Shadowboxer

[David Mullen ASC]

After shooting some B-roll type material for a two days, we finally started shooting the movie for real. The week before, all I did was some shots of buildings, cars driving by, and one of our actors (Cuba Gooding Jr.) getting off and onto trains out in the suburb stations. (We didn't control the trains so it was a bit tricky timing ourselves to when the trains would arrive.) Shot all of that on Fuji F-64D. Some with wide-angle lenses (35mm and 40mm Primo anamorphic) and some with a 400mm anamorphic (Canon). Trains look great in 2.35!

 

WEEK ONE

 

Shot our flashback scenes on Monday. First proposed doing a skip-bleach process but the director said he wanted them to be color-saturated, so I suggested cross-processed reversal instead. He also wanted that fuzzy-focus look of the tilt-focus lenses used in "In the Cut" (in fact, our film has three main influences: "The Professional", "In the Cut", and "In the Mood for Love", which are strange to combine!)

 

Used Kodak Ektachrome 100D (5285) cross-processed. 90mm slant-focus anamorphic lens (T/4.5). Rated the stock at 80 ASA and used a 1/2 ProMist on everything. It was a nightmare lighting a small night interior for 80 ASA at T/4.5, using 1K's and 2K's with half-blue correction (for a golden look.) Roasted the child actor; I think the room was well over 100 degrees all day. And we had an 18-hour first day, which sucked. I think I made everything as difficult for myself as possible on Day One...

 

Saw those dailies. Footage came out extremely high con, often highlights somewhat hot but shadows going black. Looks like a color litho. My day exterior scene is hot and glowing, but the night interior has walls that go jet black in some shots. Only was a problem in the wide shot though where I simply could not pump any more light into that room. Overall, though, I thought it was interesting-looking stuff.

 

Day Two, Tuesday, shot daytime scenes in woods with Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr.. Too shaded for Fuji F-64D so I used the F-250D, rated at 200 ASA. Had chopped feathers and flower petals blowing through woods using a big fan (ala "Legend"). Again, used T/4.5 90mm anamorphic slant-focus (scene intercuts with the slant-focus flashbacks) for most of day until it got too dark for that lens. 1/4 ProMist and a 1/4 Coral. Switched to Fuji F-500T with a 1/8 ProMist when it got darker, plus had to stop using the slant-focus lens. Last few woods scenes got turned script-wise into night exteriors because we lost the daylight.

 

Saw those dailies and it looked neat, rather like "Legend" except no smoke... But had some faint double-reflections from the hot edge lighting and stacked filters.

 

Wednesday, filmed day scenes in boxing gym. Fuji F-250D, no filters. Smoked set. Had three 18K's on parallels outside gym windows, plus a 4K Xenon. Also shot scene in basement locker room on Fuji F-500T in uncorrected cool white fluorescents, on Steadicam with 40mm C-Series anamorphic lens. Only light I added was a Dedolight over a sink -- the room's fluorescents were enough to get a T/4.

 

Ended that day on night exterior street by a warehouse. Lit with a Dino on a 100? condor crane, with 1/2 CTB added. First time using a Dino, but it wasn't quite bright enough, plus had to use 180mm lens on B-camera, so had to shoot at f/2.8. Switched to Kodak Vision-2 500T (5218) pushed one-stop, rated at 800 ASA. Still was underexposed but I hope the bright car headlights in the frame will make-up for the underexposed street background.

 

Thursday was a night exterior shoot at Pat?s Steaks in South Philly using F-500T. Lit parking lot with HMI?s with Full Green added for a cyan mercury vapor streetlamp look. Thought it looked very natural having these blue-green pools of light on the road instead of the big blue backlight. Pat's and Geno's (across the street) are very well-lit so I actually had to light the surrounding parking lot to a T/4 just to keep the stores from looking too hot in comparison.

