I can say this about this line of work, it is rarely monotonous. Most days are new adventures in foreign locales. The days since my last post are a blur of hectic motion followed by brief periods of deep unconsciousness. Loosely, the unconscious periods correspond with when I am sleeping and the hectic to those when I am at work. I have vague memories of a horseshoe tournament and a ‘spirit journey’ gone awry.
Yesterday though, laid some deep grooves in the memory region of my grey matter. The details of the stunt aside (see the movie for that), suffice to say there was a ‘bit’ of driving down an uneven, bumpy dirt road. Now, for driving shots in general we ‘go mobile’ and my role turns into driver while the mixer works the gear in the back. He’s got a nice 4 wheel drive jeep (with leather interior no less) that enables us (at least in optimum conditions) to track the picture car from close enough range that the antennae on the roof are able to pick up the feed from the wireless mic’s in the car. The range can be a bit finicky at times due to various factors so it is ideal to stay as close as safely possible. This particular shot got a little hairier than usual and moved my role more toward that of the ‘stunt driver’.
“Faster! Faster!” he yelled as the car sped closer. I knew of the car’s impending approach as the focus of my attention was the rear view mirror. The other part of my attention was on the truck in front of me, also trying to optimize the distance between it and the car so the director could maintain strong enough video reception. There was a moment when I could hear the engine of the picture car plowing down out the rear passenger window while the tail of the truck seemed to be all to close and moving all too slowly in front of me. I went ahead and gunned it, to avoid clipping the camera hanging off the driver’s side window on a ‘hostess tray’. Reflecting the well oiled, synchronized motion of a crew who have obviously gotten “into the groove,” the truck pulled ahead almost as if we were one. This kind of opportunity only happens on these little low budget shows. Show gets more fun every day.
Archive for the “Speculation” CategoryLike a rectangular gramaphone bell extending from the lens, the matte box shapes the domain, its hovering ‘eyebrow’ defining a line from lens to subject. Unseen to those looking through, an imaginary laser outlines the scene, coning outward from the lens, a 3D trapezoid. At angles various and a sundry the scene is lit creating an interplay of light(s) and shadow(s). The lights emit waves, particles or wavicles. These are (apparently) reflected off of subjects and objects of various colors and sizes and “captured” as the scene is “shot.” The meticulous arrangement of every light reflecting detail attends a crew of not less than 30 people. Meanwhile, a microphone hovers at the edge of the frame, tracking actors as they dance and wail. The camera accommodates their dance, shifting the shape and destiny of the laser trapezoid. The physics affecting the propagation of sound pressure waves in air conform to the inverse square law such that each doubling of distance from the source results in half the sound pressure. Each inch counts. The biggest challenge being the navigating around all those wavicles without throwing shadows on people or the background. It’s a bit like chess. Or being a pickpocket. Must be sly enough to not get caught yet bold enough to walk the line between the perceivable and the imperceptibe. The final weeks of a show (especially one already short on cash) can be a painful, meandering grind. As the show is often being edited while we shoot, the editors come to realize early on little insert shots that are necessary to carry the action from one scene to another so the story makes sense. So we jump from little bit to little bit, changing locations and (hopefully) “cleaning up” what is needed. In addition to this ‘cleaning up’ in these past couple weeks we’ve been blowing things up. In malls (ugh) and in the sweltering summer heat of Albuquerque (gasp). It is exasperating physically and at times mind-numbingly stupid. The organization necessary to cover all this and coordinating so many people is beyond me. In almost every case it inevitably leads to what the English call a palava. Thankfully, due to limits of time and money, film projects must inevitably wrap. Although there may be a modicum of regret experienced as the tight knit crew is dispersed it is minor indeed compared to the utter relief of getting your life back. Which is normally the case. This time however some other work manifested – The 13th Annual Language of Spirit Conference. I’d run sound for them years ago and they asked me to do it again. Since it started the day O.T. wrapped I figured what the heck. All in all, the conference went on for 4 days (all day long). The story of the conference is for another day. Lots of cool and interesting people. Talking. For a LONG time. The theme this year was ‘Science, Technology & Creativity’, a cool and relevant intersection of ideas, I thought. Unfortunately, many people couldn’t get past “science/technology is good/bad” sorts of perspectives. Love to have had someone like David Dunn there. Most significant person I made contact with was Steven Vedro, the author of Digital Dharma. More than anyone he fluidly synthesizes the spiritual and the digital in a grand scheme of wholeness. His blog post