Packing the Van

Packing the van before a week-long film shoot is always a tedious yet important task. Checking that all of the equipment – cameras, sound kits, lights, etc – is in working condition is a time consuming process, but is crucial for a smooth film shoot. If we find out at BU’s Field Production Services that a piece of equipment doesn’t work, we save ourselves the hassle of finding out that it doesn’t work on set. Similarly, carefully loading everything into the van or truck ensures that everything is safe and accounted for on the long trip.

The Ride There

We’re staying at Julie’s house in Northern New Jersey, a six hour drive from Boston, and the longest drive I’ve ever taken. But I love a good road trip.

After picking up sound designer Michael Moote (or DJ Masta Moote as some folks prefer to call him), we took a pit stop at Boston Market (in Connecticut). Its funny to me that the first time I ever ate at Boston Market was outside of the Greater Boston area, but hey. The sweet potatoes taste just as sweet in Connecticut than in Boston, I’m sure.

Not to make this post totally about food, but what I was most excited for during this drive was the crown jewel of rest stop foods, the cream of the crop, the bees knees, the object of my desire: Cinnabon. With only a few miles left of what turned into an 8-hour drive (Thanks traffic at the George Washington Bridge), I had all but given up hope of finding my this sweet nectar of the roadtrip gods. But then grip/electric Mike Nusbaum (who you might remember from The Fifth Floor) chimed in: “Cinnabon ahead.” And It was. And it was delicious. I’m totally getting one on the way home too.

The best part of my drive here, however, was the last two minutes of it. We had burned off all the daylight and were now shrouded in the darkness of nighttime. My GPS told me we were just two minutes away. And it told me to take a left. But what I didn’t know is that there was a median dividing the left side of a shirt stretch of street from the right side. Woops. I accidentally went up a one way street. I panicked, but turned my high beams on to alert any cars coming my way. They gave us an aggressive honk of the horn, and we escaped. Only to see a police car ahead. Who promptly pulled me over. Just to be clear: an 8-hour drive without even the tiniest incident, and two minutes away from my destination, I get pulled over for a silly mistake. Luckily, this was world’s nicest police officer. He just wanted to make sure I wasn’t intoxicated (says a lot about my driving). Then we were off again, and after trying to figure out which house is Julie’s, we safely arrived at our destination. I texted my mom to let her know. That’s the rule.

The First Night

We had a very casual, laid back first night, as Julie’s mother and brother treated us to some delicious barbeque, drinks, and dessert (a Philly cream cheese puff, I believe it was called). I was also served a crisp mug of Cherry Coke, which is well known to be one of my favorite beverages. Then it was time for business: we discussed what needed to happen the following day to get us ready for a week long shoot and to have a successful first day on set. There’s a Budget van full of equipment to be unloaded, and carried up several flights of stairs, and then subsequently set up. It’s going to be a busy day, but a fun one. Off to Philly!

Prepping the Location

We are super lucky to be filming at beautiful Bryn Mawr College. The buildings here are like castles – inside and out. We spent the day preparing the location for shooting, which begins tomorrow. We set up lights in every nook and cranny, some mimicking lights that were already there, others posing as daylight through doors and windows to create contrast in the scene. Now that the set is prepped, we can focus on shooting tomorrow with little distractions – everyone knows the plan and everyone is on board. Onto shooting!

The First Day of Shooting

On this set I am a gaffer and grip. What that means is that I’m responsible for lighting the space, and for cleaning up the light that I spread out. Much of my job was done on the prep day, but on shooting days, I need to be on standby in case something needs to be fixed or changed.

Last night, for instance, a light we had hung in the hallway fell down. I was called in to put it back up. I wasn’t comfortable using the method we had used previously, because safety is important on set, and someone could be hurt by a falling light. This time around we hung the fixture from a C-stand.