 

Friday at the Lowes Hotel in downtown; began in a small steam room, using half-corrected tungsten lamps on F-250D stock for hot overhead top-light. 1/8 Fog filter added to enhance steam effect. Then went up to a 30th floor hotel room with a night view; used Kodak 5218 pushed one-stop for everything and shot around a f/2.0 for most of the night so that city lights would expose more brightly. That was a bit of a nightmare to shoot -- small room yet had to have all these big black flags to hide crew and lights from the glass windows, which were like mirrors. Hard to work at such a low footcandle level (hard to match ambient fill levels) and there was NO depth-of-field. Not sure I liked the look but had no choice since I wanted the city lights to read in background. Hour 14, the blinding sun came up when I was shooting away from the windows; threw some duvetine over the glass but the rising sun came right through it and the red curtains in the room and created some odd color in the shadows for the last two shots, but we were working fast to get wrapped.

[Mitch Gross]

Fascinating. Keep the diary coming!

 

Did you get a chance to test this cross-processed flashback look before going into production?

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

David this is great!! Love to hear all the tech things!

The slant focus.... Have yet to hear of... elaborate when u have time.

Cheers/fred.

[David Mullen ASC]

I tested a simple lighting set-up with the cross-process technique using 5285, plus I tested 5217 and 5218. Then I was asked to reconsider my stocks because there was a budget cut, so I switched to Fuji. But I couldn't switch to Fuji Velvia because I needed the extra speed on 5285, and I have a few rolls of 5218 for when I need to push-process.

 

A slant or tilt-focus lens is a simplified version of a bellows-lens, allowing you to tilt the lens relative to the film plane, throwing focus along a diagonal instead of flat to the film plane. In my case, I was using it to throw more of the image out of focus instead of into focus. Now that I've shot all of my scenes with this technique, I'll probably keep the lens on hand for when I want to do a deep-focus effect (I noticed that "Heat" used this lens for some raking two-shots in car scenes to hold both in focus.)

 

One thing I noticed about tilting the lens to the maximum degree is that the shallow focus effect is a lot more visible in wide shots than in close-ups.

 

Normally there are three focal lengths made for spherical tilt focus lenses but there is only one anamorphic one at Panavision. That was a little hard to work with in a small room -- I had two shots where I had to use a normal wide-angle lens because 90mm was too tight.

[Rachel Oliver]

Wow! This is great reading, thanks David;

Most importantly though, did you get a steak sandwich from Pat's or Geno's??? ;) I like Geno's coz they use the white cheese.....

It's interesting to read about the mixture of stock being used Fuji\Kodak I always wonder how well they intercut?

Olly

[David Mullen ASC]

Actually I prefer Jim's Steaks on South Street... Anyway, I think they all offer either bright-orange Cheese Wiz, white American, or Provolone (and I prefer Provolone.) I haven't been to Geno's yet. There's only so many cheesesteaks I will eat per week! Found a good Mexican cafe in the Italian market area called La Lupe, real carne asada tacos like in L.A.

 

The cross-processed reversal is obviously so radically different-looking that it doesn't matter whether it is Kodak or Fuji.

 

Otherwise, the only Kodak I'm using is 5218 pushed one-stop, which looks about as grainy as Fuji F-500T rated normally (which says a lot for 5218.) I only have about 10,000' of 5218 and I just used half of that for a scene on Friday, so there's only one other scene I might use it for. So ultimately only about 10% of my stock order is Kodak.

 

It's funny but when I tested 5217, 5218, and 5218 pushed one-stop, we projected the test and they all matched so closely that the director said "err, what exactly am I supposed to be looking at? They all look the same." And they WERE really close, even to my eyes.

 

But I'm happy to be shooting Fuji too, especially F-64D and F-250D. With anamorphic and F-64D, the day exteriors look great. And F-64D has a more natural contrast than 5245 (another stock I love.)

 

I'm just hoping I did OK with that nighttime hotel room scene. It's always a nightmare when you're rushed and shooting at really low light levels with no depth of field. It's almost like the light levels are actually lower than looks natural to your eye!

