this lossy codec

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.
It’s getting cold this time of year, which actually, is refreshing. The New Mexico sun can be brutal and the onset of the cool blanket of night helps me understand where the egyptians came up with the concept of worshipping the setting sun (or dying god). Yes indeed, you can always bundle up to stay warm but removing clothes only does so much in dealing with the heat.
Anyway, we’re out in an RV park so it’s a little like camping. At least the “wild” outdoors is a welcome shift from working on the stage all week. Of course, at this point we’re widdling into our weekend hours. Ah, well….
In other news, I’ve gotten offers to work on two other pictures here in New Mexico. Unfortunately, the schedules overlap with this one (& each other) & I can’t really justify leaving this longer show to work on a shorter one. Nice to be in demand.

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.
Jeff says booming is like acting. Much of the time you’re out there with the actors & I guess it’s true, you’re performing. I certainly feel that way – it takes a great deal of effort to pull off. A lot of knowledge & experience as well as finess & grace.
Anyway, there were probably some things I could have done better (better choices I could have made for position, better comunication with the camera crew, etc) but still, I made very few mistakes (dipping into frame, casting a shadow) & for the most part I think I successfully passed myself off as a boom operator.

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
5:am leave Santa fe for abq
6:am eat breakfast at basecamp before 6:30 call time
7:30 Outside the Sandi Bar in corallas getting ready for the first shot. Shooting here all day.
8:12 The first shot is off. Kind of an odd day – Spanish dialogue for the duration.
9:30 crafty calls…thank god for crafty.
12:00 nearly lunch already. Time flies when you are reading. (Great article in current Fortean Times on William S. Burroughs.) This is one of those days that earns the cable guy both the hatred & the envey of the crew. Sure, I worked a little; placed a plant mic or two, wired up an actor, replaced a battery in a transmitter pack & handed out some headsets. Those are momentary bursts of activity that are surrounded by long periods of waiting. It’s dangerous business – if something isn’t ready when we start to roll & I’ve been sitting around…it doesn’t look good.
2:pm after lunch rewired the talent & wd-40′d the squeeky door – ready for the first shot after lunch.
3:30 thunder. Sure, we’re shooting inside but there’s alll kinds of electic stuff outside (lights, generators, etc) not to mention our sound carts. We’re hiding under popup tents, anticipating wetness.
5:30 Not much rain after all. Back to sitting around waiting while they film a large turtle (tortoise?) named Otis.
7:30 wander around looking for a place to nap (as expected, 4 hrs sleep has caught up with me). Manage to close eyes for a few minutes. Wander around some more, eventually ending up my craft service (go figure) looking for something to medicate me from all the crap I’ve eaten. While talking to a local neighbor who has set out to watch all the hoopla, he points me away from the tums (“it’s got aluminum in it!”) and hooks me up with some aloe vera juice. Nice guy, if a little out on the fringe & perhaps slightly paranoid. Well, who knows…
8:30 we’re wrapped
10:00 I’m home
11:00 sleep

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.

]I’m not sure if it is how busy I’ve been (or not been) or something weird in the stars but I just haven’t had it in me to spill some verbage onto the interscapes. For the record, we are back on the sound stage, out of the blowing wind and so, not eating as much dirt. Which is certainly nice. Still, something is a little not right. I guess the bloom is off the rose and I’m just ready for this gig to be done.

Last week Governor Richardson made a surprise appearance on set. I was standing nearby and caught a bit of the discussion he had with the producers, directors & cast. He asked them about how the incentive program had helped the movie, about how capable the crew has been, etc. Everyone had a lot of good things to say all around. Hopefully, that will keep the business coming. Afterwards Richardson shook hands with some of the crew and Denzel called all the New Mexico folks in for a group photo.

Speaking of photos, somebody pointed out this link that has a picture of yours truly booming Eli himself. A further search today turned up this link to an Entertainment Tonight video with another shot of me booming.

As has been the pattern this week, one heinous day is followed by a beautiful one. I wish there was more to write about than the weather (or lack thereof) but today was a pretty slow day. More fx shots with very little dialogue.

We did shoot a second take of the scene we shot yesterday (& I think a 3rd as well). That took us to lunch. Sheesh. It was a complicated scene, involving the aftermath of an RPG hitting a house, with dead people, return gunfire &…oh I shouldn’t give the whole movie away.

Short week this week. We’re off tomorrow (Friday) and back at work on Sunday. So, unless something interesting happens soon…uh, not bloody likely. Right now we’re sitting around waiting on a reset for this shot. Probably another hour or so to go. Zzzzzz.

Unbelievable. Jeff Knudsen, our 2nd boom op, broke his collar bone skateboarding this weekend. Is this show cursed or what? I’m starting to refer to it as the ‘Spinal Tap Drummer Syndrome’. Anyway, really tough break for Jeff. After two weeks the team had just caught our stride and Jeff & I were both looking forward to booming some more scenes together. Ah well, he’s supposed to be all healed up in six weeks so he’ll miss this show but (hopefully) be ready for the next one.

Luckily though, David called up another familiar face to fill the boom spot – Eddie Santiago. Long time readers may remember that he was the mixer I boomed for on Doc West. He’s another great guy & I’m glad to be working with someone I already have a raport with.

Regardless, with wind gusts up to 45 mph there isn’t much to be happy about. We’re still located in the same dirt-pile-on-top-of-buried-landfill and it’s pretty miserable. Luckily, shot-wise today is pretty kush. Very few lines and mostly special effects shots (exploding Cadillac flipping through the air, flaming body parts raining down, etc). So while Eddie is out booming such oddities David & I are seeking shelter in his tent.

Looking at the pile of dirt that accumulated on each piece of equipment regardless of the tent made me really wonder how my lungs were handling this. (cough, cough..)

I have posted some photos collected from Cole’s movie life.
Full resolution downloads are available. Also, you should be able to upload photos as well.

Cole
Gittinger Photo Gallery

Fortunately we mostly shot inside today as the weather was mostinhospitable. Apparently, at higher elevations there was some pretty major snow accumulation. No snow for us though. Just a cold, dirty, dusty wind. While David was get blasted and burried in his new tent from Pop’n'Work Jeff & I were inside the house double booming. No wires today…we were ‘being bold’. It felt good to be surrounded by the focused intensity of the scene, practicing the mystical art of boom fu. It was a sharp contrast to what was going on outside. Going out required donning goggles (at the very least) & pulling a bandana over my face. This was just nasty. Even with the tent the gear got covered with dust. Btw, did I mention the location was a buried over landfill? Presumably, this explained the large quantity of plastic tampon applicators scattered everywhere. Maybe it was part of the set dressing though, hmmm…

The scenes seemed to go well. They were fast paced, hand-held camera jobs, requiring Jeff & I to move quickly and hand people off to one another. I couldn’t help thinking how surreal & unlikely it was that I would be here, booming such major talent, so early in my career. Jeff helped out a lot (as Cole always had) by giving me tips on position & whatnot. But when the camera rolled it came down to walking the thin line between acoustical instinct & cinematographic paranoia (ie. staying out of the shot). We stayed out of the shot & David seemed happy with the sound. I felt pretty good about it. Would have liked to get a little closer to Eli & Solara as the walked out the door, though.

When they handed out call sheets we discovered there was no call for tomorrow (Friday). I guess the impending storm freaked them out. As it turns out, since they called it (Murphy’s Law being as it is) the storm barely touched Albuquerque. Oh well, another long weekend (only 3 days work this week though…).

Not sure if the nastiness of the dust filled wind comes through but here’s a picture.