Dancing With a Star

It was at some point on the first day, the setup day, that I heard that MF and JP were going to be there. I called my dance partner and left a message.

“They’re having these auditions here and MF and JP are the judges, and all you gotta do is read some portion of some script -- all the info is online.” I carefully read the web address in the message.

My dance partner has been in local theater productions, has worked as an extra and a key extra, had a small part in the TV series DC.

I didn’t get a response to that message. I imagined my dance partner rushing to get ready for the audition, too busy to call me back. I wanted to not know when she would show up -- to just see her walk in the door and blow everyone away with what I know she’s got. Here was a chance to have her in something I was also working on, and with MF and JP as well!

The next day the judges started seeing contestants. Before each one entered, the producer would pass out papers to the judges showing the next contestant’s answers to his screeming questions. “Please note item number 7,” the producer might say, “which says that he sweats profusely.”

One contestant had stated, on his papers, that he has a rare form of diabetes involving kidney failure, and needs to drink water continually.

“You have to drink 3 gallons of water every day?” the judges asked him. He concurred. “You must be just constantly pissing,” they said. The contestant kind of nodded but said nothing, and I wondered if he were handling it some way he didn’t want to mention, like maybe with diapers. The judges harped on that for a while; it was then said that the guy was also an ironman triathlete; the guy read his part and wasn’t very good; they let him down easily and he left.

In his absence, the judges kept on about his disease, speculating on how he could compete in a triathalon if he had to pee all the time. I wondered, to myself, if maybe doing extreme exercise, and sweating, was the only time he could get a break from his constant peeing. The liquid was needed elsewhere, on the skin, so it could go there instead of to his bladder. You know, like how ADHD people finally get to focus and connect with the world, in a sense, when they are in an environment that reflects the spasms going on in their brains, like when playing a video game or performing search and rescue during a hurricane.

MF explained the name of the disease, pointing out that the prefix “nephr-” means “kidney.” Looking at her website, one can see that she knows about world health matters and diseases.

In the random conversations that occurred during the days, it was MF who had the assessments and background information to offer. While talking about relationships with JP, she said that she didn’t know what was up with younger folks these days. “I work on these shows with these young girls, and it’s amazing, they have nothing to talk about. Their minds are empty.”

JP said, “Plus, they’re crazy.”

MF said, “Well, men like crazy women.”

I was putting a mic in her orange sequined blazer at the time, and I said, “I tend to go for the crazy ones,” not even looking up from her blazer.

“Well, there you go, even [Elrond],” she said.

Another contestant had written on his papers that he loved architecture. After a series of contestants who had little to say for themselves, who got through the audition just by being cute (MF told one, “You can’t just vamp your way through this”), MF took the opportunity to ask him who his favorite architect was. When he named his first and second favorites (names I have not heard of), she nodded, smiling, as if seeing something new in a person -- knowledge of architecture that rivals hers, perhaps? She said, at another time, that she was an avid reader.

Another contestant mentioned something that he had “learned in social studies,” and MF said dryly, “At least they’re still teaching social studies.”

At the end of this first day of seeing contestants, I called my dance partner again and left another message. I said look, they’re doing this thing here and not enough contestants are showing up. They need people. I know you can bang this out. If you do it, you may see me in the room, but don’t worry about saying “Hi” to me. Just do your thing for the judges.

But I harbored a fantasy. What if they asked her about her ballroom dancing, and what if she said, “My dance parter is right over there?”

“[Elrond]?!?!” they would say. Surely, they would make us dance together. I would take off the headphones and leave the faders set in some lowish, safe position and go out there and hope I would look confident enough, happy enough, while struggling to overcome stiffness accumulated from standing all day, and to remember moves that we have not practiced for weeks because we’ve both been so busy trying to earn a living. No doubt, MF would have something to say about our presentation, would have notes for me in particular, because she has spent her life dealing with these matters of poise and stage presence. I would probably not feel that I had impressed her and the others, but I could at least say something like, “I did mambo for MF today, and this is what she said about my hip movement . . .”

I had decided I would suggest mambo because there was room for it on the small “dance floor” they had laid down for the contestants to stand on, and because I had heard a nice slow mambo in the music selections that the producer would play from his iPod during the down times.

That night I called my dance partner again, and this time she answered. She said it sounded like a neat thing to do, but she was really busy and had 5 hours of lessons to teach the next (and last) day of auditioning, and there was so much to do regarding home repairs and other matters.

Okay, I said, I understand. But, I told her, these folks are here, it’s right here in town, and I’ve seen them give a gold ticket to (that is, pass on to the next level of auditioning which will be in New Orleans a few months from now -- the second round of the ”tournament,” so to speak) people who have as much talent overall as you have in your little finger; I’ve seen you do so much better without even trying. But do what you want, and I won’t say any more about it.

She said she’d think about it.

On the morning of the second and last day, as we were about to start, the producer said that there were only six contestants waiting outside. I called my dance partner again, and she answered. I said, “Look, I had said I wouldn’t hassle you about this again, but I just wanted to say, there are only six people here now, so there might not even be much of a wait.”

She said that she had awakened with a migraine and couldn’t keep food down, but she’d do her best. And she said she had talked to her husband the previous night and he had said, “Where is the audition,” and she said, “in Durham,” and he had said, “well you silly, go and do it then!”

“Thank goodness for my coaches,” she said. “That’s what I’m talking about,” I said.

