The Enemy Within

                                                Look at all the fun I missed...
                                             (Photo by Chris Elizondo)

So much for getting back to doing the "best part" of my job -- hanging, powering, and adjusting the lamps on set. My four days in Sick Bay took me out of the heavy lift to get the second half of this show underway, as four sets went out, replaced by four more, two of which were big and meant to simulate the Outside World. One was a huge woodsy set that required a 140 foot long scenic backing, several big artificial trees, truckloads of dirt, many large bags of leaves and pine needles, and dozens of potted bushes. The greens crew got a serious workout building this set, as did the juicers and grips -- because it takes a lot of lights to create a convincing illusion of an exterior set on a sound stage. 

The trick in this case was making sure they were placed properly, because once the dirt and trees were in, adjusting the aim of many of these lamps would be a very time-consuming effort requiring a big articulating lift. During the two rig days, this wasn't a problem -- the dirt and trees weren't all in place yet, so the juicers and grips were free to do their work. But once the shoot days arrived, all bets were off. Due to the fifty-pounds-of-shit-in-a-five-pound-bag nature of this show, there was no room on stage for that lift, so it had to be kept outside. If we needed it, all five (yes -- five) cameras, cables, and two big arrays of video monitors (along with two massive sound department perambulators) would have to be moved well out of the way, the big elephant door opened, the lift driven in, and all the necessary lighting adjustments made. Then the lift would have to be driven back outside, the big door closed, and all the cameras, cables, monitors and sound gear moved back in place -- a process that could easily consume half an hour. With the extremely tight schedule of this show, there just wasn't time for this, so those lamps had to be set properly the first time around.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is where the DP and Gaffer earn their money, and fortunately, we had a very good DP and Gaffer who got it right.

The other exterior set was a beach, complete with sand dunes, palm trees and real sand that came in eight of these huge bags, each of which weighed in at well over a ton.

                                                      Three of eight...

Being laid up in Sick Bay, I missed all the fun. By the time I returned to work on Monday -- the first shoot day -- most of the heavy lifting was done. There was lots of tweaking, of course, but that never ends until the cameras roll, and sometimes not even then.  

Scheduled for six consecutive shooting days -- several of which went 14 hours -- this was the hardest week of the entire five week job. By mid-week, we worked a day that started at 8:30 A.M. and ended at 11:30 P.M., then we had to be back on set ready to start another long day at 8:30 the following morning. When you factor in drive time both ways, shower time, and wake-up/eat-something/get-dressed time, there aren't many hours left for actual sleep. At my age, and still recovering from that cold (having lost my voice for two days), this was a serious grind. Day Six would be lucrative, of course (at time-and-a-half all day), but we were zombies by then -- dead men walking -- because all that accumulated fatigue truly is the enemy within. It wears you down, makes you stupid, and dramatically increases the odds of making mistakes. At one point, a camera assistant looked up and said to no one in particular, "I was driving home last night and saw all the lights on the houses... and realized I'd forgotten it was Christmas." 

I knew exactly what she meant, because the same thing happened to me every night on the way home from this job. When I pull the plug -- very soon, kiddos -- I certainly won't miss the all-consuming nature of the film and television industry, where we do little but eat/sleep/work until the show is done. The show becomes our world, with everything outside the sound stage seeming somehow not quite real anymore.   

It's no way to live.

I arrived on set that sixth morning at half-mast, acutely aware that my brain was not functioning well.  "Stay off the ladders today" was my first thought, because ending my career with a fall and in the hospital on my last shoot day in Hollywood as a core member of a set lighting crew might make a good ending for a lousy movie, but I had no desire to bring such bad fiction to life.
 
So naturally -- the Gods of Hollywood being famously contrarian at the best of times -- my first assignment was to climb that forty-two step steel ladder up high, inside the Tube of Death, to drop down power for one of the newer swing sets. Needless to say, I made that climb very carefully, holding tight to each and every rung on the way up and down, breathing hard all the way.

