Phreaks and Geeks
Posted on December 30, 2008
I’ve worked with a lot of weirdos over the years.
Off the top of my head, here are some of my most memorable:
The producer who would hit me with his script to cue a graphic change. I was serving graphics for live satellite broadcasts. We all had scripts in fronts of us, we knew what to do without prompting. But he felt it necessary to pace behind me, swatting me with a rolled-up script each for each moment it was time to change to the next slide or lower third, etc. In a two hour show, we had hundreds of graphics cues.
I had another director during live broadcasts who would give me a verbal cue for graphics changes… a second too late. I finally had to put my fingers in my ears so I couldn’t hear her. That way I could concentrate on my timing without her distractions. Later, I would wear headphones just to listen to program feed for the cues.
Another thing she did was to torture me when Iwas floor director for her broadcasts and pre-tapes. She kept wondering why the shots didn’t match between program and preview. The engineers repeatedly told her that the preview monitor CRT was dim and dying , but she kept demanding that I adjust the lighting or exposure.
I had a director who though we should light for an F5. The broadcast was utilizing three actors and four cameras on a 1600 square foot set. Our most powerful instruments were a handful of 2k scopes, broads, and Mole-Richardson Jr. fresnels. The equivalent lighting plot we normally used, with our 1k instruments, netted and F-stop between 1.8 and 2 (depending of the focal length.) If we had twice as many 2k instruments, we could have made it to 2.8, maybe. I tried to halve the light plot’s subject to instrument distance. That would have got us to 4. But, he proceeded to make fun of me when that lighting plan invaded the wide shot’s composition. He couldn’t be persuaded that it would not work. After several vain attempts, we ran out of time and went with the original lighting design. Of course, it worked just fine. Even though it was physically impossible to achieve, he blamed the failure to reach an F5 on me. He was never able to justify why he wanted more light. When I asked about greater depth of field or brighter long lens shots, he still couldn’t provide an answer. To me, that indicates a profound lack of knowledge about light and optics.
Another director would eat and snack. The smacks and crunches heard over our headsets would irritate other crew members, but I didn’t really mind.
Another would, for some reason, duplicate all of our show’s graphics. We would spend most of the previous rehearsal day creating new Chyron graphics from product still-stores we’d shoot. He insisted upon this practice, even thought the client brought in their catalog for us to scan still stores from.) Also, the client would provide slides ready made for the broadcast with appropriate copy. His intent was to use both. Thus, he would then get confused about which graphics to serve. Then he’d order up thewrong ones, and we’d constantly be behind the script.
I’ll never forget the director who would get high with his DP before shoot.
Or the one who was deaf, but didn’t inform anyone on his crew.
The one on steroids.
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