The first shoot of AOAO took place in a parking lot right by
RoosterCat coffeehouse. We had a great crew, a late arriving lead actor,
and pretty much no idea what we were doing. See, the shoot was on a
Friday night, and the parking lot was right behind one of SoBo's biggest clubs.
So, naturally, by the time 10pm rolled around the parking lot owner shows up.
"Sure you can film here, if you pay for every space you're using to
shoot." Not being part of the production crew at the time I turned a deaf
ear to the discussion between the lot owner, Tyler, and Buddy. Somehow we
got the lot (catchy, isn't it?) and the owner even directed cars around and far
from the shoot.
I had come on as a last minute gaffer for this, a night shoot!
I had all sorts of fun lights to play with, plenty of extension chords,
gels, a limited amount of gaffer tape, stands that raised almost 20 feet, and
absolutely no sandbags, cinder blocks, or other forms of safety...Yay! As
it turned out, I needed a couple of orange gels and to raise the stands almost
at maximum height to provide a fake street-lamp/parking lot lamp look.
Needing at least 2, sometimes 3 point, lighting to pull this off, I had
to be a constant asshole to some of the more 'green' members of the crew to
have someone on these lights at all times. We often stopped a shoot and a grip
would run off, leaving one of those things just sitting there like a 20' tall
insurance liability waiting to happen..."At least break the damn thing
down to it's 5 foot version!" I often screamed to the mutineers.
So...remember how I mentioned we shot on a club night? I
have never worked in some establishment like, say a 24 hour convenience store
near a bar district, so I have not had the pleasure of soberly watching people
in their energetic states on the way to the club, then their various stages
of inebriation during and after the club...that all changed this evening. There were
never any fights (if you ever go to Boston, for example, there will be three
fights per every block, usually simultaneous, right after the clubs close), and
not even any puke that I recall, but there was one guy...
We were setting up Seymore's scene, our car thief beckoning the
lead over to "help me push start my car" (in that rough Jersey
accent), everyone was gathered near a car, which happened to belong to our lead
actor's roommate, who happened to be dropping off some clothes and suckered
into staying about 6 hours to let us use his car in the shoot. I had my
fake parking light set up, an orange gelled light standing a good 18 feet or
so, and the kid was sitting on the base, as instructed by me. I made it
very clear that he has to stay on that damn lamp. It was in the wee hours
after clubs closed, most of the straggler were gone. I would say it was damn near 4am, and one last car was in the lot, an SUV in the far corner
of the parking lot, the driver and some passengers were in it, idling, getting ready to leave. A kid from the
absolute opposite corner of the parking lot, more like the sidewalk along
Lincoln, began yelling at his "buddies" about some nonsense. He was
hyped up, drunk, stoned, high on molly, your guess is as good as mine, but he
was definitely in "the zone." He decides to sprint from where
he was on a direct "flag pattern" to the SUV, he'll be damned if
there's a whole fucking film crew in his way...Surprisingly, he deftly skips
and jumps through our gear bags lying outside of us, like a fucking mountain
goat, and chooses to run past Cody's roommate close enough to give him a good whiff
of whatever beer soaked, 3 hour dancing with perfumed skanky hoe smell this guy
surely had on him...It was at this point that he keeled over in a dead stop,
folding from head to knee like a switch blade. You see, in this parking
lot between the spaces that meet are concrete yellow posts with about an inch
thick steel wire sitting right about 3 feet high, and the kid was completely
oblivious to it. His momentum was reversed and he fell over backwards,
right into the 18 foot high light pole that Cody's roommate was sitting on, and
like a giant domino it was heading straight for the hood of his car...
Fortunately, this enslaved car owner corrected himself as he slid off the lamp and grabbed the falling stand before it crashed into his car. It would have caused hundreds, if not a
few thousand, dollars in damage.
So...what happened to our raving runner? He slowly gets up,
clearly in pain, then notices us all staring at his dumb ass, and what do you
suppose the words are that come out of his mouth?
"Sorry guys..."
HAHAHAHA, no, the little shit did not say that...it was more
like...
"Who put that there?"
And the moral of the story is, give us some fucking money so I can
buy some fucking sandbags and build up a goddamn virtual fort around any shoot
we're crazy enough to do on a Friday night in a parking lot by a club...
Sincerely
Jeremiah Zentz, ex gaffer and current production manager (and you wonder
why I'm line producer? This story is why!)
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