In one of the rooms, the director of photography, Alvaro Congosto, was unhappy with the way the light was shining through the windows. He wanted them to appear glowing white, or “blown out”, rather than clear and translucent. He had me cut out rectangles of what is called diffusion paper – a plastic sheet that spreads out the rays of light so they appear “diffuse.” It is partially opaque, so the it appears to glow when hit by light.

Once I finished with that, I needed to hang a china ball – one of those recognize able paper spheres that casts a nice, soft light. However, we needed this light to be daylight balance. Daylight has a different color temperature than incandescent light, and because we were using natural daylight through the windows, this new source needed to match. Thankfully Julie’s mom was at Home Depot, where she purchased a daylight balanced light bulb for us to use in the china ball. At 5000K (the color temperature) its a near match to the daylight of the windows.

On Monday I had the pleasure of working on Boston University Professor Sam Kauffman’s latest film, “Where’s the Money,” a story about a bank heist. Unlike my other recent shoots, however, this Monday’s scenes took place outdoors, during the day. While its not true of all daytime exterior shoots, on this particular day, there was very little to do in terms of lighting. This is in contrast to the shoots I’ve written about over the past couple weeks where the bulk of our time was spent lighting an interior location.

Here, the sun was our primary light source, and is far more powerful than the brightest incandescent fixture. However, this is not to say that we don’t need to shape the light the sun gives us. To direct the sunlight we use a device called a flex-fill – a foldable, reflective canvas circle that we can hold near an actor or set element to cast sunlight. Its probably the funnest film tool (because it doubles as a giant Frisbee).

Additionally, it is important to remember just how bright the sun is, because often it can be too bright for the camera to capture the scene at exposure. To solve this problem we use what are called ND (or neutral density) filters. These glass filters slide in front of the lens and cut down the amount of light actually entering the camera without altering the light’s color. Because the bright summer sun was beaming down on our scene on Monday, ND filters were crucial.

And finally when shooting outside, we are at the mercy of the clouds (not to get all biblical or anything). What I mean by that is that there are clouds in the sky, and clouds cover the sun. This can be a problem as each time a cloud cover the sun, the exposure of our scene changes because of the difference in light. In my Production II film “Panhandlers” this was a huge problem. As you can see in the film below, the exposure fluctuates throughout the film. This was an unfortunate after effect of shooting outside without the proper tools.

So shooting outside is a lot of fun, but its a very different experience from shooting inside. The amount of work to be done on set doesn’t change, but for lighting folks, the kind of work does.

Now off to Philly for a week-long shoot.

So I changed.

Film shoots generally tend to have some early call times. I’ve been so busy with them the past few weeks that my body became accustomed to getting up at 7am and going to sleep a bit earlier. For two weeks straight, I would wake up for the film shoot, go to work when it was over, and come home to work on my mopeds, by which time it would be dark. That cycle repeated everyday and there was never a spare moment for me to relax or to do things leisurely.

When the film shoots ended (though another will be starting up shortly) I realized that I could continue my new found sleep schedule, but now with extra time where the film shoots normally would have been. Since that change, I not only have more time, but more energy to complete the things I want to do in the day. It has allowed me to work here at the library from 8:30AM to 1:30PM each day instead of 1:00PM to 7:00pm. By the time I’m out of work, I have the whole day ahead of me to do whatever I want. It rules.

From now on I hope to continue this new habit, even when there isn’t some early morning obligation forcing me out of bed. Getting up early is so worth the extra eight hours of sunshine I get a day.

Then again, we’ll see how the weekend goes. (There tends to be fun late night stuff on weekends…)

While we sometimes use our lights to replace kitchen appliances, we sometimes use kitchen tools to work with our lights. I’m talking about one of the most useful film tools a gaffer or grip (the people on set who do the lighting) has available: aluminum foil. Not just any kind of aluminum foil, however, but blackwrap – aluminum foil painted black. One might be surprised how many mundane toolls like this we use every day on set, but after a while, you get used to people asking you for surprising things.