about attending the conference recollects some of the high points. Anyway, I’m trying to sum up the past to get current here and if I get hung up on details I’ll never finish this blog post before getting called back in to work on the next show. Yes I said show which implies that I am working on another movie. Totally different affair – Indie (low budget) psychedelic 3D conspiracy horror. Was that you groaning or my unconscious? Yes well nothing is perfect and this show may be finding how far you can take that famous dictum. At least the subject matter is somewhat stimulating (to me). MK-ULTRA anyone? Numbers stations? DMT? at least they did their homework. Even if the weaving together of these various threads is complete fiction. Also, I’m swinging the boom on this one which is always great fun. There is something thrilling (I really do get endorphin rushes after each shot) about keeping the mic just outside the frame. It’s like an extreme sport or something, you know? – “living on the edge.” An exercise in being small and subtle and sneaky. In other news, anyone raised in the 80′s or with a love of early video games, should go out right now and pick up < a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=Ready+player+one&x=0&y=0">Read Player One. I just devoured it and it was the funnest read I’ve had in ages. A total blast.
When a gig finally materialized I had to choice but to take it. Still, in the weeks leading up to it I developed an ominous feeling of dread. Never one to allow feelings to whitewash my mental set going into an experience, I put my best foot forward and wrangled up an optimistic outlook. That outlook probably survived about the first week, which by now is veiled beneath sedimentary emotional layers of anguish, despair & hopelessness. The experience is too sensitive to go into details about (and it would sour the reading palates of my “devoted readers”) but I can say that I lasted about five weeks and my expulsion seemed more of a release than anything else. Regardless, there is a sting to being let go and my experiences leading to the end had undermined my self-respect and left me seriously questioning my future. There was some release in the last few days when I simply stopped caring but just went ahead performing my job to the best of my ability. My last day was on Friday and we wrapped late (around 2am). I had (perhaps foolishly) agreed to boom a non-paying gig the following day as a favor for a friend. Unfortunately, this equated with 4 hours sleep sharing a bed at a friends pad. But I felt pretty good about it. I was working with friends and as I worked it seemed to gradually be cleansing me of all the negative vibes that permeated my daily existence for the past several weeks. This “purification” built to a head later in the afternoon. You see, the gig which I committed to blindly, turned out being a motivational speaker for Mary Kay inductees. The pinnacle moment for these ladies (aged 20s-60s+) involved karate chopping a board in half. The speaker admitted to having NO TRAINING WHATSOEVER in any martial art. Regardless, she donned her self-stylized “gi” and took the 100+ ladies through the motions. Of course, to muster the necessary force required uttering a guttural “hi-ya!” So, this is what I had been hired to boom. The women all broke down into groups of 10 or so and began taking turns chopping the boards (or trying to). Meanwhile, my crew scurried around the room with 4 (5?) cameras trying to guess who was going to successfully obliterate the board. While this goes on (it must have gone for nearly an hour) I’m swinging the boom pole around while women are chanting “Go! Go! Go!” building to a “hi-ya!” This is one of those moments you just can’t comprehend the profundity of until after the fact. You can say what you want about motivational speakers (or Mary Kay for that matter) but when a bunch of middle age (and some just plain old) ladies start harnessing enough chi to push their hand through a solid object you can feel it. And hear it. Looking back I sort of feel like I was a whirling dervish focused on my dance while someone yelled out instructions, programming my unconscious mind (“Go! Go! Go!”). In the end almost every single person broke their board (only a couple had to use their foot) and while certainly fatigued I truly felt a kind of purification had a occurred. It was hard to hold onto any sense of negativity after scurrying around that room trying to “capture” the essence those people were generating. Also, the sheer absurdity of it sends my mind reeling. Always good to send your mind reeling, especially when it’s been reeled in too long. Ok. Well, I kind of gave up on trying to document what was, a painfully monotonous 5 months. Some days were less so but it was becoming difficult to mantain the conditions of the NDA I signed when I began the show. It’s a very fine line trying to document this life while not letting the cat out of the bag. So here we are, the final few days of the final week of a show that ate half a year of my life (and perhaps more… time will tell). All in all it’s been a great run. Learned a lot more about all kinds of aspects of filmmaking. I’m better at my job for sure. And I understand the roles of other crew better as well. TV work may be involve grueling long hours for months on end but luckily with this show we haven’t had any night work (yet). Alas, there are always exceptions.
