WORST SHOOT EVER

Arni Heimir · July 26, 2008

I've been on some shoots that were not very nice while on them, but in retrospect proved to be quite funny. Like that film with Dolph Lundgren...

Worked once with an idiotic Italian steadicam operator who didn't like me (I didn't kiss his ass which he expected everyone to do), that wasn't too pleasant, although what hurts more is that the production company went bankrupt and still owe me and a lot of people money, money which we'll never see.

Funny, because in Iceland salaries that aren't paid is underwritten by the government in a years time. Why was the steadicam operator idiotic?

monday sunnlinn · July 27, 2008

oh man...

well here are three blogs i wrote about shoots...

i've just cut and pasted them and edited out the swear words...so there are plenty of typos...but i've been told they're still entertaining...

[warning-there are a few comments about the guy that lives at 1600 Pennsylvania ave that are there for humor's sake...and some bodily humor, but it's actually integral to the story]

Thursday, June 29, 2006

won't you be my neighbor?

okay, so for those of you that don't know, i live in a somewhat crime ridden section of orlando. when the winter comes and the windows let in the fragrant night breeze, redulent with the smell of orange blossoms, it also let's in the sound of gunshots, and helicopters and sirens...

so i get home tonight at about 2:30 am from a shoot in daytona, with honest to god NASCAR heroes like dale waltrip, who managed to put the late 60's caddy that was a prop, into reverse instead of park and almost ran over some people...since the guy i was working with, had a utility trailer behind his pickup for the 30 ft camera crane we used, he couldn't pull down my street to drop me off, because there was nowhere to turn around(i live on a dead end street with a graveyard at the end...). so he pulled into the church parking lot that's around the corner. as i am proceeding to get my camera and tripod out of the back of the trailer, a white chevy jimmy drives by us slowly and parks across and up the street with the occupants half hanging out the window staring at us, they proceed to rev there engine really loud. a stand there and stare at them for a few seconds, breaking new yorker rule number 2 -never make eye contact.

mike-that's the guy i was working with, asked me if i'd make it home alright, i eyed the two guys in the jimmy and said, yeah, if they give me any problems i'll hit them with my tripod (it's a pro tripod and is quite heavy, plus there are spikes on the ends of the legs) he says 'alright, just give me a call when you get home...'.

so as i am about to turn the corner down my street, i hear the jimmmy come at me and the high beams come on...i think okay here we go...but they drive just past my street and stop and turn around...i walk past my house and duck behind my car which was parked in front of the empty lot that is next to my house (i didn't really want them to see which house i live in - i do have a fairly expensive studio) then i cut back along the fence, out of sight behind some trees to go into the gate, i forgot about the motion light on the corner of the house though, and that surely would clue them in, so i go into my building(i live behind the house in a guesthouse.) drop off my stuff and put on a black shirt to go with the black cargo pants and shoes i had on, took everything out of my pockets that would make noise and grab the biggest butcher knife in the kitchen...

i then go out the door, lock it behind me, and bury my keys near the door so i don't have to worry about them giving me away...i also put my phone on silent...

as i walk towards the gate to go out into the driveway, i saw a shadow move on the fence and immediately slashed at it, (turns out it was my shadow, but that area between the fence and the house is narrow and heavily overgrown with ferns almost as tall as i am...and very, very dark) then i creep out the gate and listen and feel (stretch out your feelings luke), nothing but the usual night noises. i then slowly half crawl past the open fence area to the end of the driveway and crouch behind the tree. listen. feel. nothing near, but i sensed and almost saw in my mind, someone at the end of the block waiting for me. judging that there was no way to get to the shadows of the trees that line my street from where i was, and considering there was only two of them(probably) i figured, do the last thing that the hunter would expect from the prey.

i put the butcher knife in my pocket and covered the handle with my shirt, and walked straight down the center of the street towards the shadows at the end. now for those of you that don't really know me that well...i didn't just stroll down the street whistling a tune. long even strides, head slightly lowered, eyes staring hard and direct at the source of my perceived threat, projecting that 'that's right, i'm comin for you mother f-----, this is -my- street' feeling.

sure enough, as i'm one house away from the corner, the lights come on the jimmy, which is actually blocking the street around the corner, while they are turning around i jump into the shadows in the weeds behind a tree in front of the empty lot where they just tore down a vacant house. (i didn't actually want to kill them, i just wanted a license plate number). naturally, they pull right into the driveway, but i happen to be directly behind the tree so they can't see me yet. then one get's out, he's got a flashlight (clue number one) and a club (not clue number two) eventually he spots me with the flashlight. i stand up as he says