We went through the morning, seeing the contestants as they came. We had lunch at 2pm, and on the way through the hotel lobby to our lunch area, I scanned the upcoming contestants in the waiting area. My dance parter was not there.

After lunch, I did see her there, filling out her forms. I spoke to her. She was on low energy, mellow, quiet, unassuming.

The first batch after lunch were more of the cute ones who had hardly prepared, had nothing to say for themselves, and couldn’t act at all. By now, our judges had acquired a little bit of edge and would say, “It’s clear you have no experience, and if you really want to be an actor, then take some classes and see how that goes. And good luck. Stay in school.”

(My dance partner told me later that some of these contestants came out of the room crying. One of them said, “How can she shatter my dreams like that?” and my dance parter said to her, “Nobody can shatter your dreams. I’ve done this a hundred times and had my guts torn out. It’s the only way you learn to get better.”)

Eventually, the door opened, and it was my dance partner who stepped through, into the lights. She still had that low-energy demeanor. She took her place on the mark in the middle of the room, and MF said right away, “It says here you are a ballroom dance instructor.”

“Yes,” my dance partner said.

“Dance with JP,” MF and AZ said. “Can you dance with him?”

My dance partner nodded cheerily, and I was nodding as well in my shadowy corner behind the tent-like chimeras. She has been making beginning male dancers look and feel good for years.

“Nothing hard. Not tango,” said MF, again knowing something about a subject. Tango is indeed one of the harder ballroom dances.

JP was crossing the room -- no urging needed here for a star to do something when he’s on camera already.

“We’ll do a box,” my dance partner said. “So, come forward on your left foot.” She back led him, keeping her head up, her poise that MF would approve of. JP was looking down, watching his feet. The other judges hooted and clapped, and then JP took the lead, breaking out of the box and turning my dance partner in quasi-swing, stepping back too far on his rock-steps and letting his arm get too extended. My dance partner made it look good though, doing what she knows how to do, her eyes stabbing along their momentary sightlines as she spun, her long curls bouncing.

JP started to go back to his seat, then returned to the dance floor and said, “Can you jitterbug?”

“Sure!” my dance partner said. I have never exactly jitterbugged with her. Or shagged, really. She says that it’s all the same, just swing. JP started leading her in something that was pretty much swing, and there were more turns and spins, and then it was over.

“Wow, she really can dance,” he said, returning to his seat.

MF said, “It also says you run a non-profit acting troupe that goes to assisted living homes?”

My dance partner talked about that. MF said, “As someone who has had a mother in that situation, thank you for bringing joy into those lives.”

It was time for my dance parter to show what she had prepared. She spread papers around on the floor, and I thought “Uh-oh, she’s going to be one of those that moves around.” We had just the boom mic for the contestants, and the boom operator was up on a ladder to keep himself and shadows out of the sightlines of the four cameras. Being up there meant that he could not move laterally very much. Some contestants had walked out of his boom range and had to be heard off-mic.

She was doing a scene from this movie about a rock star, the scene where one of his girlfriends is on drugs and becomes furious with him. She started sitting on the floor with those papers around her, and our boom guy had to lower the boom much more than normal. This risked getting it in to the criss-crossing camera angles, but he could see the monitors from where he was sitting on the ladder, so he could see if he were dipping in anywhere.

My dance partner started with her manner confused and quiet, her pale Irish face wondering but not inquisitive, like a child’s. How does it affect parents when they see their grown children, as actors, revert to childhood like this? She stood up and came to my side of the room, off mic, and was now paranoid, strung out, her voice cracking near some nervous breaking point, warning some imagined person that the rock star would not care about her; then she flew across the room to the other side, again off mic, and screamed at the rock star in the way that it sounds like the throat is being torn. It was the only audio that distorted in the whole two days.

I had not been able to see her face, and now I really wish I could see the video of it, but this may have to wait until the show comes out, and even then, who knows if they’ll use it.

The judges were quiet for a few moments, and then AZ started saying things like, “You were really well prepared . . . I thought it was a little over-the-top, but has potential . . . as far as voting on whether you should move to the next level, hmmm, I’m not sure . . . it seemed a little crazy . . .”

The authoritative MF said, “JM would drive any woman crazy.”

AZ said, “Well let’s see how the others vote.”

MF said, “I say absolutely yes.” It was the most positive response anyone got from any judge the whole time.

JP waffled like AZ. It was like they were judging my dance parter by different standards. They had given the gold ticket to others who showed “potential” or “could be directed.” If they thought her performance was a little crazy, couldn’t they ask her to do it again, tone it down a little, see if she can take direction?

No, she got no second chance. I had practically begged her to come here and do this when she had other things to do, necessary things with a clear goal that she was certain to achieve. She had changed her priorities for the day, put her heart into this, and now two of the judges had gone all “New York Times Critic” on her, acting like exacting standards had been theirs all along.

She had been right in her first reaction to my messages, which was to blow this off and get her errands done.

I forget how the two guys actually voted. At least one begrudgingly voted yes, because I recall them saying half-heartedly, “Congratulations. You got a call back,” and AZ handing out the ticket to her.

My dance partner said “Thank you,” and stepped up to take her ticket. As she went back to the stage area and bent down to pick up her papers, JP said, “Nice job. Thanks for coming in.” And my dance partner said, with a little crack in her voice, “Thank you too, it’s a pleasure, I really admire your work.”