 

Next two days will also be in a high-rise hotel room with picture windows, but both day and night scenes. So for the day scenes, the problem will be balancing for the view and for the night scenes, also balancing for the view. And in both cases, hiding reflections. And the producers wonder why it takes so long...

 

I'm still at this level where I'm working a little faster than is comfortable, so you make on the fly judgement calls not to fix some problem and hope it's acceptable in dailies later. But I guess working on the edge of knowing whether something comes out right means that I'm not taking it easy...

 

I don't know if anyone else has worked with the 40mm C-Series, but I've discovered that they fall off about a half stop in the corners. Looks like it is vignetting in the viewfinder but a test showed it wasn't. Anyway, I hopefully won't be using it too much.

 

The crew has started calling the 50mm Primo anamorphic "the Hubble"... It's been a bit of a pain with these Primos since they are huge and require switching out rods on every lens change.

 

I'm exhausted -- we seem to be starting each week in days, ending the week doing all-nighters, and then switching back to all days at the head of the next week. Impossible really to reset your body's clock.

[Mitch Gross]

Yes, Jim's Steaks!! Forget all the cinematography debates, the only REAL cheesesteak is make with Cheez Wiz!

[harryprayiv]

Thanks for the detailed diary of the shoot so far. This stuff is really helpful.

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

David. So far I´ve only shot with Hawk anamorphs but am very eager to go for Panavision C-series in a near future. Have you had the opportunity to battle these agains each other?

 

Also. How do you handle days that are overcast in the highrise to make a "sun"?

You are quite high up right?

 

BTW: Has any one tried the carne asada burritos at Las Golandrinas in LA??

(Laguna niguel were I lived, and Newport beach) So good you wanna cry :D

 

Cheers.

[David Mullen ASC]

No, I haven't eaten much that far south on the coast...

 

Truth is, I rarely get to test various options and then pick the best one. I make a guess as to what I want, or what I can get, and test THAT. So it's not like I've ever tested Fuji against Kodak directly, or one lens series against another, etc.

 

Just comparing the C-Series 40mm against the Primo anamorphic 40mm, besides the obvious difference in size and weight, the C-Series has a little more barrel distortion, more flare, and falls off in brightness in the corners. The Primos look "cleaner" and clearer, less like anamorphic lenses. However, I did shoot a whole short film using the C-Series and thought it looked good -- however, it was all low-con Fuji F-400T skip-bleach processed. The C-Series are older lenses and you may find them to be rather all over the place (shape, size, characteristics, etc.) compared to the Hawk series. Also, the 150mm and 180mm C-Series are not as good as the 135mm and 180mm E-Series; they aren't very fast, they don't focus close enough, etc. You may want to use E-Series for those focal lengths.

[Fredrik Backar FSF]

tnx :D

[Neal Fredericks]

david:

 

can't wait to see your Fuji photography for this film...

 

i just wrapped one myself all on Fuji (250D and 500T)...my 7th with all Fuji stock...

 

neal

[David Mullen ASC]

WEEK TWO

 

Only a four-day week due to Memorial Day. Shot for two days on the 32nd floor of the PSFS / Lowes Hotel building in downtown Philly. The trick was dealing with the picture windows. When shooting with the windows to the side, I mostly used available light augmented by an Image 80 Kinoflo as a key light coming from the window direction. Some shots I rigged a 575watt HMI to a beam that ran parallel to the windows as a hard rim light as if coming from outside. On shots where I had to balance with the view, I put ND.60 acrylic hard gels on the windows and lit from the side (to keep out reflections) with a 4K HMI through a 6x6 Light Grid frame. At 200 ASA (Fuji F-250D) it was around an f/22 outside ? so it was an f/11 with the gel and I lit the room to an f/5.6 and shot at an f/8. Had problems though with varied light levels and then the real sun breaking through in the late afternoon, giving me a warm look I didn?t really want.