'what are you doin sneakin around here?'

i respond with, 'what are you doin followin me home?'(i left out the 'bizzatch')

after numerous exchanges where they tried to get me to tell them where i lived. (i wasn't exactly about to just tell them where i lived until -i- was sure of who -they- were, and honestly when you've been shot at trying to buy weed, a skinny redneck with a club isn't that threatening. plus it was a short club which is a tactical mistake any ways, especially when you're holding a flashlight in your other hand)

i then managed to get them to realize that you don't go to rob a house with a tripod and camera case and jug of water, it's just not practical. i then mentioned that i had just filmed some NASCAR legends and all doubt of my status as a good ole' boy from the neighborhood disappeared.(thank god for the redneck code of honour) i then thanked them for being the neighborhood watch (turns out they own all the houses on the one side of the street around the corner. they claimed they had never seen me before, but i had in fact waved to them on numerous occasions when they were renovating one of the houses).

i showed them my dreads and said 'look, these make me stand out like a sore thumb around here',

they said well you should be smoking a big 'ole blunt then'

as i was walking away, i said 'not tonight, not tonight..."

lame ending, i know, but this is just one more chapter in my bizarre life...

f---, now it's almost four in the morning and i'm wired on adrenaline...

Friday, June 30, 2006

the moral of the story...

so why did i post the last blog?

probably not for the reasons you think.

let's think about what would have happened if i decided to hide in my house rather than deal with the situation.

i would still be sitting here now worrying about if someone was going to break in and steal my stuff (atleast more than usual).

i probably wouldn't have been able to sleep very well.

i wouldn't feel as safe to go on a nightly bike ride.

so, the point is that fear, which on small and large scales , is used to control your thoughts and habits everyday. the reality of your fear is usually far less horrible than what your mind makes it. not confronting your fear only gives it more power over you and further restricts your freedom and sense of well being.

instead of running and hiding. i decided to take on that fear head-on and without hesitation. but

-not without caution and forethought-

my goal was to determine who these people were, not to attack them.

therefore, my strategy was based on stealth first and then had to be changed to drawing them to me by presenting a target for them, but keeping myself in a position to wake the neighborhood if necessary.

the forethought was asking myself if i felt that i was getting into a situation i couldn't deal with, deciding i could deal with it, but bringing a tool in case i should need it. i did not walk down the street with a weapon in hand though, as that presented an obvious intent. when outnumbered, it's best to confuse, and take control of the initiative in whatever way is most natural to the situation, in this case passive-aggression(which is a personal favorite-it's the most harmonious).

another example of of caution is not just rushing blindly into the situation, i took stock of my person...what i was wearing, what i had with me. eliminating as many of the possible chances for things to work against me as possible.

an example of a error on my part was not waiting for my night vision to return fully before going back towards the street, which is why i got spooked by my own shadow at the gate. that incident forced me to slow myself down and feel my way through it. once you commit yourself to a course of action, you don't want to move too fast or slow for the situation. that is how you get your hole punched, that is how the situation takes control of you. true mastery is the ability to move so completely in harmony with the moment that you give the illusion of being completely in control of it. this requires you to let go a little and trust your instinctual awareness even more. if the situation is a conflict, this has the effect of sucking the morale from your enemy like george bush sucking the honor out of the american military.

that is the essence of the final teaching of martial arts.(except for the brief, obligatory political jab)

so by facing my fear immediately and without hesitation, only preperation:

i slept soundly(or as soundly as a futon allows)

i feel more secure in my neighborhood, not less

i kept those other two people from having to worry about one more threat in their neighborhood

so why am i wasting more of your time telling you these things?

because i like to see how smart i am?...mmmm...well maybe...

...but more importantly because we live in a world that will try and pin you down in every way possible to keep feeding off your mind, body and spirit. the key to staying beyond the reaches of that darkness is to deal with it as soon as you feel comfortable to deal with it, and not one second later. i hope that in my explaining all of this, those who don't have very much confidence in their ability to deal with these things can learn a few tricks from someone whose whole life seems to be series of events meant to teach this lesson. in every single human being there is the power to be the captain of there own destiny, don't let the world convince you otherwise.

a quote from 'dune' written by frank herbert

I will not fear

Fear is the mindkiller,

Fear is the little death

That brings total Oblivion

I will permit my fear to pass

Over me and through me

And where it has gone

I will turn the inner eye

Nothing will be there

Only I will remain

----------------

Thursday, August 31, 2006

the great restroom caper...

so i was in boston for a couple of days this week, shooting some b-roll of the headquarters of a 9 billion dollar multi-national corporation...

i know, i know...

but they're sole business is serving science and the manufacture of many instruments that help find cures for really, really bad problems...

