(Note: This is from ten years ago, when I considered myself “old.” Ah, what a young fool I was!)
The view from a condor bucket eighty feet straight up.
(Photo courtesy of Kevin Brown, IA 728)
I had a chance to go up in an articulating lift for my current show, an experience that reminded me of many a past night spent up in the bucket. There's something, well, elevating — in every sense of the word — about rising high into the night sky. This time was fun, mostly because I was in a brand new lift with solid hydraulics and didn’t have to go much over thirty feet … but now that I’m on the cusp of retirement, taking the bucket higher than forty feet is no longer my idea of fun.
What civilians call a “cherry picker” is known as a “boom lift” in the construction industry, and although there are three distinct types, Hollywood uses the generic term “condor” for any lift with a bucket on the end of an arm. As The Bard long ago declared, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," so who am I to argue?1
The fear of falling remains one of our primal terrors, and for good reason. Early humans may have lived in the trees before descending to walk on land, but trees are the natural realm of birds, not people. Even a relatively short fall could injure our early hominid ancestors to the point where survival would be a challenge, which may be one reason we’re still hard-wired with a healthy fear of falling.
Working on set as a juicer or grip requires dealing with that fear on a regular basis. Much of our work on soundstages is done atop ten, twelve, and fourteen-step ladders, and in man-lifts that go up twenty feet — where circumstances occasionally dictate that we climb on the very top handrails of the lift to get our work done in a blatant but unavoidable violation of the official industry safety rules.2 When a production moves off stage to film on location at night, some of the set will often need to be lit by big lamps in condors that go much higher — anywhere from 60 to 180 feet.
Some juicers relish condor duty. Once the bucket has been rigged with a BFL or two, then fully pimped-out with a chair, snacks, bottles of water (as the water is consumed, the empty bottles then serve as a portable honey wagon,)3 furniture pads and/or a sheet of visqueen to cut the wind, they’re set for the night. All that juicer has to do is take the bucket up high, turn on and adjust the lights, then relax while awaiting further instructions over the walkie-talkie. With a smartphone, iPad, or good book to ease the boredom, that juicer won’t break a sweat until wrap, and even then will barely get his gloves dirty. That's one reason condor duty is considered such a sweet deal: you get to sit in relative comfort watching the ground crew scurry around doing all the hard work.
Still, there’s a sticking point: condor duty isn’t so great if you have a problem with heights, and it’s not just the altitude that can make riding the bucket a white-knuckle experience. The real demon is the lack of stability, because every time you swing the arm or turn the bucket, your world up there moves around a lot — and the higher you go, the more radical the lurching, which triggers our ancient reptilian-brain fear of falling. Sudden gusts of wind are another factor — such gusts can knock down high-flying condors — and falling isn’t the only danger: a condor operator has to make damned sure that his arm and bucket remain a safe distance from any high-voltage power lines at all times.4
I've rarely had a problem working up high on stage, mostly because the catwalks and perms don't move — they're as stable as solid ground5 — but up in bucket swaying around like a small boat in heavy seas, 60 feet suddenly feels like 100 ... and I really don't like that feeling anymore.
While working my first real movie as a PA drafted to help the grip and electric crews, I went up almost every night in a scissor lift or a big forklift rigged with a steel basket and two 10K lamps. This freed up one of the real juicers to work on set while giving me a bird's eye view of what was happening down below. I loved it, and later enjoyed going up much higher in condors once I’d become a real juicer. Being young back then, I had a naive faith in technology along with a misplaced sense of immortality. Granted, there was a certain pucker factor when going up full-stick, but the perceived danger was part of the appeal. Now decades older, I have a more acute sense of mortality and much less faith in oft-used, beat-up rental equipment, so I don't do serious condor work these days. I'm happy to go up thirty or forty feet, but things get a bit squirrely much beyond that. Plus, you can't move much in a condor — lamp operators up there have to sit still in the bucket for long periods of time, which stiffens my aging back in a big way. Then at wrap, down comes the condor and a frenzy of work during which I’ll invariably tweak something in that cold, stiff back — and once that happens, I'm pretty much limited to wrangling stingers.
All in all, it’s better for everybody that I stay on the ground and work up a sweat while the young juicers fly up into the night sky. I've done my time in condors — it's their turn now. Besides, there's no way in hell I'm going up full-stick in a 120-footer, much less that 180-foot monster.
I'll leave that to the fearless youngbloods, thankyouverymuch.
“Romeo and Juliet,” by William Shakespeare.
Scissor lifts go even higher — 35 footers are often used to rig and wrap stages. One of my favorite juicers fell 30 feet from one of those big lifts during a stage wrap, and although she survived, the accident ended her film industry career.
It’s a bit trickier for female juicers, of course.
The danger isn’t limited to the lamp operator up in the bucket. A film student was electrocuted back in 2009 while adjusting a lamp on set when a condor rigged with a BFL contacted a high-tension line outside. A massive jolt of electricity ripped through the cables into the power distribution system and killed him.
Except when they aren't.
Yikes! That sounds WAY worse than sitting in the open door of a helicopter.
My condor solution was a Tupperware pitcher and a desperate hope that no one was looking up.