I did sound for a web series called Brooklyn last April. The producer just e-mailed us and said the first episode was printed and published on the web. I remember this one being a particularly difficult shoot, so I was interested to see how it turned out.
The production was quite large for a web series. The first day of shooting was in the desert; East of Palmdale. Even though it was the Spring, the temperature easily clocked 100°. On top of that, there was a lot of shooting top of a hill for the shots of Brooklyn as a sniper. Guess how we got up there? That would be by me carrying it up in one trip: mixer, recorder, Portabrace, boom, and all. There was a huge crew for picture, but they only hired me for sound (notice why it's just ME in the picture).
So that sucked. I also remember not being able to get a pole in there. Ever. They had two cameras shooting all over the place, so I usually only got to sync to one camera at a time. My friend Camille (below) had gotten me on the shoot, and she was much more comfortable than me doing make-up in the air-conditioned trailer.
I'm not sure if I would say things got better or worse the next day. Although we weren't shooting in the High Desert, we were shooting in Skid Row. And if you're thinking that the heat was more tolerable, it wasn't.
We were shooting in a near-condemned building on 7th St., and it was literally only a small bedroom. The room couldn't have been more than 12x12. No bathroom, no shower, NO KITCHEN. Only a sink. To do God's work, you had to go to a community toilet down the hall. Shower was at the other end, and I guess the residents cooked on hot plates. I found out that the rent was only $100 a month. The discount comes with a price; there were roaches everywhere. It really opened my eyes to how deeply the line between rich and poor is drawn in LA. These people didn't have a pot to piss in (literally), but less than 25 miles away was Beverly Hills.
Anyway, inside this tiny room we had to fit all of the lights, the Director of Photography, the Assistant Camera, talent, and me. Even the director couldn't fit in there. It took a long time to get the shots off because only a few people could fit in the room at a time. The crew was NOT happy.
It was very hard to get good sound in this place as well. The residents kept blasting Mariachi music, and it was difficult to get them to stop because no two people spoke the same language (and none of them spoke English). They did finally stop when we paid them. Of course, there was still plenty of city noise, air traffic, and sirens. Constantly sirens! We had to stop completely when there was a shooting down the street. There was just way too much 5-0.
The next day was a little better. We were shooting at an Eagle Rock coffee shop. I thought I was finally going to get good sound until I realized that the owners wouldn't let me turn off any of the refrigerators in the back. So there was a lot of buzz on most of the takes, which is why I'm guessing there's so much music in the final cut. I actually did get them to turn the damn things off when we were shooting in the kitchen, because it was just unmerciful.
All in all, it was still a good experience. The crew was very cool, and the job paid well. I wasn't very happy with how the sound came out, and that could be why I haven't heard from the producer or director since. However, I did end up working with the actor who played the homeless guy in a student short called "Altered Design."
Looking back, I was still kind of new to sound, and Brooklyn, at the time, was by far the biggest production I had done the mixing for. It definitely beat another day at the office. As a weird side note, one of the crew members looked so much like my brother Alex that I started to wonder if my parents were keeping a secret from me.
See episode 1 for free at http://www.brooklyntheseries.com. It has a lot of energy and I think will do well if it's picked up.
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