(i think they are working on a machine that will erase the last 6 years of political blunders caused by the turd in washington)

and since none of my blogs would be really complete without a jab at dubya or an update on my bodily functions... here we go...

THE FLIGHT UP

orlando international airport...

'we're sorry, but due to air traffic control delays caused by bad weather, american airlines flight 212, non-stop to boston will now be taking off at 5:30 pm, we apologize for any inconvenience...

starving now....

monday boards plane.....

immediately opens huge bag of trail mix and devours the entire bag, except for some of the sunflower seeds...in the process, unbeknownst to him, he cracks off half of the molar that was already nothing more than a shell of it's former self...

the interesting thing is that when your ears fill up during changes in altitude, it's becuase of the change of ambient airpressure...that's not the only part of the body that experiences changes in pressure though...and trail mix makes me fart....

2+2=4....

seeing how i'm a considerate human being most of the time, i managed to keep the increasing density of gastric explosiveness in check, and from escaping and causing something far worse than the plot of the movie 'snakes on a plane' from happening.

THE LONG AWAITED MEAL

the producer picks us up at the airport, take us out for dinner...

i've never had a 'pulled barbequed chicken burrito' till then, but it was good...

the next morning, for breakfast, i made the mistake of eating 2 bowls of raisin bran, and as if the bran alone wasn't bad enough, milk and my intestines just simply do not see eye to eye...

as an added bonus most of the gas pressure was still there. since it couldn't go one way during the flight, it found somewhere to lurk inside me and hadn't come out of hiding yet......

THE BIO LAB

so now we are at one of the locations we are supposed to film. a lab that is crammed full of lab type stuff. we are now crammed into a seperate small area that is nothing more than a hallway full of scientific equipment, and now add 5 crew members and a former scientist(who now works for their marketing department and also used to be a model, and is absolutely gorgeous) a camera and alot of lights.

so there's no chance to let one go in there....

A TASTE OF THE EAST

the two lighting guys were from the area. twin brothers who are really interesting people. they decide to get curry chicken when asked to get lunch by the producer.

it was like a triathalon of terror now for monday's gastrointestinal track.

the curry was good, but man, it was hot...

then for dinner...chicken quesedillas...

THE DAY OF DOOM

the next day, we are in the top floor of this mega-company's world headquarters, where only CEO's dare...

at lunch we break for some pizza...

which i thought was a much better choice personally...

an hour or so after lunch i stood up and felt a sharp stabbing pain in my intestines...

a few minutes late i'm in the bathroom, brushing cheeks by proxy with very powerful people.

this was the first of a series of visits.

you see, the damn had burst. somewhere deep in the bowels of monday, a monster had been coming to life. a beast born of time and distance, from the peanut plantations of south carolina and georgia to the jungles of where ever the hell they grow cashews. from fields of grain swaying majestically in the wind, to the sun soaked hills of the place that they grow california raisins, which is probably malaysia, or somewhere that they think it's okay to pay children 3 cents a week to pick grapes(instead of here where it's only okay to eat the grapes picked by children for 3 cents a week). a creature fuming with the rage of lactose intolerance, fueled by the agony of genetically altered and factory raised chickens. a curry powered minion of the Goddess Kali herself, clawing through my colon, driving lesser turds before it, until that black day, when like an un-expected total eclipse of the sun, it comes upon you unawares, unprepared, leaving you pale, sweating and slightly euphoric for having brought this karmic darkness unto the world...

in this marbled bathroom, a smell filled the air, so that the poor bastard who came in to try and release his own lesser demon into the world was turned away by the plume of

despair...

who knows what evil may have been lurking in his colon, perhaps my suffering saved humanity from yet another four years of a republican in the office of the presidency.....

so, there you have it-two glimpses into the ironic madness of my world...

the amazing thing is that i now live in boston with the scientist turned executive. and she's heard me let one go now too...and as it happens i've heard her let one go...

if you're bored there's more where these came from

http://www.myspace.com/monday1313

Ben Reckelhoff · July 30, 2008

Day 5 of a 7 day shoot on a shortfilm called Taxy (spelling error intentional). We are on set waiting for our lead actor to show up. 60 people on set, camera up, loaded, and extras in places, and my phone starts ringing. My director is on the phone (I'm DP.)

