Monday, July 2, 2007
Kal "Slow Dance"
I had my first experience working as a production assistant yesterday on a music video for a new R&B artist known as Kal. It was an interesting experience to say the least, and helped reaffirm my distaste for production.
There were shoots in three locations, a docked boat, an indoor party scene, and a street corner. The boat scene was dealt with fairly quickly, and was shot with a Panasonic P2 camera on the nose of the boat. My job was to block the sun so the director could see the LCD screen on his camera. Not glorious work, but important when you consider that without being able to see what you're doing, you can't do anything.
The second shoot was the indoor party scene, which I wasn't even there for. I was pulled off with the crane crew to unpack the pieces of what is essentially an elaborate and potentially dangerous seesaw. Now, this wasn't so bad in and of itself, but then I was instructed to stay with the crane by myself for five hours while they did the second shoot. So from 4pm to 9pm, I was sitting on a street corner in Baltimore by myself, staring at a crane that was in twelve pieces. You wouldn't think doing nothing would be so excruciating until you're left with such a mundane task for such a long period of time. The only thing that kept it from being completely unbearable was when one of the other PAs was sent to bring me food and keep me company for a bit. Turns out he was a bit of an old school anime geek, and we chatted up about a bunch of stuff for much longer than he was supposed to.
Around 9pm, the crane crew came back and we put the tulip crane together, a job which took 5 people to do safely and effectively. After which my patience paid off as I got to help operate the crane. The way the crane works is that the camera operator gets strapped in on one end, and then the opposite side is counterbalanced so that with some effort, you can smoothly move the camera operator up and down and all around by hand. This last part of the shoot was actually kind of fun and I felt like I learned a little, but it was still a pretty long and stressful day.
I ended up working 13 hours for only $50, as opposed to $75 as I had previously been told. Thankfully I didn't have to take the bus home, as the director and his crew were able to drop me off on the way to their hotel. Which in all likelihood was an even trade as I helped them find their way out of the city.
If anything, this experience has taught me that I really ought to get into pre-production or post-production, and failing that, always have sunscreen and work gloves handy.
Labels: Film Production
posted by Aaron Clark at 4:15 PM