1st day of Coming Down the Mountain

This was it, my first pro-gig. I was fortunate to secure a production gig right after the school when most of my classmates are still struggling to find a job. The script was promising and the adventures of filmmaking in remote place of Kentucky appealed immensely to me. I've never been to Kentucky and now I can get to know real "southern state." And it was 3 months since I was in a principle photography; I was ready and eager for another one. The call time was 7:30 am at Joshua's apartment. I was there on the dot, at least according to my watch. He greeted me out his apartment door, just like I first met him during July 4th break. Kett Turton was the first to arrive before me and we exchanged greetings. People begin to arrive shortly. Kevin Thoms fit the Bulldog character description perfectly at my first impression--a well-built bully. Although I heard a lot about Kett how great actor he was for his age, his appearance didn't really fit my imagination for Joe. He just didn't look stereotypical "southern." Dan McCabe was Tyler. Only black guy in the crew, Dwayne Buckle was our entire, one-man, Sound Department. Although he griped he didn't have enough people helping him, we lost our Boom person loooong time ago, he was probably only one in the crew made money off this production by renting his gears. And finally, I met with John our Gaffer, who was to be my direct superior in this production. First thing he did was look over the rental list and gripe that there are stuff missing. And he proceed to give me ain impromptu test to see if I'm up to the stuff. I glanced over the list and saw that power distro stuff was lacking compare to the lights we have. (2500W HMI lights without renting a generator?!) I didn't point out specifically what's missing but he was impatient to dismiss my half-assed answer and decided to go to the rental house to "correct" this oversight by our DP who made the last minute requests added to the original rental package. So he and I left while Joshua had to wait for more people to arrive. It was nearly 8 when we left the apartment and there was no bagle nor coffee.

My spider sense was tingling when I noticed that Joshua was still getting ready when I arrived at his apartment, without any bagle or coffee waiting for the people as he mentioned on his email. I'm not picking on the fact that he didn't deliver on his promise, but I was little surprised that he didn't have any hand preparing for the breakfast, not even a PA. (People bought breakfast after they left the apartment.) I was concerned that Joshua, as a producer, was trying to do too many things by himself. I've already gone through that as a producer who unsuccessfully tried to make a short film by trying to do literally everything. I felt he needed to delegate, but alas, I learned the magic words of "defered payment" that morning and he wasn't about to order around anybody like a hotshot Hollywood producer for cups of hot java. No, this was gonna be more like a Full Sail film production, only it's privately funded with grand amibition to start a new film company. I was to get my first taste of LBC--Low Budget Cinema. (I first thought it stood for Low Budget Crap as I handled some of the shittest light and grip equipments for next 7 days. I didn't know I had it good at Full Sail lighting cage.)

I learned in the cab ride that they--will refer to Cyan Pictures from now on, went through two gaffers before settling onto John. He explained me the "defered payment" plan and he told me he was doing it to get out of the city, nothing more. Although he was an experience pro, he had a girlfriend problem that bailed him out of the production before we took off for Kentucky. However he did straighten the lighting package at Shadow Studio on West Side. Wow, my visit to real rental house. They also had an indoor blue set where a Nickelodeon was shooting something. I was little disappointed that the equipments are used and old even if they are organized neatly on every possible space in the garage. John already knew the guy running the rental house. (And I never got to introduce myself. Darn, an industry networking opportunity blown!) As I looked around the gears, I promised to be more assertive meeting new people. I did get to exchange hellos with other guys working there. John added many stuff that really saved the production later. I can't believe how many times I thanked he managed to include this and that. But this also highlighted an ugly problem; there weren't enough pre-production requirements handled by the dialogue between a gaffer and a DP. The failure to pre-pro everything 120% will come to haunt the production for rest of the journey. I hope the producers really learned the lessons before tackling a feature next year, and there were so many lessons I learned from this small venture. John eventually had to leave as soon as Joshua and the rest of the crew pulled with a truck. (Joshua originally planned and rented a van, but the lighting package got too big for the van that he swapped for a truck that very morning.) I met Allison Westfahl who was our Script Supervisor, the position I originally wanted in order to work myself up to the director position. She was personal trainer by day, and a friend to our director, Jamie. Althought Script Supervisor is vital in a film production--what isn't?, its craft can be learned fairly easy given due diligence and sharp eyes. Fortunately Al had them and ended up learning the craft from our AC, David, because no one had an idea to teach her until the production got too problematic without a script sup.

I met Mel, a NYC film student who was the AD, Caroline--a makeup and dresser, and Charlie--18 years old cutie Key Grip when I boarded the van after loading up the truck. I was quite taken by the number of female crew members in this production. I mean, this industry is still male-dominated industry, yet this crew reached near equilibrium in terms of male and female ratio. Although I was green myself, I was also little concerned about the professionalism of this crew when Charlie showed me her Basic Grip Book--that's THE title of the book. I prayed for a really, really good professional gaffer for this production, and my prayer wasn't answered till the 4th day.

Our departure time was 12pm after all the drama and work. And the day didn't pass that easily even as we were on the road. First, we got lost right after coming out of NYC because of confusing road signs in New Jersey before getting on the interstate. After lunch, the truck broke down in the middle that Josh and Al had to rent a U-Haul and reload nearly 1-ton equipments to new truck. I knew that truck would be a problem when I heard Josh mentioning transmission failure while driving out from NYC. You do NOT mess with transmission failures, but I wasn't ready to point out that fact when I had no solution to fix the problem. And this was only first of many vehicle problems the production encountered throughout till we returned to NYC. Nearly everyone didn't want to do anything with vehicles by the end of the production.

Since I didn't sign up for a driving shift, I was hesitant to take the wheel of the van. So the girls did most of the driving that lasted 24 hours, when it should've taken just 12 hours! The van got to the destination good half-hour later than the truck which spent good 3 hours idle by the road for its share of problems. It was a nightmare roadtrip that I wish to erase from my memory. The direction confused the drivers and ended up spending good 3 hours wandering in Kentucky mountains roads. The winding roads made me car sick in the 4 am. Kevin's great sense of humor kept our spirits lifted from the dire situation. The cellphones didn't really work as we climbed up the mountains. As I was passing in and out from sleep and trying to calm my motion sickness, we miraculously arrived and I immediately hit the bed. And my sleep lasted only 6 hours, which would be standard for the rest of the production.