I filled in as boom op for Jeff today (as well as last Friday). All in all I think it went pretty great. I had a good time doing it anyway. There’s something really thereputic about it – it’s probably the physical dicipline & focus. My regular job on the other hand is all about sloth & work on the peripheri. Ugh. Not really looking forward to going back to it… For certain, booming is high pressure. Still, even though I was nervous laying in bed last night, a kind of deep calm came over me in the midst of the day. Maybe it’s just a matter of getting comfortable; of getting to the point where you trust the decisions your brain makes. That’s a good feeling.
Boyoboy. Just when I thought the week would pass relatively uneventfully, a major upheaval occurred midway through Friday(uh, last Friday). The mixer, the guy who hired me for this gig, got canned. There were, apparently, some technical issues with the sound he was sending to post. We knew this of course but we weren’t aware of the extent of the problem. As recent as Friday morning I was sending emails to post in a continued effort to troubleshoot what the heck we were doing that was causing such issues. Funny timing, I suppose. Anyway, it made for dark, dark Friday & especially the wrap, where, instead of loading the sound carts onto the camera truck as always, we pulled all the sound gear off the truck & loaded it onto a selerate truck. Made for quite a scene with the crew. Despite the fact that it was made clear that the boom & I were to stay, I couldn’t help feeling bad. Just leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Now I’m wondering if we’ll be back to square one with the guys in post. Tried to get this post up while it was still “news” but the weekend was crazy busy & the week is worse. Anyway, on the fourth day with the new mixer the transition has been relatively smooth. Relatively. If course, by mid-afternoon the wires have somehow degraded (sweaty actors, etc…) and have now gone all “rustly.” God I hate that. Anyway, I’ll be booming tomorrow & Monday (god willing) as Jeff is taking a couple days off. Should be a nice change of pace. Still, the future in this business, is entirely unpredictable. 4:am wakeup, stretch (yoga), eat & prepare for the day 6:00am start all over again Days roll on. I lose track of time. This week we’ve been shooting episode 3 of season 3. Simultaneously, the script for episode 4 was handed out to the crew to prepare for next week. I’ve been devouring the scripts when I get them…. Meanwhile, at home, Dani & I are still working our way through season 2 (we’re on episode 10). Needless to say, its a little confusing. Often it is difficult to recall what scenes have or haven’t been shot, which ones we watched & which ones we shot. Hope to post more tomorrow. Must close eyes. Overall a good week for the sound crew. Despite some continuing concerns of the Production re. certain details of sound recordings themselves. Anyway, word has come around that ‘all is not aught’ so that kind of put a damper on our feelings of accomplishment for the week. we’ll see what happens next week. looks like i’ll be getting a chance to talk with the dialogue editor. looking forward to that. In other news, I did a fair amount of booming this week, leading up to a moment of incredible embarrassment when I accidentally let the boom fall on the camera operator. Oh god. Still, as bad as it was it wasn’t that bad. Luckily, he is one of the nicest people on set & really let it slide right by. I apologized immediately & then a gain later. He said, “Don’t worry, I’m sure you feel worse than me.” He got that right. Other than that moment that day had gone well. Jeff basically let me boom a whole scene (granted, it had no dialogue of course, so it was all just ambience & sfx). The end of this week finished up episode 2. Now on deck: 3 day weekend. woo-hoo! Weeks reel by – picture the sun flashing across the sky in a hi speed time lapse. Regardless, when the sun beating down each moment seems to last an eternity. I’ve been busy, focusing on the job, dialingin our wiring technique & even booming most days. Most of the time I’m too focused (to use that word loosely) on the job & for better or worse that means less time/mind focused on documenting my day. Anyway, the good news is that some of the issues we had been having