When she had left, the producer talked it over with the judges. They talked about how, with some direction, she could be someone who might have a chance. They shrugged. I was thinking, “You knuckleheads, you don’t know what to do with someone who is good; who may, with a little more focus, really surpass the acting skills of any of these judges; someone who has also demonstrated a practical side by employing herself and earning a living, who has a college degree, who took the time to learn ballroom dance so she wouldn’t have to support herself by being a secretary, who has put much effort into a long-term relationship which has turned into a very solid marriage, who has built a following of real friends and clients . . .”

Oh wait, those are real accomplishments. Hollywood just wants someone they can use, who gets the ratings, who gets a few laughs, and who cares if the laughs are the malicious kind.

On the phone later, my dance partner told me they had made her wait for four hours before her audition. I had not expected that to happen. One of her dance students had cancelled that day, so that was good, but the next one she had to cancel. Even with that, after the audition she had five more hours of teaching, then grocery shopping to do.

We were talking as she was driving home. It was almost 10 o’clock and I had just finished my day and packed up all the gear and put it in my car. For me, it had been a 13 hour day.

I said that I couldn’t believe the judges had acted uncertain. I told her she was easily in the top three who auditioned the whole time, and they gave out maybe eight or so total callbacks over the two days. The other two top contestants, in my view, were a student at the local university who acts in a soap opera there and, on her second try at her audition (after getting some direction!) had made herself really cry over a lost lover; and a woman from a town to the west who is in a semi-professional improv comedy group and gave a fairly original-seeming interpretation to a scene she did, though I don’t remember now why I thought that.

My dance parter said it was all political. The actors behind the desk were just trying to prove something because “they’re all washed up,” she said.

“But MF is on top of her stuff,” I said. “And she gave you an absolutely positive ‘yes.’”

“Yeah. Well. I’m not gonna think about it. If they call me, I’ll think about it then.”

“Would you go to New Orleans for the second round?”

She sighed. “I’ll just have to see.” She had practical matters to think about.

I guess it gets even more political in the later round, as in all reality shows. I can’t wish this nonsense on her. It’s like MF said in the previous post. If there’s anything else you can do that will make you happy, then do that.

“At least you got to dance with JP,” I said.

“Yeah, that was awesome.”

“It sounds like you really admire him.” I had not paid attention to him back in the SNL days, or at any time.

“Yeah, I liked his stuff. He was hilarious.”

So there was that at least.

She was arriving home. I could hear her dog barking in the background on her phone.

“Are you gonna celebrate?” I said.

“I’m gonna eat some nachos and go to bed,” she said.

Continue . . .

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"If there's anything else you can do that will make you happy, then do that."

This was advice given by actress MF today to an auditioner who had said he was in a pre-med program. She told him that she had been acting since she was a child, and when she was in her teens and thinking about going into it as a profession, she had sought the council of an actor friend. That was what he had told her, because “It’s too hard to do, if there's something else you can do.”

This auditioner’s reading of a part had been only slightly more lively than the average high school book report.

“You are in school to be a doctor?” said actor JP. He, MF, and AZ are the judges for this touring casting reality show in which members of the general public audition for parts in a movie (key extra parts, or small supporting roles). This is a pilot for now, may become a real show later.

The auditioner nodded yes.

“Well, I’m not going to say what you think I’m going to say next,” said JP. I had heard the producers on our show saying that JP, MF, AZ have been, in previous cities on the tour, too nice. None of them have the grumpy, harsh critic persona like judges on some other reality shows.

JP told the student he needed a lot more experience in acting, but if he had the drive and was willing to take classes, then he shouldn’t let anything stop him. Then JP went ahead and, perhaps remembering recent coaching by a producer who wanted him to be tougher, said “Really, you should stick to medicine.”

When auditioners were out of the room, the judges talked amongst themselves about their personal lives. “You know, I’ve never been to a strip club,” said JP. MF turned her pristine head to him and said, “Well J, I’m really proud of you,” deadpan.

“Let’s go tonight,” said AZ.

JP talked about a relationship where the woman was a young sexy wild person, and the older male actor decided he needed to quit dealing with her. "The thing is, she wants a sugar daddy,” said JP.

“They all think we’re rich,” said MF.

MF really knows her stuff. Someone was asking who is the president of a radio conglomerate, and she knew. She knew references and speeches from famous movies, old movies, the good stuff, not recent kitsch. I didn't catch all of the story, but her current name she adopted from a character in an old movie who had risen up against adversity and fought for social justice.

One auditioner had written on his form that he does Karate.

"Can you show us a kata?" said MF.

The guy went through some motions, then stopped and said his pants weren't loose enough for the kicks.

"I know," said MF. "I took Kung Fu for several years."

JP said to one male auditioner, "I like how you filled in the answers for bra and cup size, saying 'I don't have breasts.'"

(I think these measurements are requested on the audition form for costume fitting later, if the auditioner is accepted to the next level.)

"Well, I don't," said the auditioner. "Is that a prerequisite?"

"No." "No." said JP and AZ, looking across MF at each other. "That's not why we're here."

"It's why I'm here," said MF.

"Mmm," someone muttered, and it was quiet for a second or two before the conversation moved on.