And once safely back on the stage floor, I was wide awake at last, once again proving that adrenaline is a lot more effective than coffee.

With that, the tedium resumed as another long day unfolded one slow hour at a time. We'd been told the producers wouldn't go past 10:30 P.M. no matter what, and they were true to their word. We plugged in the man-lifts to recharge, then did some minor clean-up around the stage -- "making it safe" -- and that was that. There will be a few days of wrap, and hopefully a little day-playing early in the New Year, but with the end of this day, my career in Hollywood is essentially over.  

Put it this way: my name will never again appear on a call sheet as a core member of a set lighting crew. That part of my life is done.

                                                  The last call sheet...

I'll have some thoughts on that and a few other things in the weeks to come, but for now I'll leave you with a little Christmas gift -- the same one I leave under the cyber-tree here every year: the great Robert Earl Keene's rendition of Merry Christmas from the Family. If you've never heard it, you're in for a treat -- and if you have, you already know.

Merry Christmas, and as always, thanks for tuning in...

One of Those Days

                                                         Uh oh...

It was just one of those days. The fifteenth day of my last real job in Hollywood began with a full elbow-flapping scramble to power up eight new wall sconces and table lamps the set-dec crew had added to a swing set sometime after we'd wrapped the night before. We discovered this on our own, of course, since -- as usual -- the Art Dept didn't bother to give us a heads-up... but three of us got after it and had everything burning fairly quickly, at which point we settled in for the usual watchful-waiting tedium of grinding out the day's work. 

All in all, business as usual.

So it went for the next five hours or so. But with just fifteen minutes before we broke for lunch, the tide turned rather decisively. We'd just finished a scene in one set and were moving to the next, the floor of which had been carefully painted with a big red-on-white logo earlier in the morning, then cordoned off with a symbolic barrier of blue paper tape and paint cans to prevent anyone from walking on it. I'd already maneuvered around that tape barrier half a dozen times during the morning, taking care not to step anywhere near those paint cans. 

That's when I noticed a problem with our lights. We'd laboriously rigged thirty-five two-foot Kino Flo tubes in that set the previous week, taping every single power cable up and out of sight behind the set-pieces. I figured the tape wouldn't hold, but given the extremely tight quarters (thanks so very fucking much, Mr. Art Director and Set Designer), there was no other way to secure those cables up and out of the cameras view. I'd had to re-tape several cables in the days since, but here were two more of the goddamned things drooping down into the set and on camera. Grabbing a roll of white tape, I walked straight towards the problem with a laser focus, determined to fix it right now, suddenly oblivious to that tape barrier... at which point all Hell broke loose.  

It was a quiet sort of Hell audible only to me. I looked down in confusion to see a tsunami of bright blue paint spilling on my pant legs, boots, and all over that carefully painted red logo and the clean white floor. I tried to back out of this rapidly metastasizing mess, but the tape stuck to my pant legs and pulled the rest of the paint cans over, adding their contents to the multi-colored disaster.

It was only then that I fully comprehended what had just happened.

Mortified, I looked up and saw that only one person on the crew had witnessed my blundering snowshoe act: one of the grips, who stood there staring at me with a look of better-you-than-me pity in his eyes. I looked around for the First AD, but he was nowhere in sight, so grabbed a roll of paper towels from crafty and beat a hasty retreat to the nearest bathroom. 

My cleanup of pants and boots was neither rapid nor particularly successful -- the paint dried quickly, and much of it just wouldn't come off. As I scrubbed away, it occurred to me that I really should have notified somebody about this -- the standby painter, at least -- but that was water under the bridge at this point, so I just kept scrubbing. Besides, somebody had surely discovered the disaster by now and raised the alarm.

I did my best, then went back on stage and found the standby painter down on his knees touching up that big red logo. Not a trace of blue paint remained, which seemed utterly miraculous to me. I confessed my sin to him and offered a profuse apology, but he just laughed it off. With the crew at lunch for a full hour, his touch-up job had time to dry, so no harm, no foul.*

This was extremely gracious of him, but I still felt like a goddamned idiot. 