 

Did one two-shot of Helen Mirren and Cuba Gooding Jr. sitting on a couch, she leaning forward and him reclining back, with the 90mm slant focus lens, trying to hold them both in focus. Looked a little odd but interesting. I didn?t relish the idea of ping-ponging the focus, although some of my Primo anamorphics hardly breathe during a rack (like the 50mm). Have been shooting clean except for either a 1/2 or 1 Soft-FX on Helen?s close-ups.

 

Later in the week I shot a raking 2-shot of two guys sitting in a car with the 90mm slant focus, and since I was able to shoot it at f/11 even on Fuji F-64D, the deep focus effect was more believable.

 

Have been using the Kinoflo Image 80 a lot as my key light, with Lightboard over it.

 

Moved to a track home on Friday for some night interiors, all Fuji F-500T. Small interiors, usually lit to T/2.8-T/4 split, sometimes T/4. For these scenes, am using a 1/8 ProMist on everything.

 

Saw some dailies; liked this twilight shot I did in the hotel room with a single tungsten (Kino) keylight from the side, no fill, against these blue windows. Black shadows. Had this one frosted art deco glass panel on a wall that I put a super-blue glow behind as well. Blue light and black shadows ? reminded me of the Japanese occupation sequence in ?Last Emperor.?

 

Noticed some milkiness in a few daylight shots indoors (F-250D) ? blue-ish blacks as if the film had aged. Neg report was fine though. Could be a transfer problem. I?ve been shooting the grey scale with a 1/4 Coral and then pulling it for a blue tone to the dailies and perhaps the way the colorist cranked around the settings just corrupted the blacks. Have to check further.

 

The dailies from the night interior in the high-rise that I shot on 5218 pushed one-stop came out really nice; deep blacks, strong reds (we had red accents everywhere ? red lampshades, red curtains, etc.). Low depth-of-field but the focus seemed right on for most shots, including the tight ones. Grain was there but very subtle. It?s almost a cliché but the blue-lit Fuji F-500T shots are a nice contrast to the red-lit Kodak 5218 shots? I?d say that the Kodak seems sharper on the DVD dailies but considering I?m shooting with Primo anamorphics I?m a little concerned that I?m not diffusing some of the close-ups of the women enough even on the softer Fuji stocks. I?d say though that the Fuji is more flattering to the women.

 

Did a day outdoors at the Waterworks park near the art museum, next to the river. By the end of the day, I had some bright light glaring off of the river so decided to stage one scene against that background even though it was crazy with anamorphic lens flares ? just thought it would add a disturbing quality to the master shot.

[Wendell_Greene]

David,

 

I'm really appreciate your taking the time to post some great information about your work and I really enjoy reading your journal. Would you be so kind as to give a brief synopsis about the film and the characters that Cuba Gooding and Helen Mirren portray? Thanks in advance.

[Mitch Gross]

Very interesting as always. How much light do you find you're able to get punching an Image 80 through Lightboard? And out of curiosity, which lab/transfer house are you using? I presume a New York facility.

[David Mullen ASC]

With all 8 tubes on plus Lightboard, I usually get a f/4 at about five feet away at 400 ASA. If the Image 80 has to be more like seven feet or more away, I switch to 250 diffusion over the light, or just pull the diffusion.

 

The story is odd... it's about a couple of hit people (professional killers). She is older and is dying of cancer; he's much younger. She was his father's lover then she killed the father for abusing him as a boy and then raised him as his step-mother. Now they are lovers. They get a job to kill a mobster's wife who turns out to be pregnant. They end up on the road, in hiding, protecting the wife and her newborn.

 

It sort of has three acts: in the city, in a secluded house in the woods, and finally in a suburban tract home. The city scenes will be blue-ish, hard-edged, stylized like a film noir, etc. The country scenes will be green and lush; the suburban scenes soft and warm. More or less.

 

The schedule is very tight -- too tight -- with a lot of scenes and locations, so getting enough coverage is hard. But at least with 2.35, I feel that the wider shots hold up interest and contain a lot of the action, so fewer cuts seem necessary.