I first saw MF last night, after the horrendous day of setting up the audio equipment as described in the previous post. I was leaving the hotel, and as I entered the space between outer and inner n doors, I first saw the short dark-haird sub-producer of this show who is bossed around by the producers as if she were a PA, coming in through the outside door. She was smiling and has one of those haircuts with longer hair tapering to a point about neck length in front of her ears, and shorter around the back like a boy’s. I had not met her personally yet, but I nodded to her as a familiar face around the set; then I saw the woman in front of her who had just let the outer door nearly close on this sub-producer, who made eye contact with me and then looked back at the sub-producer giving orders in her sort of gripy, nasally voice. This second woman’s turning head was perfect, a sculpture to be viewed from all sides: skin pure white, noise pointed, hair coiffed to immobility but in a way that sets the standard for how it should be done -- not like your local newscaster’s, but with a level of virtuosity that returns, at its height, to a level of ease and naturalness. It’s like MP playing piano, that coif is.

They had a makeup artist, but MF did her own in her room before coming down today, and again, she looked like a pristine doll. She was patient with me clipping the mic to her orange sequined blazer, but I sensed that she may not want me to clip the transmitter pack to her waist. Women in tight jeans tend not to like that. In fact, clipping the transmitter pack to a woman’s waist usually causes more consternation than my putting the microphone itself in, or near, her breasts. Most of the women I do this to are regular folks who have not been in a video before and are completely unprepared for the experience. They have spent the morning making themselves up a little more than usual, preparing for the camera; then here comes the audio guy dropping a mic cable down their shirt and tucking it into their pants waistline. And if they’ve got a roll of fat there, it takes me extra time to get the cable under that roll and into the waistline, and I have to push against the roll in back to get the transmitter close enough to their pants waist to clip it there. By the time I’m done, they’ve given up a certain amount of dignity, like maybe they’ve been to the doctor or something, and they’re all the more malleable for the director.

But I have learned, starting with PH a few years ago, that woman actors in reality TV like to clip the transmitter on themselves, so when it came time to do this, I said, “M, should I clip this to your waist, or do you--”

“I’ll do it,” she said, and took it from me.

I got her and AZ miced, and then the producers said they wanted the mics hidden, so I had to go back and re-plant them inside the shirts and blazers. All three of these actors were cool with that, not complaining. And their clothes were quiet, so it all sounded pretty good.

MF was totally cognizant of her transmitter. Whenever there was a break, her transmitter was the one that went off, turned off by her, to avoid any possible sticky situation. And she knows audio -- when an auditioner came in with his cell phone to use as a prop, she spoke up right away and told him to turn it off. “It makes a beeping noise on the mics,” she said, “even if you have the ringer off. It’s the radio waves.”

Amen, sister! I’ve never had anyone who goes on camera understand this before. Usually I’m saying, “Can you power down your cell phone,” and they’re saying, “it’s on vibrate,” and I’m saying, “we can hear that, can you power it down?” and they’re saying, “okay now the ringer is off,”and I’m saying, “no, we may still hear it, it’s not the sound by the radio waves it emits, the mic picks them up and makes a chirping noise,” and they still don’t get it.

MF is very down-to-earth, sensible, professional, nice. JP is also very nice -- he walked in, walked past boom operator S and myself and said, “Hi guys, how’re you doing?” sensing, I guess, by our appearance, that we were some of the “guys who get this thing done.” I did not recognize him, not being an SNL afficionado, but he had makeup on so I guessed it was him. And AZ is very nice too. All are easy to work with and good people.

Continue . . .

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Tomorrow We'll See If This Works

We’ve got 4 cameras, 2 audio tracks each, for a total of 8 tracks. We’ve got 1 boom mic on the contestant and 3 wireless mics on the judges. Contestants will cycle through all day, one at a time, and the judges will trash or praise them.

The 3 wireless systems will enter the mixer in channels 1-3.

The boom mic will input in channel 4

The direct outs for channels 1-4, post fader, will be sent to 4 isolated tracks on cameras. (This uses 4 of the available 8 camera tracks.)

The 3 wireless mics will be panned Left and sent to Left Master. This will go out to another "wireless mix" track on a camera (1 more camera track used, total 5 now). I’ve been told that this mix track of the wirelesses is what the editors will probably use for the wireless audio, because it’s easier for them to use this one track than to deal with the 3 isolated tracks. But if one mic on this mix is screwing up the whole mix, then they’ll go to the isolated tracks.

If it were me editing, I’d want to use the isolated tracks only, because even if the 3 wirelesses are behaving properly, there will be phasing problems between them on the mix track. But the production may not have the money and time for its editors to deal with the isolated tracks unless they really need to, or they may not care about the quality that much, or they may not know that phasing could be an issue.

The boom will be panned Right and sent to Right Master. This output will be split via y-cable and be sent to both tracks on the Talent Camera. (2 more tracks used, total 7 now)

The Mono Out (mono mix of everything) from the mixer will go to the 8th track on a camera. Also, all mics will go to an Aux which will feed a y-cable which will send one feed to the camera operator's intercom system, and another feed to a small mixer which will step the audio down to mic level so that I can feed a second-rate wireless mic system which will substitute for first-rate wireless headsets for the director and producer.

Each camera will be fed by 2 or more 50’ XLR cables (for the two tracks/camera) joined to an ENG duplex cable which will attach to the camera itself.

It’s not enough just to send audio to the cameras. I have to be able to listen to the audio on the cameras. So, I need to bring all their headphone outs (a stereo output for each camera making a total of 8) back to the mixer and input them to 8 more channels.

To begin this link, the ENG duplex cable has a mini stereo return feed from the headphone out on the camera. At the other end of the ENG duplex cable, this mini stereo headphone return will go through the following adapters: stereo mini female to stereo 1/4” male; stereo 1/4” female to female turnaround; stereo 1/4” male to XLR male. It’s got more simultaneous male/female linkages than Behind the Green Door.

