3/17/09

Beannachtam na Feile Padraig

I wish I were in Savannah now....or Dublin...or Galway.

I typically live my life like St. Patrick's Day regularly...so Irish Folk Music, Corned Beef & Cabbage, and Shenanigans are common place. Today it's just nice to have others join me.
I encourage everyone to take a moment to consider that Padraig brought Christianity to Ireland, for which he was canonized by the Catholic church and now annually celebrated. No other holidays for any other Saints are celebrated as emphatically nor as widely, and there are plenty of other Saints who brought Christianity to other places in the world. Ireland is special, especially to Americans, most of whom aren't even Catholic (I'm not). That says something.

The fellow in the video below is an Irish Singer/Songwriter who lives in Savannah and who can be often be caught at Kevin Barry's pub playing a lively yet. Here is one of my favorites:



This was the featured video on Youtube today, and its pretty well near the mark:


Éirinn go Brách.

3/16/09

LA Comes to Town


You may have noticed that I didn't post anything last week. I would like to blame that on the Obama administration, but they've already got enough problems. The truth is, I've been working a bit more than usual. Last week it was Airtran commercials, but before that it was "Clean House."

Let me start by saying that clean is a relative concept.
If you are not familiar with the Style Networks hit (maybe?) show "Clean House", it is a simple reality format program that has the black woman from Reno 911 come into people's cluttered homes and "clean" them with her stereoty--er, I mean, friends. Friend of the blog and oft-mentioned collaborator, Andrew, got on board as one of the sound guys and being the gregarious sort of fellow he is talked somebody into having come work for a day or two as a PA (which normally stands for "production assistant" but in my case stands for "production awesome.") In the production world, be it film, TV, or commercials, the PA is the bottom of the ladder. Essentially a PA is a grunt that can fill any sort of position and be given varying amounts of responsibility but always the least amount of money possible. Depending on the shoot, PA-ing can be rough business. On "Clean House" things weren't so bad. The LA crew were very laid back and easy to work with and I was treated on equal footing with the rest of the group of "locals."


The shoot was at a house in Smyrna owned by an Indian man and his obnoxious white Yankee wife. They also had three triplet boys. The actual house was cluttered from bottom to top with junk that had been horded away for years. The production, according to the format of the show, cleans three rooms as opposed to the whole house. Like I said, clean is relative. I arrived "on set" to find three big production trailers outside the home and a "craft T" (craft services tent) in the backyard. I will pause here to mention that one set, forget about a diet. Craft services is any healthy person's enemy with endless supplies of food, candy, and drinks and the allure is just too strong to resist during those long, often boring hours as a PA.

Anyway, my shift was from 4:30 Friday afternoon to 5:30 the next morning; an all night drag. I didn't end up going home until 8:30 (overtime baby!) so suffice to say my Saturday was shot. My basic task, along with the other PAs (production assistants, not production awesomes. I was the only one of those) was to load up all the useless "stuff" (we weren't allowed to call it "crap") into plastic bins for transportation to another location where we would then set up a yard sale. Even though we only "cleaned" three rooms, this took a very long time. In the corner of each room was set up a video camera on time lapse and we each wore blue shirts to feign anonymity. However, I am fairly certain that I will show up quite a few times if that footage makes it into the show. The end result was to go from cluttered rooms to empty rooms.

So who cleans the houses on "Clean House"? That's right, in this case it was me (and some other grunts.) By the end of the shift we were all exhausted and deliriously joking over the headsets of our walkies about everything from the state of the home to the plight of polar bears. Despite the backbreaking labor, it was a fun gig. As I mentioned, the LA people were cool and the set was my first real TV show experience. I met some of the talent, though not Neicy Nash, the main "star", although I didn't realize it at the time. I thought they were all just part of the crew until I got home and actually watched an episode. Star struck I was not.

After a "courtesy breakfast" I hopped in my car to leave. Down the road as I was fighting to stay I awake I was stopped at a traffic light for ten minutes while a parade of pickup trucks filled with little league baseballs teams drove past. Yes, you read that right. Apparently little league is a huge deal in Smyrna. I waited out the baseball related insanity and finally got a chance to be on my way, only to be blocked by the same parade a few streets down. How I made it home alive, I may never know.

I will be sure to inform you all of the date and time when the episode I worked on airs.