[David Mullen ASC]

WEEK THREE

 

Shot scenes in a suburban tract home for the first half of the week and then scenes in a ranch house in the woods for the last part of the week. Have always had problems making scenes in a modern bright tract house look interesting visually. Shot these scenes with a 1/8 ProMist, which I haven?t used much elsewhere in the movie.

 

Shot one scene of the family eating breakfast by keeping them out of focus and using foreground elements like broken egg shells and a mixing bowl. Used the 90mm slant focus lens to keep everything out of focus except for the egg shells, just to make something interesting out of the shot.

 

Printed some footage and had it projected at a mall cinema; was a little disappointed ? the print is more pastel, soft, and grainy than it should be for these stocks. The DVD transfers, on the other hand, have mostly been razor-sharp and fine-grained (of course, a video transfer can be deceptive.) One problem may have been the theater, which has a small seating area in front of a huge screen, so the image is being greatly magnified over a short distance. The editor saw the same footage at the lab in NYC and said it looked great.

 

Have been shooting more material at wide apertures than intended. We essentially lost nearly a day because of a bad wig that they gave the actress ? we lost two hours on set waiting because they couldn?t make it acceptable for the director?s tastes, and then we ended up RE-shooting all those scenes two days later after we screened the dailies. Expensive mistake on someone?s part but the net result is that our tight days got ridiculously tight trying to make up the lost time. So we ended up shooting a day scene inside a house with big picture windows at dusk, so I lit everything to a T/2-2.8 split just so the background landscape would expose brightly enough to look like daytime. Then I started another day being told that we were short on my 250D stock, so I lit and shot an interior day scene on F-64D at T/2.8 just to have enough of the 250D stock for the big scene where I was going to run two cameras. But then, another problem: we had a baby for this scene (a birthday party) which just shrieked continuously when brought on set, so we ended up cancelling that scene, pushing it to another day. We set up for another interior day scene ? again as it as getting dark ? only to have the generator break down after the first take. Anyway, we still managed to pull that off because we staged most of the action in one flowing shot, no mean trick inside a small bedroom on the second floor of a house. Because it was a shot of Cuba Gooding Jr. performing a mock-striptease for Helen Mirren, who was sitting across the room in a chair, reflected in a mirror behind him, and then I panned & tracked him over to her, I essentially saw nearly 360 degrees in one shot. Had to go with an HMI PAR right next to camera bouncing off of the ceiling and a little HMI light coming through two of the windows.

 

We did some nice establishing shots of the house in spring and winter by dressing first with spring flowers, which I tracked through in the f.g. and then later putting fake snow and ice on the house. Did a fake fall shot of the tract home house by blowing brown leaves across the front lawn with a fan and shooting it at 48 fps.

[Max Jacoby]

Gee David, sounds like you've been having a hard time there...

 

I had a look at Alien today and I noticed on some shots that the corners are noticeably darker than the centre of the frame, just like you described with your 40mm C-Series.

 

I've has the same thing on the Hawk 46-230mm zoom. Strangely enough it was on the long end (200mm plus) that the corners got dark. I mentioned this to the lens technician at Arri Munich and he said that was odd, since it mostly happens on the wider lenses.

[David Mullen ASC]

I didn't mention that I also came down with the flu in the middle of the week...

[Brad Grimmett]

I didn't mention that I also came down with the flu in the middle of the week...

David,

Good news! They say the toughest shoots end up being the best movies! I'm sure you've heard that one before. Hopefully things go better for you this week!

[David Mullen ASC]

WEEKS FOUR AND FIVE

 

Have started rating the stocks a little slower, 2/3 of a stop overexposed instead of 1/3 of a stop. Trying to also get the light levels up to around T/4 whenever possible, but it?s not always possible. For example, I had to follow a person down a very narrow hallway under fluorescents into a daylit room. On F-250D, I only had a T/2.0-2.8 split under the flourescents and no way to add more light because of the moving shot with a wide-angle lens.