A third 50’ XLR cable for each camera will continue the headphone return back to the mixer where it will go into a XLR female to 1/4” stereo male adapter; then into a 1/4” female stereo to Left/Right split TS males, which each feed two more inputs on the mixer (8 total).

These 8 inputs of audio on the mixer will be what I use to monitor the audio on the cameras. They do not get recorded to anything.

The wireless tracks, isoated and mix, will go to Subgroup 1. The boom tracks will go to Subgroup 2.

On the Control Room/Phones selector, I will listen to Subgroups 1 and 2 and fade up the returns from whatever camera tracks I want to listen to at any moment. Now that’s power.

I will calibrate meters as follows. I’ll use my tone generator to send tone to all cameras. Left and Right Master will be set to Unity. 0 dB VU on the mixer will equal -20 dB on the cameras. Then I set all return input trims and faders, and all subgroups, to Unity. Then I set the meters so show the levels of the return inputs, and I set each camera headphone monitor level until its level on the Mackie meter reads at 0 dB VU.

Or, actually, I may have to turn the Trims way down for these camera monitor returns because they are really meant for headphones and may be pretty hot.

In any case, the point is that when the camera is getting -20 dB tone level, the meters for the returning monitor audio read 0 VU. This way, I can double check on the levels on the camera meters by checking the return levels on any return whose fader is set to Unity.

Got that? If it works, I’ll raise your children for you.

Continue . . .

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The Year Rocktoberized

Just as Black history is featured in February, Women’s history in March, Asian Pacific American heritage in May, Hispanic heritage from mid-September to mid-October, American Indian heritage in November, classic rock has traditionally claimed the month of Rocktober.

Classic rock DJ’s spend the eleven other months of the year dutifully muttering the normal month names without inspiration, waiting for that one special month when they can cut loose and bring their full poetic license to bear, capitalizing, as our friend Idiom noted one dinner conversation back in June, on the serendipitous oblique rhyme of the first syllable of the tenth month of the year, “Oct-,” with their favorite music form “Rock.”

But why can’t classic rock shine just as brightly on every month? This Rocktober, Elrond Hubbard presents the full lineup of all twelve months of the year Rocktober-ized to allow classic rock fans to never feel overlooked, never release the gas button on their lighters, never have to go without the “Free Bird” and “Stairway to Heaven” that they don’t quite hear all the time anyway even if we don't mess with the month names.

Vanuhalery
Febujourney -- this was Febrourneyry but Glenn suggested the newer form for clarity.
Mheartch
Aepril
Mayx
Whoon
Juloyd
Eagust
Zepptember or Jefftember
We’ve already got Rocktober, so how about Ozztober
Novendrix
Doorsember or Pretember

Any other suggestions?

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Show Me Some Spirit

During summer, the setting sun was a big warm blob whose light lingered well up to 9PM, reassuring us, like a parent putting a child to bed, that she’ll be just in the next room, she’ll not abandon us. Last Sunday evening (one week before making this post), the sun looked farther away, shining not through fuzzy magnifying haze but through a glass lens from which heat drains quickly. In a few months, she’ll be that dimming bulb left burning at the far end of the attic, neglected, but providing no heat anyway.

There is only so much money I can make in a year, and the year has just 3.5 months left. I was busy for the first half until mid summer. July and August were nearly dead, and the same was true for other freelancers. Now September has tossed me back into another fray of work and I feel like I’m swamped, but I know everything is finite.

I was watching that lens-clear sky while driving home from the RBC Center after spending that Sunday as an afterthought. They had called me for that gig the previous Tuesday while I was in the midst of a 5-day job in Snow Hill, doing 12 or 13 hour days pushing carts all over some high school. We’d get to a room, set up an interview, do the interview, break it down, follow the interviewee to a class and tape her teaching it, head back to the carts and move to another interview setup.

The owner of the local company that had hired me on the Snow Hill job was there working with us. He told me, after the first day, that I had worked really hard. “I mean, I’ll get over it,” he said, looking down at me from the lift-gate of his 3-ton Diesel truck. “But I feel I really got my money’s worth out of you today.” He went back to strapping things down in the truck. “Of course, I worked every day like that for 40 years.”

I knew why he liked the way I worked. It was because I helped set up and take down lights, and push carts, and load and unload the truck. All this I did in addition to doing my primary job -- audio -- which means I never got a break. Between shooting stints I was moving equipment around. During shooting stints I was either monitoring audio for an interview, or wearing the mixer and holding up the boom for our cinema verité classroom tapings which sometimes lasted for entire class periods. Those days were some of the most physically draining I’ve ever had, and they were long, and there were a lot of them (a whole week!).

So, on Tuesday of that week, after two of those grueling days, I was looking forward to the weekend and not exactly eager when I was called by producer B to work at the RBC Center the following Sunday. But, remembering the previous slow months, I figured I better take it. We freelancers have to be like squirrels maniacally gathering nuts to save up for the dry spells.

I got back home late that Friday night and, thankfully, had Saturday off to rest my arms. I was supposed to get call time and directions for Sunday by email, but by Saturday evening, when I left to go to a ballroom dance in Raleigh, I had received nothing. While in the car, I called producer B at home and left a message saying I didn’t know where to be the next day. When I got to the dance at 9pm, she called me and said she thought the other producer, J, had emailed me, but he must have forgotten. So she told me that the call time would be 7:30 AM the next morning.