On BU MFA student Alvaro Congosto’s thesis film shoot this past week, we used a crazy amount of black wrap lighting Debby Krim’s art studio in South Boston for a scene. Alvaro wanted the lights in Debby’s studio to form circles around the pieces of art work we brought to hang up. In order to do this, we cut out pieces of light proof black wrap and made long cylinders that we folded over the fixtures. This allowed us to shape the light into the circles Alvaro wanted. The effect was just right, and blackwrap, though an odd tool, was the perfect one to get what we were looking for.

Debby thought it looked so good that she decided to keep the blackwrap on the fixtures to light her own work. That’s pretty cool.

BU graduate student Padrick Ritch did a lot of location scouting for his MFA thesis film, “Limbus.” He needed a unique location for a surreal dream sequence: a 1970’s style trolley car – like the T, but older. He called around, he travelled around, and discovered that New England is speckled with trolley museums that have amassed huge collections of antique trolley cars and trains. Even the MBTA has a selection of retired vehicles that they rent out to filmmakers (at a fairly hefty price). Scheduling with the MBTA fell through, a trolley museum in Maine ended up being too far north, but the Shore Line Trolley Museum in East Haven, Connecticut ended up being the perfect spot. My favorite part about that location? Road trip. For me (and I’m sure many others like me), nothing hits my idea of fun more than spending the weekend at a Motel 6 in Brandford, Connecticut with a group of talented filmmakers working together on making a movie. This weekend ruled.

Just like night shoots, however, this experience proved as challenging as it was enjoyable. Our 1970s trolley at the Shore Line Museum was located on train tracks cutting through a cramped barn. Our challenge was to light the inside of the train from outside, with only a few feet of space to do so. The goal was to make the windows look blown out – or to glow white – to enhance the dreamlike feel of the scene. To do this we covered all of the train’s windows in white sheets. In addition, in one shot a character needed to exit the side door of the train to face a huge white field. Using compact stands (also known as C-stands) we built a giant frame draped with white sheets. Because of the narrow passageway on the other side of the train, we had to use angled bounce board (white foam board that bounces light) to get light to the windows. It was an impressive set up, and in the end, worked extremely well.

Once the outside was lit, we needed to light the inside of the train with overhead fixtures. The original florescent bulbs built into the train cast an unsightly light that showed up greenish in the camera. Fortunately, a company called Kino Flo produces color-temperature balanced fluorescent light fixtures for use in film production. We tied the Kino Flo bulbs up the ceiling of the trolley car and ran cables to ballasts (power sources) on the ground. Like the outside set up, the inside was fairly intricate. But also like the other, this one was successful.

This weekend I learned the value of planning. Padrick and his crew arrived to this unique and appropriate location with a plan prepared – they had done their homework. The people in charge knew exactly what they wanted, and assembled a group of people capable of delivering it. When we arrived on set, we were immediately told what to put where and why. If, on the other hand, there had been no plan, valuable time would have been wasted preparing one on the spot that may or may not have worked.

Also this weekend I learned that Chuck’s Margarita Grille in East Haven, Connecticut serves up some mean Taco Salad. And the best meal to get at the Parthenon Diner is a blueberry waffle a la mode with french fries and marinara sauce. Yum.

From 10pm to 6am, a truckload of BU filmmakers (myself included) headed out to the suburbs to shoot a car crash scene for COM Graduate student Padrick Ritch’s MFA thesis film “Limbus.” We had a whole street to ourselves (blocked off on either end by police detail) that became our film set. For the first several hours we lit the dark road using various high-power fixtures, all plugged into a gas-powered generator rented from High-Output studios in Canton, MA. The dark street became a dynamic scene with creative backlighting to add depth to the frame, as well as key and fill lights mimicking a car’s headlights.

Setting all of that up was a lot of fun, but it was also exhausting. We tried to keep our energy up with fruit snacks, granola bars, 5-hour-energy, soda, sandwiches… did I mention I love craft services? But none of that could change the fact that by 3am, our bodies are usually ready to sleep. Luckily for me, mine was able to. By that time, we were ready to light a shot of a car crash victim lying motionless on the ground. Director of Photography Trevor Taylor (COM ’10) asked for a stand-in. Hallelujah. I gleefully volunteered.