 

We filmed the climax of the movie in a tract home basement with cement walls and three small casement windows. Luckily, it was a house on a sloping hill and the basement had a patio door going to the backyard which we covered with a fake wall on a hinge, so we could have the crew, equipment, and video village right outside the basement without having only the narrow staircase as the access to the room. I?ve always had problems lighting day scenes in basements because of the lack of natural light. You tend to add too much light and make it look like a mini-soundstage. This time, I kept it simple: strong light coming through the small windows and some low bounce back up at the faces in the shadows, or a single soft side key. The far backgrounds that had no windows in the wall, I had tungsten practicals on (china hats or fluorescent shop lights.) The small windows were covered with 85 gel so I could shoot everything on F-500T (rated at 320 ASA.)

 

We?ve been doing a lot more 2-camera shooting, especially for the big scenes with multiple characters. This means longer lenses in general, like one camera with a 100mm Primo anamorphic and the other with the 180mm E-Series for shooting mediums and close-ups at the same time.

 

I?ve had a couple of days where I?ve shot scenes in dusk that are supposed to be daylight, shooting wide-open. And for the most part, it?s been for no good reasons. Yesterday we had a simple day scene where four people stop outside of a motel room and talk. We had a 3PM call time since we were also shooting night exteriors there. After our blocking rehearsal, the actors went off to the make-up trailer. One of the actors and the director futzed around with her make-up, not satisfied, and then came out at 6:30PM instead of 5PM as scheduled. So now I have one and a half hours to shoot a three-page scene with four people before the sun is gone. Shots began in sun and end in late dusk with street lamps and neon signs turning on the background, with the last shot being push-processed. FOR NO REASON!!! We could have easily shot the whole scene in daylight and been waiting for the night.

 

This has happened on other days as well ? just as soon as I think something will be simple, they kill three hours over some make-up or hair or wardrobe discussion (with the crew sitting around doing nothing) and then bring out the actors just as the sun is going down. And then they wonder why we are rushing things, dropping coverage, shooting wide-open, and working long hours, etc. It?s crazy.

 

The night exterior and interiors of the motel were fun to light. We wanted a very blue-green look, so the exterior had fluorescent tubes gelled with Full Cyan mixed with tungsten wall sconces. The interior had the walls painted turquoise with metal blinds with the same color. I had the actors walk into the room in silhouette against this color and turn on a lamp in the foreground, which was done by bouncing a Source 4 into a sheet of Lightboard taped off-camera to the wall. The night exterior was a rain sequence, the first time I had a real rain machine, a ?spider? dangling from a crane arm. The motel parking lot was backlit with an 18K on a Condor with Full Plus Green to create a mercury-vapor look.

 

We filmed another scene in a red-painted room dressed to look like a backroom lounge for a nightclub. The nightclub itself has yet to be shot, but it is heavily decorated with blue neon. So I lit parts of this red-painted room with Kino Bluescreen tubes to suggest off-camera blue neon. In dailies, I noticed an interesting effect ? since the Kino Bluescreen tubes have such a narrow bandwith, everywhere on the red walls where the Kino was filling in the shadows, the walls were blue, not red.

 

I?ve also had problems of the director asking in the last minute (like after a couple of takes) to shoot the whole scene in slow-motion. If I ended up with a T/2.8-4 light level and now have to shoot at 48 fps (the Millenium only goes up to 50 fps) then now I?m shooting at T/2-2.8. Sometimes I?ve just had to say ?no? especially if there is no real reason to shoot slow-motion. For example, the director thought the actor was setting a glass down on the table too quickly and wanted to shoot at 48 fps but I suggested that we just have the actor set the glass down more slowly instead on the next take. Some types of motion don?t look any differently if you shoot at twice the frame rate or simply move at half the speed.

