Film Production: You Can’t Do That! (4)
- Posted on 19th September 2017
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, Film Production, film production book, TV Commercial Production
- by Ben
Most of my film production career was spent producing and/or serving as first assistant director on TV commercials, over 1,000 of them.
We all know the expression “fog of war”. No matter the well laid plan once the shooting starts that plan goes out the window. The same is mostly true with location film production. The work of the line producer and AD quickly become crisis management. This made the job challenging and therefore fun (most of the time).
One factor in this state of affairs is that (many but not all) directors tend to have brainstorms – in this case more of a brain-fart – on the spot. This tale is excerpted (and trimmed) from my film production book Circumstances Beyond My Control, a bad idea created an insoluble problem and was no fun at all.
OJ Commercial: Filling the hole under the waterfall
“As I recall we had only two setups at the falls and we had to start at sunup since we needed to be out of the park by 1:00 PM so it could be opened to tourists. The most important and difficult was the master shot of the guy standing in the river talking about water and juice so we started with that.
Author Ben Bryant on Location Ocho Rios
“The Jamaican grips and electricians were a riot. For one thing they were all stoned at sunrise. As far as I know, none of us New York potheads were smoking when we worked. Not in as tricky and potentially dangerous location as this, anyhow. But these local guys were amazing. All unshod, they navigated the rocks in the river like mountain goats. The feeder cable (big electric cable used to power the lights) they used looked as though it was left over from Birth of a Nation and was held together by fraying black tape. Frost [Wilkinson our gaffer], who is a stickler for safety, was seriously freaked out by these characters and their ancient cable – which was passing through a river – but they constantly reassured him, ‘Don woorry, Mon. We use it all de time. It fine cable, veerry safe, Mon.’ What could he do but trust them?
“While this cable running, camera setup, sound checking and lighting were happening [Director] Kyle and the agency were brainstorming. I never knew which of them (pretty sure it was the director) came up with this harebrained scheme but it was decided that we should put the actor directly under the center drop of the waterfall.
“As I said to Kyle, if we had had a day to build a platform this might have been possible. The hole the cascading water had dug in the riverbed was of an indeterminate depth. Out of sheer curiosity on the scout day we had stuck several long poles down into it but never were able to feel the bottom so it was at least ten feet deep, likely twice that.
“Kyle insisted that we begin dropping boulders into the hole and that we would soon fill it up. The Jamaicans agreed with me. ‘Too deep, Mon. Too deep.’ I insisted that (in more polite terminology) this was a fool’s errand and we would be wasting our rapidly dwindling remaining time on something that simply could not possibly work. Kyle said I had a negative attitude. That stung.
“I have many failings and have made many mistakes in my life but no one, before or since, has ever accused me of having a negative attitude.
“So we got to it. Everyone on the crew was enlisted in the hefting of large stones and humping them to the middle of the river and into the seemingly bottomless hole. I’m not certain how long this went on, at least an hour, probably more. It was very difficult and even more exhausting because we all knew it was futile. Finally when we had less than three hours left to shoot Kyle called it off.
“We got the main shot done but had to wrap out before we got whatever the other shot was that we needed. Claudia [local production lady] prevailed on the park management to let us come back for a couple of hours the next morning and we got out of there.”
This job was the low point of my producer/AD career. I was labeled by Kyle as a good AD but a lousy producer and never worked for his company again.
More (and much happier) stories of film production are to be read when you click here and get Circumstances Beyond My Control.
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