Generally, we try not to make actors wait around set while we prepare a shot, but instead prefer to allow them to sit off to the side, to relax, enjoy some snacks and conversation while we go about our technical business. That’s where stand-ins come in, and this particular stand-in would have the privilege of lying down. And that stand in was me. I took a seat where the actor was going to lay, put my head back, closed my eyes, and let the crew light me as I drifted off to a restful nap. When they woke me up nearly an hour later, the sky was beginning to turn blue as the sun rose.

So as I said before, lighting that street was fun, challenging, and exhausting, but luckily for me, I got to stand in. And take a nap.

On Wednesday, some fellow BU film majors and myself took a quick road trip to High Output Studios in Canton, Massachusetts, to attend a barbeque sponsored by the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE), followed by a presentation by BU lighting professor and Emmy Award-winner John Gates on LED Lights. LED, or light emitting diode, lights are fairly new to filmmakers. Traditionally, film lights have used incandescent bulbs, which emit light  by heating a filament until it glows. LEDs, on the other hand, create light via semi-conductance. Now I don’t totally know what semi-conductance means, however I do know that, as a lighting method, it is more efficient, and has a more controlled heat output. In his presentation Professor Gates reiterated a point that I mentioned above: LED technology, while advanced, isn’t inherently better than incandescent technology; rather its the artful application of each that yields superior results.

Professor Gates presenting.

During the presentation, I was struck by a seemingly mundane feature of most of the LED fixtures that Professor Gates was demonstrating: the ability to dim via an on-board dial. Dimming lights probably don’t seem like that amazing a feat, but in lighting for film, the ability to control and to subtract light is just as important as the ability to create it. Traditional incandescent fixtures don’t have the ability to dim right on the fixture. Instead, to cut the amount of light being cast by an incandescent fixture, we use a small metal mesh circle called a scrim. When slipped in front of an incandescent light, a scrim cuts down the amount of light by a quarter (1/2 a “stop”) or by half (a full “stop”). Scrims have been in use for decades and are given when working with lights for film. So the ability to dim on board with LED lights caught my attention during the presentation. Afterwards I approached the representative from Arri (a well known German film camera and lighting company) and asked her: “Is this the death of scrims?” She confirmed: “Yes, this is the death of scrims.”

So again, I am in this uncomfortable position of watching new technology, for better or for worse, take over the space dominated by the filmmaking equipment of the past century. During the presentation, Professor Gates and representatives from the various companies demonstrating their lights reiterated another point: LED technology is constantly changing. If you buy an LED fixture now, it could, like a computer, for instance, be obsolete in a few years. On the other hand, the Arri SR cameras we use in the BU film department are from the seventies, and yet are still relevant technology. So not only is the type of technology changing, but the rate at which it changes is changing as well.

The film industry, like almost every industry, is in an awkward transitional phase. The technology of making movies is changing just as the model of distributing them is changing. In fifty years, the way we make and watch movies might be entirely different than what it is now. But one thing will always remain true: great technology doesn’t make great films, great filmmakers make great films.

On the set of "Parent's Weekend"

This weekend I worked on the set of Rachel Imbriglio’s thesis film Parent’s Weekend. We spent the weekend shooting on the ninth floor of the Towers dormitory on Bay State Road. In the winter this heated dormitory would have been a wonderful location, but in the summer, this air-condition lacking building became a much-lamented sweatshop. The temperature problem was only exacerbated by the fact that I, the sound guy, demanded that the windows be shut before every take. Why? When you’re a location sound recordist, you quickly learn just how noisy the world is. The slightest click or tap outside of the sound recorder is amplified inside the headphones, including any sound sneaking in through open windows. As such, on a film set, windows gotta be closed. The sound department is always kind of hated (tongue-in-cheek, of course) by the rest of the crew; this is doubly so on a hot summer day when you’re depriving everyone of their one little source of available fresh air. Oh, and asking them to shut off the fan. I forgot about that.

