Film Production Its Colloquial Language (RCH)
- Posted on 24th September 2017
- in Entertainment, entertainment books, Film Production, film production book, Hollywood books, Video Production
- by Ben
The highly specialized world of film production, like many other esoteric professions, has its own inscrutable lexicon. As in the military – in many ways analogous to film making – there are a lot of idiomatic terms and phrases many of which would, in the manner they are employed on a movie set, make no sense at all to civilians.
I have written a book, Circumstances Beyond My Control, about my over forty years in this wonderful world and much of this patois is used therein.
“Get me a half-apple.” Seems like a request for a small portion of fruit. Wrong. “Strike the Baby and Kill the Blonde” seems a brutal request but it’s actually the title of a book by Cameraman Dave Knox on the same subject as this small essay. I haven’t read Dave’s book so if I seem plagiaristic I plead both ignorance and synergy.
How about “Hit that brute with meat-axe!” – a line from a monster tale? Not even close.
Film Production Grip Equipment
Those brown things, top, are known as Apple Boxes. A full apple is 8″ X 12″ X 20″, there are half, quarter and eighth apples (commonly called pancakes) made of plywood and they are used for everything from a place to sit to making an actor look taller. Therefore “Get me a half-apple” (or a pancake) is not a request for food.
The rectangular things below the apple boxes in the picture are flags and scrims used to cast shadows of varying size and opacity. Not in the picture are the biggest flags, “meat axes” (“Alis” in Utah, don’t ask.) that are 18” X 48” or larger. A brute is a very large arc light. So “Hit that brute with meat-axe!” does not mean to attack a menacing giant with a deadly kitchen utensil, it means to “cut” some of the light cast by the brute arc. Both the “baby” and the “blonde” in Mr. Knox’s title are also types of lights. “Strike and kill” are synonyms for “remove and turn off” respectively. “Hang a black” is not a recommended lynching.
But this isn’t a serious piece about equipment and the many monikers of our gadgets (every piece of gear on a shoot has at least three slang names) but rather a frivolous discourse about our lighthearted language.
My favorite category of our silliness is units of measurement the largest of which is “until you hear glass break”.
DP (Director of Photography): “Back that 10K (big light) off a ways.”
Gaffer (Chief Lighting Technician): “How far?”
DP: “Until you hear glass break.”
The varieties of smallness are many and subject of much loopy argument. I have heard men of high intelligence and skill reasoning over which is smaller, a skosh or a tad. (I say skosh.) There is one unit of smallness upon which there is universal agreement: a hair. However within that context there are increments. Slightly smaller than a hair is a cunt-hair (CH) and the smallest measurement of all is the RCH. But film people being the contentious types that we are there’s disagreement as to the meaning of the “R”: royal or red? (I say red.)
The shooting day ends with the “window shot” a term that is said to have originated back in the early days of Hollywood when crews were paid in cash at the end of each day at the pay window. Nowadays it means throw all the gear out the window and go have a few beers.
You will not learn this stuff in film school.
You will, however, learn a lot of inside stuff about film production and its language when you click here and get Circumstances Beyond My Control.
Thanx to – in alphabetical order – DP Jack Churchill, Prop-Master Jeff Naparstek, Lighting Designer Paul Weller and DP Tom Weston for reminders.
Tags: Grip Equipment, Jack Churchill, Jeff Naparstek, Paul Weller, Tom Weston
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