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Tuesday November 30, 2009
Shoot
Monday I received notice from my calling service of my being booked for background on a Wells Fargo commercial spot.
Casting director
Alice Ellis
emailed the information to those booked; the shoot would be at the Verdugo Hills High School in Tujunga.
I had been there before: a friend of mine used to teach there and I had attended two stage productions there that she'd directed.
The email also indicated a 12:30pm calltime, and the closest to that time MTA could get me there was 11:08am.
It was a slightly tight connection, and MTA puzzlingly took me out of my way for the connection point, but I made both buses and got to the location just past eleven.
We were to have acquired lunch on our own before our calltime, as clearly the production "couldn't afford" to provide lunch to us
(the client being a bank an'all...).
I got to basecamp at 11:45am, having taken time at the bus stop to see if two other lines had schedules.
If it was a long into-the-night shoot, getting back would be far more problematic.
As it was, from two fronts, I didn't even have to be concerned.
The catering truck was there, and tables and seats.
To my surprise there were already about three others having arrived already as well.
We were signed in by
Miller.
Joining me at my table was
Lisa Littman,
who I first met when she and I together worked on the TV show
10 Items or Less
two years previously.
Lisa graciously drove me home at the end of the day's shoot, which wasn't all that long.
We were all checked out by wardrobe stylist
Paola Weintraub
(I came across the next day's callsheet, but not for the current day;
I knew in advance if was an
Epoch Films
production, but the .pdf map emailed to us with the location only indicated the three-day project as
"Job #29051,"
of which our segment was one small cog:
therefore I remain unsure of the actual title of/for this spot, but at least I know who did what).
2nd AD
John Elmore
brought us to set
where
1st AD
Greg McCollum
provided us with what to do, which essentially consisted of being a line of people receiving meals from a food bank,
set up like a buffet, servers would spoon food onto each plate.
To the surprise of the background, the camera work was personally handled by the main director
Jeff Preiss,
who had a halter system strapped on, the top from which the camera was hung.
It was not actually a steadi-cam as much as a way to maintain control over an extremely heavy "hand-held" camera.
After several takes, several coverage angles and such,
we were done and wrapped shortly after 4pm, officially wrapped at 4:30pm.
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