Sitting On Set

“Shoot a few scenes out of focus. I want to win the foreign film award.”

~Billy Wilder

I’m sitting in a little trailer that a horse would refuse to enter. This is probably because it lacks at least two Important Horsey-Related Items: 1) a feedbag, and 2) windows. Although several days of my life have been spent in this spot I notice for the first time today (I’ll be a detective in my next life) a sticker that says “DragRaceResults.Com,” which is connected to a frame that looks suspiciously like some sort of drawbridge contraption. Hmmmm. I bet this isn’t a horse trailer at all.

It also lacks in the horse trailer department in that it’s got linoleum of the black and white checkerboard sort. And it’s been greatly modified so a horse would nix an invite on the grounds that it couldn’t fit in there if it wanted, what with all of the junk and all. By “junk” I mean thousands and thousands of dollars worth of video recording equipment, computers, a fancy tool roller thingy the size of a deep freeze, and boxes of HD tapes which cost--and this is just an estimate--about a trillion dollars each. This precious little tin box is called “Video Village,” The video part, I see. The Village? Not so much.

My official title while in “Video Village” is “Script Supervisor,” which means I sit in said metal container and punch two little buttons and then write about it. The two little buttons happened to be connected to a playback deck and the precious Sony HD recording deck making the place I presently occupy as the "nerve center" of the production and if I screw up by not hitting a button, or if I hit too many buttons, or hit buttons in the wrong order, thousands of dollars are lost in an instant. We often call this the “nervous center” for that very reason.

The one thing about the “nervous center” is that you have no sound from the outside world, nothing at all. This can be a bit of a drag, as it were, because although you are able view the world via the camera, it doesn't offer much in the way of informative visual communication and you don’t have any idea as to what they are saying. On top of that, this is film making so “they” (the crew) spend much of the day getting ready for a shot, which means that the “script supervisor” (a.k.a. “me”) spend hours sitting in this little tin crate, in utter silence, until someone loudly shouts over the walkie talkie, “Roll tape!” causing the “script supervisor” (“me”) to jump, give a little squeal, and try to press all of the right buttons in the right order. In turn the “script supervisor” (in this case me) yells, “Speed” back into the little walkie talkie. The screens come alive with pantomimed action. Then, “Cut!” comes screeching through my little battery powered communications device causing more jumping on the part of the “script supervisor” and more hitting of the correct (hopefully) buttons in the correct (hopefully) order and then shouting, “Tape has stopped!” into the little crackly black box.

All of this is reasonably satisfying, so far as an experience like sitting around waiting for something to happen goes—you at least have evidence on tape—except that you never know when they will yell one of those three critical words so you sit, in the stillness surrounded by the buzzing of costly teeny electronic hearts, for as long as it takes, even if you have to go to the bathroom really badly. The bathrooms are port-a-potties, but when your bladder is full they beat the Hilton hands down.

This quiet pattern is only occasionally broken when the 1^st A.D. (Assistant Director) asks for something to be “played back.” Now I have to hit three or four buttons (maybe 5) in a very specific manner in order to find the exact clip they want to see. This is extremely unsettling because everyone is waiting on ME to find what they want to look at on a machine that runs through tape faster than the government spends money.

Oh! And if it takes too long to set up a shot the decks will get tired and shut themselves off. There’s no sound to alert you to this little fact so when you are finally ready to record, Dern! One (or both) recorders are not cued so you frantically try to remember how to make the machines record something without going into the "cued " (otherwise known as the “ready to record only not quite yet”) position adding precious seconds to the already strained schedule.

That’s really what film making is: Hurry up! Don’t Screw Up! OK… Now wait. But don’t go anywhere because you never know when it’ll be time again to Hurry up! Don’t Screw Up! OK…

In case you’re wondering, being in here far surpasses, in my mind, being Out There. Out There is on set with all of the cameras and the extras and the sun. In here is a tired, little air-conditioner attached to the roof. This is to keep the ridiculously expensive equipment cool and the tapes from melting, and I’m grateful to be a second-hand recipient of the almost cool breeze. It’s undoubtably 150 degrees Kelvin (or something close), sunny, and windless outside of these walls. Two days ago a bag of gummies instantly become a oozing glob, Twizzlers turn to lava. It’s amazing to me that people are volunteering to put on burlap robes and try to act in this heat. I can’t even stand.

Don’t Get Me Started About the Bugs at: marcyjoybryan@gmail.com