Song: "100 Percent" by Chromeo
Finished our last shoot on thursday and flew out friday afternoon to LA. FYI, I pretty much despise LA. However, we flew on Virgin America which was actually pretty nice. On check in, everyone was very friendly, and took extra effort in helping me with my 8 bags. Side note: They only allow you one checked bag at no cost, but allow all bags to be 70 pounds before an overweight fee. While this isn't a problem for me (I bill back all excess baggage fees), it could be annoying for leisure travellers. Once I went through security (always fun with three laptops and a 60 pound bag full of electronics) and boarded the plane I realized I might have to get more than one bourbon. Virgin America is the party airline. The purple plexi-glass separating the first class and coach cabin, the violet and deep blue accent lights that replaced the drab florescent overheads was almost a shock to what I've been used to in my 17 years of flying. Even the seats are slick black leather with pristine shiny LCD screens in the back. You can also order food straight off your personal screen and pay for it with the credit card machine that is built in. Great feature if you're big on sleeping pills and always seem to miss the service cart. Add 110 plugs under all the seats (Unlimited laptop power!!!) and you've got my new favorite airline. I'm not one to plug products, but after getting tortured by the airlines since 2001, its kinda nice to see a little forward progress. Well thats a little harsh on the airlines, let me rephrase that. FUCK TSA.
Once we landed, the first assistant went to get the rental car (I hate not being 25) and I grabbed all the bags. Driving to Santa Monica we listened to JACK FM, which I've always been a big fan of. We stayed at a decent hotel, although we shot in the hollywood hills and downtown (very inconvenient). We were shooting one of the desperate housewives for some Italian company, and what was promised to be a quick shoot with three shots total over two days ended up being ridiculously long. I had most of friday off so I had dinner with an old roommate and walked around a bit. Late friday night, I got our revised call time, which had changed from 4PM to 10AM. Meh, what are you going to do?
Woke up at 9 to get the gear ready, and headed down a little early to meet the assistant and pack the car. After driving to three wrong locations, we finally found the right studio, where they were having a pre-production meeting that we didn't even need to be at. We waited there for the photographer for about two hours and then headed to the REAL location, a 6 million dollar house in the hollywood hills, to get started on setup. Once we arrived we realized that they were filming commercials of her, and knew that we would spend the day getting snubbed by film teamsters, grips and gaffers. There's always conflict between still and film crews for a few reasons. We hate film people because they will take an hour break when there's only an hour of work left (stupid unions), will bitch about how slow we are at everything (sorry, we don't hire one person per stand. Its excessive and we aren't lazy), and being at a bigger production level/cost, the won't let us shoot while they're filming (strobe lights travel a long distance). They hate us because, since we don't have time to do a full lighting setup once they're done filming, require them to leave their lights up while we literally take 100 images. They were dicks as usual, even though we would shoot for literally 20 minutes after they finished and then would be completely out of their way. They still managed to complain to every producer on set, but to no avail. I made a specific point of eating way more than my share of their catering, and unplugging anything they put in my designated power source.
The actress was really nice and TINY. She was over a foot shorter than me which looks crazy in the light tests. We did two shots the entire day, the last one ending at 10:30 pm. We wrapped by 11 and headed home. 13 hour day (three hours of overtime) for less than 1 hour of shooting. At least I got to lay in the sun for about 6 hours.
The next day we shot downtown and had our own room in the building which was a nice break from working with all the teamster assholes. We finished our setup around 11 am and then took it easy for a few hours. After the day before, our producer (she's an amazing producer and a very good person) was hyper-sensitive towards people being in our area. A woman had already come in to change her babies diaper, and now she was breast-feeding right in front of us. Being that we had a "closed set" sign on the door, she asked the woman to leave since she had already asked all the other non-photo crew people to leave. The woman looked upset, but left without a fuss. The production assistants were outside, and came back in 5 minutes later laughing and asking what our producer had said to the woman. Right after that she came back in, had obviously been crying, and demanded to know our producers name and started yelling. Our producer handled it very well, and once she had left, felt terrible. Needless to say the joke for the rest of the day was about her stony cold heart.
We ate tons of food while waiting and when the actress finally showed up, we shot for 30 minutes and then she left. The shot finished at 4:30 pm. Another long day for barely any working. I tried to get a redeye flight out to New York, but there was nothing available that I could make being that I still had to go back to the hotel. The images turned out really well despite our limited shooting time, and we were all happy to be done and heading back to NY.
I'm now on another virgin america flight, rocking the turbulence over the midwest. We had an early flight this morning and I've barely gotten any sleep in the last week. Time for some Dewars (no bourbon on Virgin....might be a deal breaker) and a nap. Heading to St. Lucia next Sunday, with a few more studio jobs in between. Until next time.
