Life in Hollywood, below-the-line

Life in Hollywood, below-the-line
Work gloves at the end of the 2006/2007 television season (photo by Richard Blair)

Sunday, February 21, 2010

The Silliest Job Ever






















Nope, not this one...



I know what you're thinking -- the Hollywood Juicer has finally lost it, slipped down the rocky slope and tumbled head-first into the abyss of Internet cliche. There, having hit rock bottom staring at the creative brick wall of bloggers-block, he was forced out of sheer desperation to dredge up a "cute cats" photo in a pathetic attempt to post something -- anything -- that might salvage his street-cred as an active Industry blogger.

That day may come, but not just yet -- and I swear, there will be no more of this third-person crap...

Although I had nothing to do with the photo above, it did jog my memory to recall the silliest job -- and silliest shot -- I've ever been paid to light. Given that I put in twenty years working on television commercials (which are nothing but concentrated silliness), that covers a rather wide spectrum of absurdity. We once did a shot where an actor/stunt man took a 150 foot bungee plunge right next to the Queen Mary while holding a Taco Bell burrito, another with a half dozen tiny human babies nestled inside Michelin tires, sleeping like... well, babies, and a spot where the ad agency's vision called for seducing a full-grown ostrich into committing a highly unnatural act for the camera. But when it comes to full bore, triple distilled, two hundred proof visual absurdity, a cat food commercial I worked on back in the mid-80's takes the proverbial cake.

Have a good look at those eight cats above, stacked like so much furry feline cordwood, then try to imagine just how long it took the photographer get that shot -- keeping eight highly individualistic cats exactly where they need to be, paying full attention and all looking in the right direction long enough to click the shutter.

Assuming the image wasn't created via the digital magic of photoshop, that took a while. The phrase "herding cats" didn't materialize unbidden out of the ether, but emerged as a perfect metaphor to describe something that's all but impossible to do. You can herd cattle, goats, sheep, pigs -- even people -- but cats? No. Trying to get one cat to jump through any pre-determined set of hoops is enough of a challenge, but eight?

Insanity.

Given that, just how difficult might it be to get twenty-one adult cats lined up in a perfect triangle for the camera, one at the head, the rest fanning out on either side, each sitting primly at a small bowl of cat food while wearing a tiny white chef's hat?

Cats wearing chef's hats... You can bet that concept brought high-fives all around at the agency/client presentation, but they weren't the people who would actually have to put the image on film -- and in those pre-CGI, days, that meant orchestrating the real thing: Twenty-one living, breathing cats doing something no self-respecting cat would ever do.

The gaffer and I had the easy end of this job, lighting the small scale burning-of-Atlanta crane shot reveal of the feline triangle. Once the lamps were set, all we had to do was sit back and quietly watch the circus as a crew of six cat wranglers worked their asses off. The twenty-one cats, needless to say, did not cooperate. They absolutely hated those little chef's hats (what a surprise...), and when not trying to tear them off, were busy eating the food from every other cat's bowl but their own. Even in Cat Land, apparently, the grass is always greener on the other side of the proverbial fence. Succumbing to their natural curiosity, the cats would not sit still, fascinated by lights, the flags, the camera, the crane, the crew, and their very strange new surroundings.

The hapless wranglers earned every last penny of their paychecks. Caught between a rock and a hard place, six wranglers were at once too few and too many -- not enough to fully placate and control every single cat, but too numerous to get off the stage without disturbing this highly volatile lineup before the camera rolled. By the time they finally got all the cats properly arranged, then tiptoed off the stage, a dozen of the animals would already be wandering. It was just impossible -- and at a certain point, I figured we'd eventually get into triple time, which back then kicked in after 18 hours.*

But miracles do occasionally happen, and right around the 12 hour point, everything clicked and we got the shot. Since we were shooting film with only a crude black and white video monitor for the clients, nobody could be sure we really had it until seeing the dailies -- which meant we all had to come in the next morning just in case.

One more fat commercial payday was fine by me, especially when the word came down the following morning that the shot was good. All we had to do was wrap the lights and cable, then head home well before noon: a full day's pay for a couple of hour's work.

Those really were the good old days. I don't know about you, but I could use some of that silliness right about now.


* We were working under NABET rules, not IA...

9 comments:

Leslie C. said...

As one who is not in a line of work that would make me aware of what it might take to get the shot you show, I loved hearing about the 12-hour ordeal. And yes, silliness (though not stupid-ness) is an under-served quality lately.

nahiyan said...

I think I would run a mile if I had to shoot something like that.

Michael Taylor said...

Leslie --

True enough -- we live in grim times. Grim times with money, I can take, but grim times on an anemic budget are no fun at all. Of course, that anemic budget is half the reason these are such grim times...

Nahiyan --

Believe me, if someone told me this story while I was studying film in school, I'd have said the same thing. But the equation shifts once you're out in the wilds of real-world Hollywood. At the then-going rate of commercial pay, a 12 hour day plus a 10 hour day (we worked on a 10 hour guarantee, meaning we got paid for the full 10 even if we only worked five minutes) would work out to around two thousand dollars in today's funny money.

Even after taxes, two grand can pay the rent/mortgage (assuming you don't live in a McMansion) with enough left over to bring home a couple of bags of groceries these days. For two day's work (really, about one-and-a-half), that's not bad.

The trick is to take each job for what it is, and not let the crass commerciality drive you up and over the wall. As Kurt Vonnegut said in "Slaughterhouse Five" -- "concentrate on the good and ignore the bad."

There's much wisdom in those words...

nahiyan said...

Amen to that.
Like so many recent commentors on your blog, let me thank you for helping me on my college assignment...
I hope you get paid for all this help you're dishing out.

Michael Taylor said...

Nahiyan --

Yeah, what's up with that? I can't figure out if those "thanks for helping me with my college assignment" comments are some kind of joke or what. If they're some kind of Internet scam, I don't see the angle.

The bottom line? Dude, I am so not getting paid...

BoskoLives said...

Almost as funny of a visual as the one of trying to get Jan Michael Vincent to come out of his motorhome when his handler can't be found.

P.S., you can substitute Gary Busey and get the same laugh.

www.boskolives.wordpress.com

Michael Taylor said...

Bosko --

Having done movies with both of those clowns back in the day, I think you hit that nail right on the head...

hazel motes said...

brilliant!

Peggy Archer said...

I don't get 'college paper' comments, but I get a ton of them in emails. I don't understand why anything that I do would be even remotely interesting to anyone in college, but that's me.

And cats are a guarantee of overtime. Ditto babies. Babies never, ever do anything on cue.

Oh, what I'd give for a commmercial with babies and cats.