 

After several sixteen hour days or so over the past two weeks, people are starting to listen to me when I tell them that the blocking and coverage plan is too elaborate for the time we have. We?ll have a simple 1/4 page scene where two people step into a room, see something in front of them, and talk. But it gets blocked where the director wants one to pace around the room one direction, the other to cross the room to sit down, then stand up and cross the room and lean against a table, etc. Eyelines switching screen directions multiple times. So something that could have been shot in two angles becomes several angles and multiple shots IF they want it covered in a master and singles (which they do.) It gets crazy. It?s a simple scene on paper so why complicate it unless you really like working sixteen or eighteen hours every day?

 

This has been an unnecessarily rough shoot and the saving grace, besides being able to shoot in 35mm anamorphic and having a good production designer to work with, has been my camera, grip, and electric crew. All top-notch with a good attitude. They've all had to work hard to make up for the time lost due to circumstances beyond their control.

[Max Jacoby]

After several sixteen hour days or so over the past two weeks, people are starting to listen to me when I tell them that the blocking and coverage plan is too elaborate for the time we have. 

David

 

Are people at least paid to do overtime?

 

Personally I don't like doing overtime for the very simple reason that I think it's just not save. Driving home after a sixteen hour day can be very dangerous. Also I think most directors don't realize that doing excessive hours might get a days work done, but is very bad for the long run, since people don't have enough time to recuperate. This is especially true for 6 day weeks.

[David Mullen ASC]

It's a union show so there's overtime and meal penalties, etc. The problem is that this script has so many locations and scenes that we are at a new place almost everyday so you have no choice but to wrap up all the scenes at each location.

 

The problem is that you can't work fast enough to compensate for the hours lost at the start of each day due to both coming into a new location (we have a limited number of pre-rig days in the budget) and the time lost due to these problems I mentioned.

 

It's also one of the those situations where a number of scenes were cut to fit the schedule only to be snuck back in after the shooting days were cut down under the idea of "we'll just work harder and get those scenes back in." Sometimes the same scenes end up being cut again on the day because there IS no time to fit them back in... after much stress and argument on the set. If we were an efficient shoot, maybe we could fit them in but no one seems to want to get a shot off early each day. And of course, there are the turnaround issues with the actors, who simply can't be brought in before a certain time if they worked late the day before. So for some reason, the crew still gets called in early only to be told that the actors won't be arriving for another hour because of their turnaround. Yesterday, because of the make-up delays, I was ready to shoot almost a full hour before I had the actors in front of the camera. I had to switch to a faster film before they even came out of make-up. Then I'm told just before the end of the night that one of the actors was going to leave a certain time no matter what, so we actually lost a scene (which now has to be fit into one of our other heavy days) and actually worked a slightly SHORT day in the end. We had actually caught up and could have finished all the scenes within 13 hours but now we have this scene with no location for it, requiring now a company move on some other day and re-lighting a night exterior with rain when we could have easily knocked it off last night.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

...on the other hand, I would contend that it beats working repeated 16-hour days, on pain of losing your job, without overtime or any kind of penalties, which is what you get here with no toothy union to back you up.

 

Phil

[Max Jacoby]

David

 

It sounds like with a bit more organization, a lot of your shooting days would be a lot shorter.

 

In Luxembourg we usually work 12 hour days (11 hours plus 1 hour lunch) on English/American productions. Since there is no overtime pay we don't really do overtime. This is different from French productions however. I haven't worked on one of those yet, but the people I usually work with have. They say that there in generel they work shorter days. If they are in a studio or in a location for a period of time, they come in the late morning and set up and rehearse for one hour. Then they have a lunch break and after lunch they work eight hour straight. So that roughly counts as a ten hour day (9 plus 1 hour of lunch). Of course if they have a location move or a more elabortae set-up (relight, complicated camera set-up, etc...) the responsible crew comes in earlier. In that case they might have a 12 hour day as well.

 

But basically in a 10 hour day, they get the same done as in a 12 hour day. From talking to the people involved in those shoots I get the impression that this is mostly due to the fact that one adapts the work to the time one has available. If you know you only have a 10 hour day, then you automatically work faster to get the job done in that time. That's why knowing in the back of your mind that you can always do overtime sometimes takes the sense of urgency away to get things done as fast as you can.