We shot that scene after lunch with nobody any the wiser, then moved on to the other swing set with all those newly-added practicals. Once the cameras moved on to another again, I unplugged all the lamp cords powering those fixtures, and started wrapping them. Every cord but one slithered right through the mouse-hole with no problem, but the last cord refused to cooperate. Since it was no longer connected to live power, I pulled out my dykes and cut the line... which is when a bright blue spark erupted between those small steel jaws, accompanied by a loud "pop!"

Fuck me. Having apparently neglected to disconnect that line after all, I'd just cut a hot line, offering yet more evidence that my brain simply wasn't working properly today.

Given that I was wearing gloves and using insulated dykes, I didn't get shocked, so the only damage was a small hole in the jaws of those dykes, where 120 volts of AC power had instantly vaporized the steel. But again, I felt like an idiot. I'd made two colossally stupid mistakes in less than four hours -- the kind of blunders I hadn't made in the past thirty years.

It was just that kind of day.

I managed to get through the rest of it without falling off a ladder, dropping a light, or burning the stage down, then limped home feeling more humiliated than tired -- but very tired nevertheless. Come 3 A.M., I understood why, awakening with what felt like a Gila Monster crawling down my throat. Illness had come to stay for a while.  

I tossed and turned for the next two hours, unable to sleep while trying to decide whether to  go to work anyway and suffer through the rest of the week to make a decent paycheck -- thus exposing the rest of my crew to whatever crud had afflicted me -- or call in sick in the hopes of recovering sufficiently to at least salvage the final week of this show?

Although I had no desire to end my last real job in Hollywood with a bang, neither did I want to close my career whimpering from the sick bed. All my free-lance instincts told me to power on through this gig, then say goodbye and walk into whatever awaits in the New Year knowing that I'd finished strong, head high. But it's not so easy to hold your head up when sick, and I might just as easily wind up even sicker and unable to work at all. Facing a no-win situation, the Greater Good had to factor in to choosing between the lesser of two evils -- and there was no way I could justify passing this illness to my fellow crew members.

It was just another iteration of the free-lancer's eternal dilemma.

So I opted for discretion rather than misplaced valor, giving up the rest of this week so that I might work the next. I didn't want to be Typhoid Mike, ruining the rest of my crew's  Christmas by getting them sick too. Besides, I really wasn't in any shape to do real work... so I texted the Gaffer to replace me, then stayed home to rest and recover for the next four days, with a roll-of-the-dice promise to return the following Monday at the start of what promised to be a very long, ass-kicking six day week.

Would I make it?  

I didn't know, but was determined to try.


 *Granted, I was an idiot for blundering through that flimsy barrier like Godzilla marching through Tokyo, but one might reasonably question the wisdom of the painters using paint cans with lids that weren't fully secured to anchor their Maginot Line of blue paper tape. I'll bet this painting crew won't do that again...
 

A Matter of Perspective

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times..."  

A Tale of Two Cities, by Charles Dickens

       When we're filming, I spend a lot of time staring at these...


After ten days of lighting and rehearsals, we finally began to shoot. At lunch (a “walk-away,” since the show was not feeding us), the set lighting crew convened at a table in the studio commissary. As we sat down, the gaffer looked up from his plate.

“Well, the worst is over now,” he said, with a relieved smile.

Having figured out where to place a couple of hundred lamps to make each set and all the actors look their best, the hardest part of his job for this portion of the show is done.  With that over -- the decisions made and enacted -- he can relax, more or less, while keeping an eye on the cameras and awaiting the inevitable changes and roadblocks the art department and director are sure to throw our way.