Gulp. I had thought it would not be so early. I had planned to pick up the equipment in Raleigh after the dance, but with that early call time, this was looking like a bad idea. I should have gotten it before the dance, or maybe not gone to the dance at all.

But I was already at the dance, so I stayed until I felt the pressure of the next day weighing too strongly, then I left and got the gear. When I left, I found another message on my phone left at 10:30PM asking if I could bring wireless headphones for the clients so they could hear the audio I was getting. The caller knew it was short notice and would understand if I could not.

The equipment source does not have wireless headsets exactly, but we can rig their cheaper wireless mics to function as wireless headsets. When I arrived at the equipment source I saw that one audio kit was already out, and other lighting and camera gear on the floor ready to go out, on other jobs. The gear I needed for my job was there, and so were the additional wireless systems that could be used as headsets. But with all that gear in flux, I didn’t want to just take more than I had reserved without checking with someone. And at that hour, it was too late to check with anyone. Plus, I know that clients never listen on their wireless headsets. They try them for half an hour, set them aside, and don’t use them for the rest of the day. So I decided that indeed, it was too short notice to include these.

I got 4 hours of sleep. Still tired from the previous week, I arrived at the RBC Center that clear Sunday and was asked by producers B and J, first thing, if I had gotten the wireless headsets. No, I told them. They wanted them. I said I’d have to check -- did they want me to call the guy at 7:30 AM on a Sunday? Yes they said with that finality cultivated by years of producing.

I called, praying that the guy had turned his cell phone off so that I would not wake him. He had. I left a message, then told B and J that I had not reached him, that I could get the headsets, but there was a chance that someone else had reserved them and we might have to give them up.

I spent the next half hour of precious setup time going to and from the equipment place again. I got back to the RBC and started frantically setting up my cart and putting the audio gear on it. I rolled it over the camera. Normally I just send an audio feed by cable to the camera. They said that they needed me to send second feed to the video playback guy so he could record audio too. Okay. So I would be connected to camera and to playback as well.

They had a 200 mm lens on the camera, meaning they’d be shooting long distance “zoomed” shots. They had told me on the phone that the job would be a “documentary style” shoot of “person on the street” interviews at the Caniancs Carnival. A 200 mm lens for that? I would have to stand near the interview subject getting audio on boom, and send the audio some 30 feet back to the camera. One camera feed cable was not long enough. Luckily, I had another. I linked them together, taping the joint to protect it from scratches from the pavement it would be dragged across, and to keep the mini headphone return feed, which is just mini connectors, from becoming detached. The cable joint looked like a person’s hand when a broken finger in a splint is taped to the adjacent good finger. In LA, where the cameraman was from, they would have a single cable long enough for this run, but here in NC, there is just not demand for stuff like that.

At 8:30 AM the carnival started filling with people. There were crowd noise, generators, large blowers to keep the Moonwalk attractions inflated. I said to director A and producer J, “You know there’s going to be a lot of background noise, right?” They knew. Alright then. It’s their video.

We started interviewing random Caniacs. Sure, they were fans wearing mock jerseys. Sure, they had come out at this hour on a Sunday to show their support. But could they put forth the spirit for camera when asked?

Director A would say to them, “Okay, I’m gonna ask ‘What’s “Giant” for you, and you tell me, okay? And put some spirit into it. Really show me what you’ve got on camera, okay?”

So, a woman in her 20’s would stand and think a minute about “What’s giant for her,” and say in a contemplative voice something like, “Well, hmm, I think family is important. School.” Director A would ask her to really show her enthusiasm for camera, and she would raise her voice a little for the next part, “winning another championship,” then drop back to her original volume.

Or there would be a little kid afraid to talk. “Umm,” he might say almost inaudibly over the carnival din. I’d have the boom mic right in front of him pointed up at his mouth. “An elephant,” he would say.

Between interviews, I waved producer J over. It was hard for me to go to him because I was wearing the audio gear, and I had cables running off me back to camera and playback. So J came over to me and I told him that we had clients and crew talking nearby, and I could hear them in the mic. Maybe we couldn’t keep the carnival quiet, but we could keep our own people quiet, right? He went and told them, and they were quiet for the next interview, but then they went back to talking as they had been.

The producers and director suddenly decided to move the camera. They made this decision 30 feet away from me, at camera, and I didn’t hear them. I just saw the camera assistant yanking cables off the camera, and I went to rescue my cable. I laid the boom across the mixer hanging off my shoulders, coiled up my two long cable runs, went to my cart, put everything on it, and pushed it, following the camera cart. The camera cart stopped and the camera assistant set up the tripod, and I parked my cart behind them and slung my gear back on my shoulders and went to the playback guy to hand him the end of that cable so he could plug in. Director A had a new interview subject nabbed already and was prepping him. I went to camera, paying out the playback cable behind me, and plugged into camera. The grip already had the reflector board in place to fill in light on the interviewee. I was just beginning to pay out camera cable and video playback cable behind me and head toward the interviewee when the director started the interview. I thought, “I’m not going to yell for them to wait.” And then someone noticed audio wasn’t ready yet and said, “Hey wait.” In general, they hate waiting on audio. There is always time (in this case, about 1 minute) for camera and lighting setup, but when that's done, if audio is still not ready, producers and directors tend to start griping. The director looked me up and down as I took my position. I lowered the boom over the interviewee’s head and returned the director's look thinking, “No, you are not going to tell me I have to move faster on this job.” They can plant and shoot the camera on whim, and not tell me when they're about to move, but when they're set again I have to run cables, that's all there is to it. He didn’t say anything to me and just started the interview over. It was the only time that day they waited on audio.

