Apple Chips! And my first ever 48 hour shift.
According to any dweeb in any OSHA office working 48 hours in a row is illegal. To the film industry, it’s a rite of passage. It is a badge of honor to survive, and thrive, in two consecutive 24 hour shoot days.
Day One started with a 6am call at Midtown Studios. The PA with who I would spend most of the next 48 hours, Mark Krumper, had the first bit of really good news.
Mark: “The EFX team is stuck in traffic.”
Me: “Okay.”
Mark: “They have the Accordion Apples.”
Me: “Oh well then. The what?”
Mark: “That’s what we’re shooting, stupid. The apple
appears whole and then fans out into several wafer thin
pieces nicely arrayed in a smile. You saw the storyboards.”
Me: “Yes. Whoever drew them should be beaten with an easel.
It looked like a series of Valentine’s Day heart candies with a
piece of thread holding them together.”
Mark and I discussed the capability of the storyboard artist for at least ten more minutes.
Me: “Okay, let me understand this. Levinson, Israelson & Bell
hired some guys to cut fabulous looking apples into, oh, two
millimeter slices. The apple is re-conformed to look whole and
then by pulling on monofilament threaded through each slice,
several dozen pieces of the apple are going to separate out
seamlessly and symmetrically into some anal-retentive
wet dream of perfection?”
Mark: “Yes.”
Me: “And these are the guys that can’t get from Queens
to Manhattan at 6am?”
Mark: “Yes.”
****
The two EFX guys did eventually show at 7:30am. They looked awful. One, an Asian man at least four and a half feet tall, still had plaster on his left cheek, and looked too much like Burgess Meredith as The Penguin.
The other, a redhead who resembled Bigfoot, if the mythical creature got shoved into a dryer on high heat, walked in with Burgess. If they started reciting Of Mice and Men, I wouldn’t have batted the proverbial eye.
That day I received my baptism of what to expect from EFX personnel.
It commenced with lots and lots of requests for things that those of us with organizational skills would have collected prior to the shoot day. And armed with said materials, build the practical apple effect ahead of time?
Inside of an hour, Mark and I were asked for.
1. Several pieces of PVC pipe with specific OD and ID.
2. Various ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ parts of plumbing fixtures.
3. Petroleum Jelly by the car load.
4. Nail polish remover.
5. The entire Grainger catalogue of metal screws.
6. A hex wrench set (Really?).
7. And the kicker . . . . . . . . . MONOFILAMENT!
Yes, the one item that should have been the first purchase by our EFX team did not appear to be in their kit. Why the Accordion Apples were not pre-strung is anyone’s guess, but for the next 32 years I’d be contemplating homicide during every special and practical effects job I’d produce.
Mark drew the short straw and had to locate monofilament and plumbing supplies at 8am, so off he went. Prior to hitting the streets, he had one prescient comment.
Mark: “I think we’re going to be here a while.”
I picked up the other items, including petroleum jelly, and returned to set in time to catch another version of the Recrimination Rhumba. Bigfoot and Burgess were locked in a steel-cage death match with the Producer and the Director regarding who didn’t tell who what and when they didn’t tell them.
Bigfoot: “The director never made that clear enough
to finish the rig.”
Director: “I certainly did.”
Bigfoot: “Did not.”
Director: “Did too.”
Bigfoot: “Did not.”
Director: “Did too.”
Bigfoot: “Did not.”
Director: “Did too.”
Bigfoot: “Did not.”
Director: “Did too.”
Bigfoot: “Did not.”
Director: “Did too.”
I’ve shortened the Geek Speak between EFX people and EFX Directors. If I included every detail from that conversation, interplanetary travel would be possible. Let me give the best analogy possible from the world of Live Action, which might be more accessible to normal people smart enough to never venture into the world of film production.
Joe Prop Master: “I can’t prop the set until you light it.”
Joe DP: “I can’t light the set until you prop it.”
And that is how we ended up taking 24 hours to shoot one EFX shot. The practical rig had not been finished, and the passive-aggressive EFX team had not bothered to tell anyone that crucial piece of information.
The line producer and director had not done any follow-up with the EFX team when the two magicians went into radio silence about a week ago. And the full crew stood around from 8am to 6pm as Bigfoot and Burgess sat behind the curtain with the Wizard of Oz and put together such a horrible effect rig that all the post-production tricks in the book in 1986 could not save the spot.
But there would be no way of knowing that until the latest chubby agency trundled over to the editorial company to look at the footage and decide which overpriced Manhattan eatery would be getting their business for the next month.
In the meantime, the live-action part of the job had to be completed.
TOMORROW: PART 2 - CATAPULTS!!
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