Each of us views the various aspects of a show from our own individual perspectives. If you happen to be a DP, camera operator, or Dolly Grip working on a major motion picture, the fun is in the filming, because that's when you get to work at your craft.  But if you're a juicer toiling on a kid's television show, the joys (such as they are...) come with the lighting that happens well before the cameras roll. As much as I hate breathing the dust and toxic fumes generated by the construction and painting crews, I enjoy the process, the problem-solving, and physical challenge of getting those lights up, powered, and adjusted. It’s hard work that draws occasional blood and requires lots of sweat, but at the end of the day I look at those sets and know that my efforts made a difference, and that we actually accomplished something. On a low-rent show like this -- in effect, a live-action cartoon written, cast, and shot for an audience of very young children -- that's as good as it's going to get.

It also means that for me, the best part of this show is already over now that filming has begun -- and the worst is yet to come.

Those rig days might beat me up, but they also imbue me with a sense of physical competence, which isn't always the case in my life away from the job -- especially here in LA, where the off-days include a lot of time at this keyboard. Although I usually enjoy the process of writing, sitting here staring into a glowing screen for hours on end is not something humans evolved to do. This lack of physicality is the worst aspect of writing, but I don’t know any way around it.

Once the heavy-lift of lighting the sets is over and filming commences, my workload is considerably lighter, but it's also much less interesting.  I now stand or sit while watching/waiting for something to go wrong -- a light malfunctioning or bulb burning out -- or to help deal with any last-second adjustments to the lighting when the director becomes inspired to depart from the script, rehearsals, and blocking... or when the art department suddenly adds five wall sconces and four table lamps to a set without bothering to inform us, and suddenly we're scrambling to power all those practicals before the cameras roll.

We never know when this will happen -- only that it certainly will, so we have to be ready.

This is where the “tedium” in the title of this blog comes into play. Our filming days typically run twelve hours or more, and that's a long time to pay attention to something written for a very young audience. Having set the alarm for 5:00 A.M. on Day One, I began to fade a couple of hours after lunch, drifting off into the warm embrace of sleep twice while a particularly dull scene was unfolding.

Needless to say -- and for many reasons -- drifting off to sleep on set is not a good thing to do. I felt like an idiot, but nobody else seemed to notice... probably because they were falling asleep too.

Day Two wasn't so bad, mostly because we worked with adult actors all day rather than kids. Although the script is a slapstick-heavy comedy painted with a very broad brush for the target audience, it's the grown-ups who carry the load, which makes the watching/waiting much more bearable.  Having endured a series of kids shows with very young actors over the past few years, I much prefer working with adults even if the scripts are no less juvenile. The older actors bring so much more to the table, and are a lot more fun to watch.

We have three days of filming to go, then several more sets come in -- one of them a monster that will feature both day and night scenes, which means we'll have to hang twice as many lamps before embarking on six more days of filming.

Then comes the wrap.

Our Gaffer now has three more days to relax before gearing up into high-stress mode again -- and it will be stressful, because for Part Two of this job, the producers are determined to cram twenty pounds of shit into the proverbial five pound bag.

Same as it ever was.

As for me, I'll get to do some real work again for a change -- and I'm looking forward to that.

One Step at a Time

                                   Yeah, you've seen this picture before...

Most of the real sound stages in Hollywood were built long ago, with an extensive network of wooden catwalks high above the stage floor that provide a place to run and drop in power cables or hang whatever needs to be suspended over the sets.*  Everything from green beds to BFLs to a variety of special effects gags can be hung from up high.

Although I've worked on a few stages in LA that have elevators to carry us up to the catwalks (and what a luxury that is), the usual route is to climb the stairs -- but the stage I'm working on now lacks an elevator or stairs. Instead, there are three steel ladders, each enclosed in a lattice-like tube designed to contain a falling body and prevent it from from hitting anybody else on the stage floor below. With no safety harnesses or other form of fall protection, you'd best pay attention when climbing up or down. I grasp each rung nice and tight, being sure that my boots make solid contact before moving on.

The combined effects of gravity and Newtonian Physics here could be lethal -- a slip would totally ruin my day -- so I take these ladders one careful step at a time,

                                 Forty-two steps up...