One little girl, when asked what was giant for her, said, “The Twin Towers?” This gave director A pause. Nope, can’t be having a reminder of tragedy and America’s weakness in a Canes spot. “Is there anything else that’s giant for you?” he said.

She stretched one arm straight in the air and pressed her face against that shoulder. She put her other arm behind her head and grabbed the straight one. She squinted up at the sun and said, “The Twin Towers?”

There’s one for the cutting room floor.

After several barely audible little kids, I told director A that we really weren’t getting their audio very well, and maybe we should start putting body mics on them. He didn’t want to take the time. The cameraman suggested we just clip body mics on them exposed at the top of their shirts. That seemed contradictory to the care they were putting into their image, what with the 200 mm lens and all. Director A said he’d think about it.

We moved to a location that was better for audio. I told them. I said, “This is great for audio. Get all you can here.” So we cranked them through. Then producer J and director A had a discussion and decided to move back to the previous location. I said, “Just my two cents, but this was better for audio than that.” They chose that. I figured they’d heard enough for one day about the audio they were getting.

There was a VIP lunch as part of carnival day, and we video slouches got the scraps. While getting food, I saw the bus driver who used to drive the Duke Wind Symphony on its spring concert tours. We spoke, and he remembered me. He was a great guy who readily joined in with our jokes and shenanigans. On that Caniancs day, he had driven the opposing team down for the game.

After lunch we did some more interviews, then went inside to videotape the game. We pushed all our carts up to the VIP deck, took our gear out to the mezzanine, and hooked in all the cables. The ushers started griping. We couldn’t block the aisle. We couldn’t put cables across the aisle. The cameraman picked up my taped broken finger cable joint, noticing for the first time the thing I had been using all day to accommodate his 200 mm lens, and said, “What’s this?”

“Audio,” I said. No, it’s a fucking firehose.

Producer J was more upset about our drawing the ushers' attention than anything else that day. “You can’t stand there,” he said to me. I told him I was in the process of moving and I’d stand right over here, out of the way, and by then I had gotten there.

“Tell you what,” he said, “Just go back outside and wait there. I don’t think we need audio on this.”

So I disconnected from camera and went back to the access corridor and put my stuff on my cart. A while later, camera and everything came out of the mezzanine, and we pushed our carts down the corridor to a VIP suite. We paused in the corridor and I took the opportunity to go to the bathroom. I got back, and the camera had gone into the VIP suite to shoot more of the game.

“Do you need to be in there?” said the gaffer, probably wondering about logistics and availability of space.

“Don’t think so,” I said. “They don’t seem to want audio on this. Though I guess I could go in and set the switches for camera mic for them. I don’t suppose they’ve thought of that.”

“I don’t suppose they have,” he said. So I went into the VIP suite. Producer J saw me right away and said, “You can just stand down, I can’t imagine what audio we’d need from this.” Honestly, in that moment, I forgot what I had gone in there for. A cookie? There was a spread of fruit, cold cuts, baked goods, candy. I turned and walked out and sat down in the corridor next to my cart.

The game went on. After maybe half an hour, camera and everyone else came out of the suite and started heading down the hall. I pushed my cart behind them. “Where are we going?” I called. “We don’t know,” answered the grip pushing his cart just ahead of mine.

We corralled at the elevators and someone pushed a button. Producer J came up and told us what floor we were going to. He looked at me and said, “Where are you going?”

Of course I didn't know, and for an instant I felt that I needed to dream up an intelligent answer. Then I realized I wasn't being paid to make that stuff up, so I put the question back in his court. "Wherever you want me to,” I said.

“Just go back to the VIP suite. We’ll call for you if we need you.”

I went back there and parked my cart in the corridor where I could see it from the gangway leading to the mezzanine, then I went up the gangway and stood there and watched the third period of the game, glancing back to check on the cart a few times a minute. The game went into overtime and so did I, racking up a half hour of not getting audio that they would not need. Producer B showed up and said we were wrapped, and I was out of there, another day of genius audio behind me.

That evening, driving home beneath that glass lens sky, I was thinking that life was finite. Pushing carts, holding booms. Sure, anything is possible, but once you fill your days with pushing carts and holding booms, you've pretty much defined it.

But I did have something more -- a possibility. I was due to write to woman C that night. This was someone who was a friend of friend G’s former girlfriend K. Literally, for years, G and K had been trying to get C and me together by having us meet at a party or some other function. I would attend and C would not, or maybe C would attend and I would not. Then G and K split up, and G was planning to move to California, so it looked like it would never happen. Mere days before leaving, G wrote to me and said that K had said I should contact C directly. He gave me her information.

C and I had met for the first time on the afternoon right before I went for that week in Snow Hill. She is cute as promised. She has quirky interests, has taught herself Japanese so that she can translate manga, does various forms of Pacific island dancing and belongs to a troupe that gets paid to perform. I was thinking that she could probably do some serious hip movement -- and hell, I’ve learned some of that myself from my Latin ballroom dancing. We talked for nearly two hours about lots of things, and when we parted ways, it seemed that we would both like to get together again. I told her I’d be out of touch on a hectic out-of-town stint in Snow Hill, but that I’d be in touch when I got back.

