The Shoot

Don’t ask…

(Note: this is the follow-up to “Monkey Business.”)

                                               

Chimps, kids, cats, and a donkey — this pilot had them all. As discussed previously, working with chimps was not a pleasant experience, but the kids and donkey were great. Seriously. Like most of the very young actors I’ve worked with on shows over the past few years, our youthful cast was polite, well-mannered, respectful, and very hard working. If their thespian skills remain in the formative stages, hey, they’re just kids performing a script written in the broadest of comedic brush strokes, designed to appeal to even younger children. 

All in all, they did a terrific job.

It will come as no surprise to anyone familiar with cats that they were more problematic. I’ve had several occasions to work with cats on set — including a memorable shoot with an adult black panther that broke loose from the trainer at one point, then banged into my thigh as it ran past — during which the underlying reality of the expression “like herding cats” became our reality. Still, filming cats isn’t usually a big problem if the shooting schedule is drawn up by someone familiar with the feline species. On a cat food commercial many years ago, the production company wisely scheduled two full days to get a single shot because it involved twenty-one cats working on the same set at the same time. For once, the Gods of Hollywood were with us, and we managed to get the shot twelve hours deep into the first day, but I’ve done other shoot involving just one or two cats that piled up serious overtime.

In the words of the late, great Chief Dan George, “Sometimes the magic works, and sometimes it doesn’t.”

The magic worked pretty well this time, as the wranglers coaxed all four cats to perform on camera in a very un-catlike manner, and although it took a while, we finished more or less on schedule. The cats didn’t really slow us down.

Still, the donkey was the star performer of this pilot, remaining calm and astonishingly patient while enduring all manner of ludicrous, noisy on-camera indignities in front of a green screen. He was a real trooper, and all in the name of art, comedy, and commerce … or more likely, alfalfa. We’ll never know. Playing his cards close to the vest, this thespian returned to his trailer without discussing internal motivations.

The rest of the three-day shoot went fine, including the audience show. The big dance number came off without a hitch, with all the goddamned moving lights working exactly as programmed.* A lot of hard labor went into putting this pilot together, and it paid off over these three days. Personally, I was heartened to see the Techno-Jib flying a camera out above the audience for several shots, which meant my long, painful hours of suffering to re-rig the lights on the front pipe were not — as is so often the case — in vain. 

You might assume I’ll be irked if those sweeping audience shots from the magical Techno-Jib don’t make it to the final cut of the pilot, but that won’t bother me at all. For one thing, I’ll never see this pilot — but beyond that, I’d only be pissed if the director didn’t take full advantage of all the extra head-room I worked so hard to provide so he could get those shots in the first place. Giving the director whatever he needs is our job … whether or not he actually needs it.  

Other than keeping an eye out for lamp burnouts — those bulbs tend to blow at the worst possible time — there wasn’t much for us on the set lighting crew to do during the audience show. We only had to run for a lamp once, when the director made an impulsive last-second decision to place an actor in the only dark hole on the entire set, but that was an easy fix. 

For all practical purposes, our work was done before the first camera rolled — all we had to do was remain awake and reasonably vigilant until the director, camera crews, and the usual army of writer-producers had plowed all the way through the entire schedule. When that blessed moment finally arrived, it was time to go home and rest up over the weekend before the last, very physical, phase of this pilot: wrap.

*  I’m not sure which I dislike more, working with chimps or moving lights. The former are unpredictable and dangerous, and while the latter work very well once rigged, powered, and programmed, hanging them on the pipe grid is a serious pain in the ass. They’re heavy, bulky, and awkward, with several pinch-points waiting to crush an unwary finger.