves were 'squibbed' (small explosive charges to make it look like a bullet's hit something) and the noise was deafening. Even from 30 feet away, I could feel the shockwaves coming off the guns as they were fired. I had ear plugs AND noise canceling headphones on, and the noise was still rattling my teeth.

I cannot imagine what it's like to be in combat, where those things aren't loaded with blanks, and in addition to the cacophony you have the chance of actually being killed. Fuck.

The one funny thing was that when the squibs were going off during the action sequence, there were little geysers of pork rinds and flavored popcorn flying into the air as the squibs set them off. It looked like a cartoon, and I was laughing so hard that I forgot to be afraid!

This director is amazingly slow. All night, he would do multiple takes of these HUGE shots that took hours to set up. Someone pointed out that we started shooting Mr. and Mrs. Smith last year, and then we had to stop because Brad had to go shoot Oceans 12. That movie was shot, came out in the theaters and has gone to DVD, and we're still shooting this movie.

I think they should call it "Mr. and Mrs. Smith go to Heaven's Gate".

Call time: 10 am

Wrap time: 3:30 am

It's going to be a long, long day.

I'm on my way into the never ending movie, "Mr. and Mrs. Smith".

Originally, our call time for today was 7:30 am, at an old Ikea about an hour east of Los Angeles.

My boss called me at 8 pm last night to tell me that the call time had been changed to 10 am, because 'Brad Pitt doesn't want to get up that early".

Wow.. I wish I could do that.

For some reason, I can never sleep late.. So, even with my 10 am call (9:30 for breakfast), I'm still up at quarter to seven.

It's going to be a long, long day.

Bleah.

Still sick.

Still working.

The best boy razzed me all day about being sick at work, which apparently I've complained about to him before.

Someone kept stealing equipment out of our pile before we had a chance to count it, so the warehouse guys would have to go and get more stuff. .there are four shows loading at the same time, so who knows who it was.

Had a good time because the gaffer was there, and he's a ton of fun.

Not all the equipment got there on time, so we had to sit and wait - in the rain, as this rental house doesn't have indoor docks - for the rest of our stuff to get there.

Dammit, I hate it when I'm a hypocrite.

I always get pissed when folks go into work when they're sick, so I guess that makes me a big fucking hypocrite..

I'm still sick as a dog, but I got called to do two days loading a truck, which isn't heavy work, so I dosed up with cold medicine and went in.

What's shooting is pickups for a movie called "Goal" which shot mostly in England, and there's 10 days of stuff here.

This crew are the same folks who did "Memento" and "The Italian Job". I love these guys. They're maniacs, and I always have fun when I'm working for them. Unless I'm sick.

Then nothing is too much fun.