with wires (radio mic’s) are disappearing & the sound is really sounding top notch. Mostly it was scratchy, clothing noise on the mic, which is an eternal issue on set because the sound crew almost never has an idea what the actors are wearing until right before the shot. Of course, the mic cannot be seen so burying it in the clothes is pertinent. Unfortunately, clothing (especially certain fibers) rubbing on the mic makes <i>noise</i>. We have all kinds of stuff to accommodate different wardrobe challenges. The standard is medical tape. Then there are little “bumpers” to hold the mic (which provide some degree of insulation from the clothing). Moleskin is something I just turned on to & I’m finding it useful much of the time. Also, a company called Rycote makes little sticky things that you can attach to some furry windscreen material & stick on the clothes. Still, with all this, each & every time I do it I am uncertain & always seem to be struggling to figure out what is appropriate. But, I’m learning. Oftentimes, the best bet is <i>on the skin</i>, somewhere recessed where clothing won’t rub. Something must be working though because this week has gone by so far without a single scratch. That, combined with a complete lack of booms dipping into frame is putting the sound crew comfortably safe in holding onto their jobs. Other than that, at home we are still going through season 2 of the show and I’m beginning to see things link up. Still, its a very strange nonlinear narrative I’m following which might make the rest of this year go by faster (or slower) or might make it seem like its over before it began… A little slow on the upstart keeping the blog current. Hard to find the inspriation sometimes…especially on uneventful days. Oh, there have been explosions & hot days swealtering in the last dog days of albuquerques summer but I had no desire to retell those days. Yesterday, on the other hand, was unexpectedly cool & rainy. As chance would have it, we were sceduled to begin our week a couple hours NE of Abq in a ghost town called Cabezon. The clouds & rain made the day perfectly barable. There was zero dialogue scheduled so the sound crew was left to our own devices. Oh, we recorded sound on most of the shots but I doubt if 20% of what we recorded will be used (the director, Brian Cranston, was giving direction over most of it). The location had a stunning view though so the day went fairly quick. The ghost town itself, I learned, had apparently experienced it’s heyday as a moonshine epicenter, trading the booze to the natives mostly. None of that going on now. A few people still reside there. As I was wandering around I found this piñata hanging in a little courtyard(or perhaps the roof had collapsed?). Anyway, it was weird & a little creepy. I’ll let te pics tell the rest.
Not really my first post since that one was lost due to a technical glitch (beware iPhone wordpress app users). The gist of it was that the first day was a bitch with as many curve balls as could be thrown at a sound crew (500 extras, prop mic wired into real house PA, dialogue spread all over a gymnasium). I ended up needing to dial in the 30 band EQ built into the gym PA because whoever set it up was either an idiot or a moron. Needless to say, when the next pep rally happens they may wonder why the system isn’t feeding back anymore. So that was Friday & we immediately had a much needed weekend. Today is Tuesday & the sound crew is started to catch our stride. NOT feeling an immenent fear of being fired anymore. We have spent the second half of the day back at the Q studios (where a lot of Book of Eli was shot) so it is nice to a) be in a familiar locale & b)be inside in the AC. By the way, did I mention it’s been nearly 100′ F in Albuquerque? Sheesh it’s been hot. We won’t be shooting on the stage a whole lot but it will be a welcome break when it happens (& gives me a glimmer of hope when contemplating the next 5 months). The funny story about today happened when a baby was brought in for the scene. The (real) mother told me the baby had been born June 29 (the day before Griffin). That fact brought even further into relief the stark contrast between the scenes portrayal of a mother & newborn & the reality I experience at home. Perhaps it took me all these years to realize tv isn’t real. Huh, go figure.