"Hey, man. He's not in his hotel! I called the hotel and they say he checked out this morning." He sounds frantic like he's about to cry.

I call our actor to figure out what his deal is. Keep in mind we are standing in a bar that has given us exactly 7 hours to shoot over 8 pages of script.

Apparently what happened was our actor had become fed up over the shoot after we made him work outside from 6pm to 6am the previous night in -15 degrees and snowing. He told me he was at the airport, had purchased a ticket for New York, and decided to go home.

Somehow, we were able to get a body double, alter the script considerably, and finish the shoot in under 2 hours. But that day sucked something awful.

Serge Teulon · July 30, 2008

Some would say that this is quite endearing but trust me, it really wasn't.

I once shot a 4 week feature with a director which, amongst many other unbelievable issues, consistently shouted "ACTION!!" at the end of a take..... :blink:

The whole crew felt like the roman guards in that part of The life of Brian when the emperor says "...Biguth Dickuth!!!" :lol:

Adrian Sierkowski · July 30, 2008

He has a wife you know. . . .

Oh Python, where would we all be without you!

Serge Teulon · July 30, 2008

Nothing but complete and utter timeless geniuses!!!

Welease WADAWICK!!!!! :lol:

Adrian Sierkowski · July 31, 2008

While we're on python, anyone know where to get a good DVD copy of Cleese's How to Annoy People?

It's not really O.T. as can be used when coming home from one of these bad shoots. :ph34r:

Andrew Rawson · July 31, 2008

When I first moved to LA I had to do low budget movies and music videos in some pretty scary neighborhoods...(I did Snoop Dogg's "187" long before I had ever heard of Snoop Dogg and Dre).

We also did a pretty cool movie that Alison Anders directed called "Mi Vida Loca". We used real gang bangers and shot in Echo Park. It was a real eye opening experience and we got to know the Echo Park people really well and came to understand that the gangs aren't all bad...a lot of it is just about protecting your neighborhood and your sister etc.. There were several generations involved that kept order in the hood.

One night though we were on a process trailer and we drove into another gangs turf and the guys in the car that we were shooting started throwing signs to guys hanging out on the street, the LAPD quickly advised us that we needed to get out of there ASAP. We went back to Echo Park and continued shooting and a car drove by from the rival gang and pumped 3 or 4 bullets into the grip/electric truck. We called a wrap shortly after :)

Had a similar experience shooting a Bon Jovi video in Hollywood in what was then a well known crack dealing spot, the LAPD made us seal up the back of the trucks and stay inside them because the local gang had threatened us.

Ice Cube video in Compton, the LAPD told us we had to be out by night fall because the guys we were shooting had made a hit on a rival gang 2 days earlier and the funeral was that day and they expected retaliation, Of course we went into dark, the LAPD left...said we were on our own... AND told us to feel free to run the red lights in order to get out of Compton and get on the freeway.

Ahhhh got to love LA!!!

Andy

Serge Teulon · July 31, 2008

While we're on python, anyone know where to get a good DVD copy of Cleese's How to Annoy People?

It's not really O.T. as can be used when coming home from one of these bad shoots. :ph34r:

I would try amazon....otherwise if no luck I'm very happy to try and see if I can get you a copy here in London. We could do payments through paypal.

A. Whitehouse · August 1, 2008

I once shot a 4 week feature with a director which, amongst many other unbelievable issues, consistently shouted "ACTION!!" at the end of a take..... :blink:

Similar situation; I worked with a director once who managed to tell me with a straight face that he found calling action pretentious and instead chose to cry "performance" instead. He was a nightmare and the shoot was awful but I'd take that any day over someone who forgets to call cut.

Andrew Koch · August 1, 2008

I was on a feature where the director always remembered to call cut, but he would drag it out. "Cuuuuuutt." Almost like he was trying to make a belching sound with the word. Very strange. And of course there are several shoots where a director would always want to YELL "action" and "cut" even if we are in the tiniest room with the actors 5 feet away and all essential crew nearby. Although I'm sure it is less annoying for me than the actors.