I have been VERY bad about keeping current here, but I have been very busy. A while back, I was hired by Channel M to provide sound for an interview. The gig was at Club Nokia in downtown LA, where Pee-Wee Hermann had recently done a month of shows for his comeback.
Traffic was remarkably light, so I was the first person to arrive. The concert that evening was for OWL CITY, a rising synth teen bop musician. His back-up artist, our subject, was named Lights. I'm not kidding, she legally changed her name to Lights.
The interview was in the VIP room, but we were unfortunately scheduled right in the middle of the sound check. Not good for audio, but then again, it never is, because no one EVER thinks of sound when making "pictures."
Our director was Alec, who was unceremoniously removed from our last production (see the Milk Studios post). Today would be something of a repeat of last production's problems, but the source would be from the P.A. It turns out, that while looking for Lights' tour manager, the P.A. accidentally spoke to the talent themselves. This is a big no-no in Hollywood, and the tour manager was pretty pissy about it.
So pissy, in fact, that she took calls during the interview and walked loudly in high heels; further dirtying up the soundtrack. The director and I looked at each other with a "nevermind, play-it-cool" look. We had both been here before, and we knew the plan without speaking. We would wait for the tour manager to leave, then simply ask the question again. The talent was young, and definitely had the energy to do it twice.
Unfortunately, that didn't happen. The P.A. motioned the tour manager for quiet, which further angered her and she left the room. We knew we had a serious problem now. She wanted to rush her talent out, and the P.A. was once again sent to fix the problem. Normally, we would send a different one since the manager was already pissed off, but this was a small crew and he was our only P.A. I was really starting to feel for him.
The DJ equipment from the Club Nokia VIP room.
The two modules with the circles are for digitally
"scratching" a CD or digital music file; taking the place
of a traditional turntable. The vertical faders
in the middle adjust the volume of the
respective instrument, and the horizontal fader
switches between the two.
The tour manager pretty much ripped him to shreds. He came back to the location, and told the director, "we have a serious problem" in front of the talent. This is the second big no-no of film production: never discuss ANYTHING in front of the talent. Now the talent perks up and wants to know what's going on, and the tour manager is looking for any break she can to whisk her talent out of the interview. Luckily, we were able to finish the interview without any of that happening.
The P.A. then got a "light spanking" from the director, but we had to move on to our next set-ups. We were still slated to shoot the sound test, her concert set, and if time permitted, Owl City's set. This meant that I had to haul ass down to the stage and get tapped in to the sound board where the roadie's were.
Or not. The tour manager went to Club Nokia's office and asked about our permits. It turns out Channel M only had clearances to shoot in the VIP room, for the interview only. At this point, security notified us that we would have to wrap our gear and leave immediately. This was good for the crew, since we get paid a flat rate, and our day was now going to be a whole lot shorter, but it's bad for the production.
Again, this probably would not have happened if the tour manager wasn't such a bitch. Concert halls are super busy before a show, so chances are we would have gone through undetected if it weren't for someone making an issue over it. Permits can be very expensive, and small productions often don't secure them and take the risk. If you pull it off, you save thousands of dollars. But if you don't, you will not get the footage you need, which can cost you jobs, and even lead to arrest or having your equipment confiscated.
Still, it was an interesting shoot. The piece was shot on a Canon 7D Digital Camera, which is a normal photographic camera set to video mode. It is rapidly replacing the Sony HVX-200 as the camera for new media content, such as this one. As an added benefit, production must use the sound off of my dedicated recorder, because the camera does not have the proper hardware to send a feed directly into camera.
Since then, I have been hired by Channel M to cover the B-Boys from STEP UP 2 THE STREETS (Riverside, CA) and for an interview with Free Runners (UCLA). Free Runners are acrobatic stuntmen, the most famous being the guy from the opening chase sequence of Casino Royale. I absolutely love working for them, and I wish I could share more stories, but I have been very bad about bringing a camera to set! Until next time...
Renato Moore shoots the interview with the Canon 7D.The camera is set to video mode, and uses it's own
lens to create stunning H-D footage.
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