3/6/09

Friday Batman

There is just so much wrong about this clip, so much...

Workin' Man

The posting has been light (i.e. non-existent) since last week, and I am truly sorry about forgetting Friday Batman. Good people, the wait has been worth it because there are many posts a-comin' of substance and interest. The Free-Lancer has been busy, with a new PSA in the can, a fashion show wrapped up, and now a forth coming stint on Style network's "Clean House." Each episode deserves a post, and each will be elaborated on in good time. There is also a story I plan to write about the panther we were
dealing with at my family's farm down in Florida last weekend.

First, the Public Service Announcement. It is finished, and I would show it to you here, but we are actually in the process of "renegotiating our contract" to put it lightly. You can check the rough cut out on my Facebook.
Anyway, Andrew Tucciarone of Whistle Peak productions managed to secure us a gig producing an anti-sex trafficking PSA for a non-Profit here in Atlanta that is spearheading a campaign for social justice regarding the issue. I wrote the script for the piece a few weeks ago, and we went out and did some test shoots to get the "look" (which I reported on HERE.) After a short week of whirlwind casting, we dug up three very talented, very beautiful young actresses and one equally talented young actor/choreographer who, after filming with us, left to be one of the chief dancers for some R&B singer (I forget who.) With our four principles in place we scheduled the shoot for last Thursday and started things promptly at 5:30. By six our first girl hadn't shown. By seven we still had no word from her and it seemed pretty clear that she had bailed. She was Vietnamese, apparently spoke very poor English, and either figured she'd rather sleep in or she doesn't own a clock. In any event, we were all reminded why we went to war with Vietnam--because they're never on time.

We had a friend lone us his Red One camera to shoot on, every body set and ready, and no one to shoot. A few frantic phone calls later we managed to get a replacement actress for later in the day and bump up the call time for our actor, Victor. The rest of the day's shooting when pretty smoothly, though we did run into a few camera related snaffus (the Red can be tricky being cutting edge tech and all.) Andrew ran away from the shoot a few times to change diapers, and I had a propensity for making our talent laugh which--though entertaining--proved counter productive when one of actresses turned out to be method. She was great though, bringing the tears and everything.


Our last scene we shot was on the corner of Peachtree and North Ave in the heart of midtown at night. Needless to say we were conspicuous with two 575 HMI's blasting the sidewalk and a small crew gathered around an eighteen year old girl who literally looked like we picked her up off the streets (thanks to some extensive (read time consuming) hair and costuming by anohter friend helping us out.)
We were accosted by no less than eighteen different crack heads and bums, to include one nut case who jumped in front of the lights and started singing at the top of his lungs for about five minutes before running off into the night, thankfully never to be seen again.
The phrase that became the motto of the shoot was provided by our first actress, Sarah, who innocently remarked regarding the camera,
"You can't learn about something unless you touch it."

Perils of Guerrilla Filmmaking or The Art of Film and Flee or Shoot and Scoot

We didn't have permits, all of our locations were exteriors in the city, so we were confined to sidewalks and public spaces. Inevitably there were problems.
On our first location, where we were shooting against the wall of what looked to be an abandoned building next to a chop shop in the ghetto of West Atlanta, the ignorant white owner of the place came out to bother us. After watching us for a few minutes we asked him what was up and he repeated, at least eight times,
"I don't appreciate ya'll just showing up like this."

We apologized, but he kept on making sure we knew that,
"Pay ten thousand dollars a year on property taxes for that building."
He never asked us to leave, and Andrew even offered. He just wanted to bother us and feel big I suppose. After a while he just left us, we finished the shoot and hit the road.
Our next issue arose when driving through downtown Brandon (our DP) tried to pass a black woman bike cop. She immediately pitched a hissy fit yelling,
"Excuse me! What are you doing?"
When Brandon tried to answer she jabbed a finger in his face and yelled,
"Uhuh. I'm talking!"
After about five more minutes of yelling at us "stupid white boys", she peddled off and we sped away shaking our heads.
At our third location, which was on a bridge over looking a rail yard, the CSX police (yeah, they have those) approached us and gave Andrew an "official trespassing warning" but then let us continue to shoot. The didn't care that we were filming, but because Andrew and Brandon look like terrorists they had to be sure and "offically" warn us to cover their butts.