Each ladder is built in two sections -- one going halfway up to a platform that forms the base of the second ladder, which then takes you all the way to the catwalks. I assume this staggered construction is designed to give those of us who have go up high a place to rest for a moment, and prevent anyone who might slip from falling more than twenty feet at the most.

That might not sound particularly reassuring, but I can testify that it's a lot easier -- physically and psychologically -- to take the climb in two stages rather than one uninterrupted ascent.

I counted the rungs while heading up to our first day of work up high -- twenty steps straight up to the platform, then twenty-two more to the catwalks. When it was time for a coffee break, lunch, or the bathroom, there was only one way back down -- which is why you'll find so many water bottles half-filled with yellow liquid tucked away in dark corners up there.

                               and forty-two steps down...

I've never had a problem ascending or descending these ladders, but the very fact that they're the sole means of access to the catwalks raises the issue of safety. The film and television industry loves to huff and puff about its commitment to safety, but it's evident to those of us who do the heavy lifting, breathe the toxic air, and navigate such unforgiving ladders that the higher powers in Hollywood are a lot less concerned with actual safety on set than in avoiding any potential legal liability or having a production delayed due to injury -- situations that would cost them money and affect their bottom line.

Okay, I get that, and have learned not expect much from an industry that grows more corporate every year -- but what if a crew member suffers a heart attack, stroke or some other medical emergency up high that renders him/her unable to climb down a ladder?  On a stage with stairs, that person could be carried down to the stage floor and receive medical care fairly quickly, but given the physical limits imposed by these enclosed steel ladders, we have no safe method of rapidly transporting an injured or unconscious person down to the stage floor. We're juicers and grips, not paramedics, and lack the training and equipment required to deal with such a situation.  

A few years ago, a big, tall juicer I know hurt his back while working up high at another studio, and suddenly couldn't move. A team from the fire department had to come to the studio, climb up high, strap him into some kind of sled, then lower him with ropes to the floor -- and that took a long time. He recovered, but if he'd suffered a time-sensitive medical emergency up there, he might not have been so lucky.

So what the fuck is up with sound stages that have ladders but no stairs?  The studio I'm working at now isn't some cheap-ass warehouse facility in an industrial park, but one of the majors, a lot steeped in Hollywood history. This studio wants me to wear an utterly worthless "safety" harness while working in a single man-lift, but expects me to climb up and down a forty-two step steel ladder  -- where one simple mistake could result in a crippling injury or death -- multiple times a day without any safety protocol whatsoever.

It's bullshit, pure and simple, but the Industry and Hollywood have been hip-deep in bullshit ever since the lawyers came on board, and never more than nowadays -- so what else is new?

Still, I'm almost ashamed to admit a certain sense of perverse pride in using these ladders. Anybody can take the stairs, but not everybody is willing or able to climb a forty-two step ladder three or four times every work day.  I'm fully aware just how stupid this sounds, but sometimes a guy really does need to feed the beast.

Anyway, back to the subject of steps...

One of the features of a modern smart phone -- which I now carry on my tool belt, just like everybody else -- is that it records my daily physical activity in terms of steps taken and miles traversed. Here's the story of my first week on this job:

Monday:           11, 404 steps     4.34 miles
Tuesday:            9, 574              3.68
Wednesday:     10, 246               3.71
Thursday:           9, 815              3.77
Friday:               9, 802              3.66

Total:                50, 841 steps    19.16 miles

Statistics don't lie -- that was a busy week -- but Saturday didn't offer much relief. After going to the post office to mail the bills, the bank to pay credit cards and withdraw cash, the laundromat to wash my work clothes, then two different grocery stores for provisions to get through the next week, I'd logged another 6000 steps on the first of my two days off.

But on Sunday, the seventh day, I rested.

Total steps: 46

And people ask me why I want to retire...


* With occasional exceptions, the major studios have good sound stages, as do some of the smaller independent lots around LA, but too many of the newer facilities are nothing more than a large empty buildings in industrial parks.  With concrete floors, no catwalks, and nothing more than a rudimentary pipe grid overhead, these stages are not good places to work. To be blunt, they suck.