
Swap Out the Babies . . . or the Cinematographer
Moving on from Canadian interference, the time I spent on the agency side of the business presented challenges I’d not found working exclusively with production companies. The biggest of them, other than resisting the daily urge to fly to corporate headquarters of any of the clients and beat the crap out of product and brand managers? Adjusting to the pace.
Fortunately, I’d just come off The Nightmare Before Christmas. Therefore, working with an institution that moved as quickly as C-Span, would not throw me off my game.
Production companies get jobs from ad agencies after several rectal thermometers have already made their way through the inner workings of the creative teams at the agencies and the larded up marketing departments at the client. Several years go by before the warmed over vanilla stuff gets to producers, who are then tasked with dropping a gorilla in a parachute out of a Cessna within a 72 hour timetable.
Additional obstacles included the following:
1. Finding a copywriter at their desk actually writing copy.
2. Avoiding the Account Executives, except for the female ones who always turned out to be heartbreakingly beautiful recent college graduates. Sadly they asked the same stupid questions as their seasoned male counterparts, such as “I told the client that we could use the soundtrack from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade for free. That isn’t going to be a problem, is it?”
3. The copier.
4. The elevator.
5. The two creative directors whose names appeared on the proverbial door.
One creative director at an ad agency is hard to handle. Two is impossible. If one likes the concept of Godzilla trashing downtown Tokyo and paying for the rights to use 30 seconds of it, the other one will absolutely hate the idea.
Meanwhile, the client will have a seizure over the implications of his Korean car company being compared to a nuclear infused monster trashing their next-door neighbor.
Of course, I loved the Godzilla idea, because it’s brilliant. And so did one of the creative directors, while the other one walked around the office with a look on his face like a resident of the Philippines in 1942. The reason he had that look is because his partner came up with the concept and he didn’t. It had nothing to do with liking it or not.
If anyone ever says the word “partnership” when discussing ad agencies, laugh them out of the room. No such thing.
GMO introduced me to new things, which is important in a dynamic industry. Other businesses with similar structures include the mob, the United States military, and the former Soviet Union. I learned a lot, and while employed by GMO managed to avoid any more jobs that included injured stuntmen, intrusions into in flagrante delicto, 48 hour work days, and recalcitrant animals on either two or four legs.
However, GMO did provide me with my first experience with deaf DPs. Up until 1994, I had the pleasure of having an assistant director on my sets. At GMO, when we self-produced anything, that person became me. Not for the last time would I experience this exchange.
Me: “We gotta go.”
Director of Photography: “Move that cutter to the left just a scoche.”
Me: “Don’t make me come over there.”
Director of Photography: “Not that one the other one.”
Me: “I will come over there.”
Director of Photography: “No. The other other one.”
Me: “I’m coming over there.”
And then a private conversation ensued. After which the Director of Photography continued his brushstrokes in a palette of C-Stands, molten sheets of gel, and crew goons. All the time, ignoring everything I asked for, which amounted to a request to hurry the f&%k up.
The reason for the mild conflagration was the presence of a six month old baby on the set. The spot, one for the test market, needed to have all photography finished within the one hour that state law dictated I could have a human being of such an age underneath 12,000 watts of light with a dozen people hovering over him to make sure his eating habits approximated those of, well, a six-month old baby.
Not only did the state of California have a say in the matter, but the baby’s parents and the Screen Actors Guild were going to weigh in on that impediment to all good productions, the talent contract.
None of these annoying facts will ever get in the way of your average Director of Photography, whose sole purpose is to make sure that if something needs eleven seconds to light that it take a minimum of an hour and a half.
There I sat, having burned at least thirty of the sixty minutes I’d have with the cute little bugger, and not a foot of film had been exposed. The mother who evolved from some attractive Marin blonde into the bad guy in those Predator movies (No, not Gary Busey) now looked at me as something on the evil side of Lucifer.
I had ten years of experience in the industry, so the notion of panicking didn’t work its way through my skull. The possibility of beating the DP to death with one of the 435 C-Stands littering the studio did, so I opted to renew the conversation with the listening impaired.
Me: “Perhaps we could shoot something, as it appears we are running out of later.”
I thought the approach using a Damon Runyon-esque type of dialogue might get the DP to come around to not microwaving the baby.
Director of Photography: “I think we need to move the diffusion away from the 5K.”
Me: “How far?”
Director of Photography: “I’ll know it when I see it.”
Me: “That’ll be a first.”
Something you should know about DPs. They can dish it out but they can’t take it. Consciously, or subconsciously, they will scuttle every shoot schedule you can put together, contingencies or not. However, from this day I learned how to schedule a film shoot.
1. If you want to start at 8am, tell the head of the crew (The DP) that you want to start at 7:30am.
2. If you have $3000/day for the camera package, tell the DP you have $2500 . . . and that’s a stretch.
3. If you have 4000’ of 35mm on hand, tell the DP you have 3000’ . . . and that’s a stretch.
Anything you might ever want to accomplish on time and on budget in the film industry you can achieve, as long as you’re willing to be the only one aware of the real time frame and the real dollars. Anyone who tells anyone else how much money you really have and how much time has been allotted is either blind, three days dead, or a prop master.
And then.
Director of Photography: “Camera is ready.”
This is announced with the aplomb of Robespierre’s guillotine operator, as if that head rolling around in the wooden bucket isn’t yours.
So we shot the baby food test spot. During the course of the shoot, the DP must have removed his hearing aid, because for the two 10 minute continuous takes we did on the 1000 foot loads of 35mm film, I asked, oh, more than once for the camera to be placed on the tripod and for a minute of two of locked off film to pass through the gate.
****
The next day I sat at the film transfer with the creative director. The footage from the Delirium Tremens Cam flashed across the screen for 19 minutes. I thanked God for my freelance status. The only saving grace from the shoot would be me returning to my life as an independent contractor, since right after the transfer I’d be bounced out of GMO.
And then there it was. A full 60 seconds of the cutest baby in the world for a day just sitting there eating baby food while the camera did absolutely nothing but record the event.
Creative Director: “Thank goodness for that last minute, but I don’t remember the camera ever being on the tripod.”
Me: “Your memory is correct.”
Creative Director: “How did we get the locked off footage?”
Me: “Oh, that must have been when I put the DP in a choke hold and didn’t let him breath until I heard the end of the film slapping in the magazine. Yes, I’m almost certain that was it.”
Creative Director: “Uh, okay. Is he alright?”
Me: “He’s fine, but is it me or was he a little hard of hearing?”
The spot never aired, and GMO lost the account within the year.
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