Testing Posting from the field…. While on my daily walk with the dogs out in the open desert that surrounds our neighborhood one of them, Emma, caught something I hadn’t seen before. Both dogs are zealous hunters and spent pretty much the whole walk prouncing around trying to catch lizards & rabits. Only in the past couple weeks have they begun to catch them. Well, today Emma sprang what appeared to be a large spiny toad. Looking at it closely it appeared to be bleeding from it’s eye. “Oh great,” I thought,” more death & destruction in the wake of my dogs.” After doing some cursury investigation when I got home I discovered this wikipedia article on the Horned Lizard. It appears it’s not a toad or frog at all but a lizard. What’s more, apparently one of it’s defense mechanisms is to squirt some foul tasting blood out of it’s eye! there is even a picture on the page that looks almost exactly like the pic I took of the one Emma found. Funniest part now is that Emma keeps coughing like she’s trying to get that taste out of her mouth.
Things wrapped up relatively smoothly last Friday (since then I’ve been in a looong slumber. The end of a show can be melancholy (at least for me anyway) and this one was probably moreso by virtue of reflecting on Cole’s passing (that memory enhanced by us filming the death sequence of a caracter that final day at the site of the worst prison riot in US history, where over 70 died). Merely letting go of a project that has completely absorbed your life for three months can leave you feeling empty, let alone bidding farewell to folks you may never see again (and at least one that is certain). Things are transitioning here to some kind of home life. I’ve got family to see and more family to greet into this world. Lots of excitement. In the the meantime i’m looking forward to expanding this space into some areas that will hopefully keep you all interested. Until then… z Time passes… z Time passes… z Time passes… Suddenly, without notice, a new post appears on your favorite blog, this lossy codec. Although the writing isn’t necessarily very good & there isn’t really any coherent theme (what’s a ‘lossy codec’ anyway?) for some reason keeping up with the trivialities of the author’s humble existence makes your own life seem more interesting. What’s he writing about today? Hmmm… What’s this? He seems to be writing about you, in the style of the old Infocom games. What a gimmick. He must be desperate. This is really bad. If you wanted to read about yourself you’d have started your own blog. You are half inclined to post a comment just to express your annoyance at his bringing you into the blog without permission. In fact, you do. There. That feels better. z Time passes… Fortunately, Pam the script supervisor said this to me today which inspired me to update the blog. She wasn’t being fresh – just repeating something she had actually heard go out over the walkies. Mr. Softy is (er, was) an armor plated ice cream truck that was part of Carnegie’s convoy of thugs. The scene involved blowing Mr. Softy sky high. And boy did they. Pretty unbelievable stunt. Almost nothing left of it by the time it hit the ground. There were lots of folks taking pictures but I was holding the boom pole at the time (it sounded awesome until the crew started cheering…good grief. amateurs). I wouldn’t want to post a pic of it anyway. Too spectacular to leak. Can’t wait to see it on the big screen. Everything else seems pretty droll compared to that. Decent weather today (cool w/ very light wind), so that was nice. I think we only recorded 3 lines all day. Two of them were Carnegie (Oldman) saying “no” in two entirely different ways. Besides that it was just car sounds, grunts & death throws. At the end of the day we wrapped both Gary Oldman & Ray Stephenson (who played his right hand man, Redridge). What an experience working with such talent. [hmm. while editing this I just had a reflection of one reason why I write here (I'd begun to believe the self-promotion bit from last time). Really, I think part of it is about control. There is something really therapeutic in allowing my voice to document the days events, unhindered by the plentitude of bosses to which I am subservient to throughout the day. It was even nicer earlier in the week when sound got called to set LONG before we were needed and I had time to completely update an old website (built w/ apple's iWeb app). I uploaded it while writing this post. So, now you can all find something else of relevant interest at lossycodec.com. Enjoy. And keep checking back. Should be growing fast.] The pix attached are from last week. |
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