If it weren’t for craft services, I, the sound recordist, probably wouldn’t have made it off that set alive. Between takes the people managing craft services rushed in with (or we rushed out to) sweet, fruity popsicles, ice cold water and cola, cookies and chips, strawberries and grapes. It’s hard not to let your frustrations melt away when you’re sucking on a tasty popsicle.

And that’s precisely why crafts services is so important. They’re life savers. And, coincidentally, if you ask nicely, they’ll probably give you some Lifesavers™. Or sandwiches… or burritos… ooh sometimes Chinese food too… and pizza… I love craft services. I haven’t paid for food since last week.

Our director of photography, Phil, frames a shot atop a ladder.

So when the battery on the light meter died midway through my Film Production II shoot this past weekend, panic ensued. It was only made worse by the fact that the light meter we use takes a 3V battery, a kind of dwarf AA battery that apparently no one but Radio Shack sells. This wouldn’t have been a problem, except for the fact that we were shooting in Weare, NH, a tiny colonial town further separated from modern society than the village in The Village. It seemed almost all hope was lost.

But wait! This past Christmas I bought an old Polaroid camera from 1966 that the seller had modified to take modern day batteries in place of the 3V originally installed (http://bit.ly/hpvzER). Could the same technique work with the light meter? I sprang into action – I climbed up to the loft where I slept as a kid in the family cabin we were shooting at and rummaged through childhood toys to find my long-since broken race car track. I yanked out a bit of wire and had Janice, my group mate, strip it of its plastic covering. We tracked down two AA batteries and checked their labels – 1.5 volts each. Perfect. Two of them should easily replace a 3 volt.

As I taped and wired this rig together, my cast and crew socialized over wine and pasta graciously served by my dad. I shoveled pasta down my gullet as I furiously worked. Two batteries taped together, wire taped to each end, and then subsequently taped to the leads in the light meter. Power button…. Success! The light meter flashed on and we were back in business.

There was much jubilation, and even more gloating. If you’d asked us at the time, we were most likely the greatest filmmakers to ever walk the earth, technical geniuses whose expertise could be matched by no one. There were pictures taken and many a high five.

Success!

This energy lasted us – we got our actor in costume and the crew prepped and headed outside to film our big night scene – the climax of our film. We were banging shots out one after another, going at a lighting pace, getting some great stuff.

Wait a second. I looked down at the light meter in my hand, the light meter we had based all of our exposures on for this scene. It was set to ISO 50. Different film stocks have different ISO or ASA ratings – the lower the rating, the more light is required to get a usable image. Each time you double an ISO number, you cut the amount of light needed in half. During the day – when we had sunlight available – we had been using a film with an ISO of 50. During the night? ISO 200. In our excitement over the battery victory, we forgot to change the meter settings. Crap. What does this mean? Everything we had just shot was overexposed by 2 stops; in other words, everything we had just shot was four times as bright as we had intended it to be.

In the end, not all is lost. Problems such as these happen from time to time, and luckily film labs have some solutions available. When film is processed, or developed, we have the option to push or pull it – pushing it counteracts underexposure, whereas pulling it counteracts overexposure. So if we overexposed by two stops, we can tell the lab to pull it down two stops, though we may lose some of the contrast in our image as a result. Further, as our professor Mary Jane Doherty told us, we “messed up in the right way.” What she meant by this is that if you’re going to mess up with film, its better to overexpose than it is to underexpose. With negative film, areas of bright appear dark, while areas of darkness appear clear on the processed negative. So rather than an absence of information, our overexposure should carry an over-abundance of it.

Whether or not “it’ll be fine” (a phrase uttered more often on set than “Action”) remains to be seen. We’ll find out at our supervised transfer at National Studios in Boston next Tuesday. Wish us luck. If it is fine, we’ll try to keep our excitement in check; in the past excitement has only caused us problems.