It was exactly 7 days later and time to get in touch. I sent her an email that night asking when she might have time to get together again. For three days there was no response, and I asked housemate S for advice. She said I had probably waited too long before writing to her after our first date. I said that usually, I think, I come across as too eager. Now I was too ambivalent? It would be totally dumb if my writing after 7 days, rather than 3 or 4, would stand between us. I could have called her that week from Snow Hill, but it was all 12 and 13 hour work days, and at the end of each, we would shower, eat, and then pretty much go straight to bed. I could have emailed her, but I was having to borrow someone else’s computer in the hotel to check email, and mostly I just responded to work matters. The grip on the show had an iPhone which he kept encouraging me to mess with while he was driving us to and from our location in the 3-ton Diesel truck, but the iPhone is damn hard to type on, especially while sitting in a raucous, vibrating truck.

Thursday, 4 days after I had written her after returning from Snow Hill, I still had no response from her. I was getting a funny feeling about it. She is Internet savvy. She runs a blog that, I gather, has some fan fiction and perhaps racy stuff intended for a certain community. She would not tell me it’s URL (“Maybe if I get to know you better,” she said), so I figured she didn't need to know about Elrond Hubbard. Maybe someday. With some things, it's better to wait. But the point is, she is plugged in. She’s online. I didn’t think her not responding was because of not checking email.

Reaching her was worth another try, and this time I would call. I figured I should come up with something specific and invite her to do that on the weekend. It would, by then, be two weeks since we had first met. I was working on a job in an unfinished part of the American Tobacco Campus that Thursday. I’ve done lots of days of work there, pushing carts past self-assured yuppies lazily dining in the outdoor cafe atmosphere. At the end of such work days, we video folks would be loading the van in the parking deck, all sweaty in our T-shirts, while beautiful couples dressed up would walk by holding hands, even pause near us for a last kiss in the parking deck before parting ways.

I have wanted to join those yuppies, take part on that good life, have a date on the Tobacco Campus -- and maybe I would have my chance with C. During lighting changes, to see what might be going on at the campus this weekend, I flipped through an Independent which I kept on my cart. I could have been helping the lighting guys more, and normally I would, but I had this important matter to settle in my social life. Anyway, I had already helped them a lot during the initial setup, and since we audio guys work during shooting, I could be excused as needing a break when we were not shooting.

I saw that an Irish/folk group would be playing on the Tobacco Campus the next night. That’s not really my cup of tea, but it would be what I would invite her to do. By now it was 7 PM, so during one of the lighting changes, I stepped outside and called her. An automated message answered and said I should enter a mailbox number. Hmm. It seemed she had given me the number she would call for messages, not the number for others to reach her. Damn. I would have to email after all. (And if I’d tried to call from Snow Hill, I wouldn’t have reached her anyway.)

Our shoot ran late, and then we three male crew members and three female producers talked about going to one of the Tobacco Campus’ joints for drinks. The only married male declined and went home. The only unmarried female declined and went home. So that left the two married female producers and me and the other unmarried male crew member having drinks. We gossiped and talked to some semi-drunk guys who were attracted to our female producers. I left around midnight and went home and composed my email.

C's email address is cryptic, akin to something like “hiddendermis@such-and-such.com.” (This is not the real address.) She has angular features and a direct brown eyed gaze which must serve her well doing those Pacific rim dances with her troupe; and her voice was a little high-strung, as if always shadowing itself across a break in a higher register, implying a double-meaning for all her words. I figured, I can relate. I’m a little high-strung myself. I thought that C’s energy level was a good match for mine.

In the email I invited her for dinner and Irish music at the Tobacco Campus, plus a private tour of the secret locations where I work on that TV show. I said, if the music was lame, there was always the Third Friday Art Walk. And, in case she was busy Friday, I mentioned an option for hopping between dance events on Saturday, no previous experience in those particular dances necessary (honestly -- these were low-key events).

I hesitated to send it, thinking it was “too much information” with its proposed plan and backup plans. Then I thought that I should not over-think it. I sent it at 1 AM and collapsed in bed.

The next morning I had a response. She said she was busy Friday. She was busy Saturday. In fact, she had so many commitments to so many people going on right now that she was very stressed and could not imagine taking on any more. Oh, and that was the correct phone number. She only uses that phone for emergencies and for calling for directions when she’s lost.

So. After all that, it comes to this. I had certainly not proposed any “commitment.” But whatever she meant, the gist was clear enough. I wrote back and said that I understood, and maybe some other time we could meet again. But I've got a feeling she's disappeared.

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Stats and Stanzas

Like the double suns rising at dawn on Tatooine, two new blogs are launched by friend and new blogger GC.

I've been saying for a while that if I can manage to scrape a post together every now and then, then he most certainly should. Now he's got outlets for policy commentary and informed poetry. We are in need of his even-temperament and statistical basis, his focus on the needs of the many rather than the needs of the few, or the one -- or an ideology. Do the sci-fi movie references ever stop? No, for as he says, "The Center Bites Back!"

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More Iraq War Haikus

Al Qaeda now gone
From where it was not before
We went to oust it

Invade a country
You'll find enemies for sure
"Duh," as the kids say

First Iraq War Haiku and background are here.

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Froggy Went A-Courtin'

Not Safe for Work!

. . . unless you want your co-workers to think you've just opened a jar of fresh summer night air. This is over ten minutes long.

A plane flies through at the beginning. Listen for some kind of weird phase effect in the left speaker on the plane sound. There was the wall of a house behind me, to block some road noise, so maybe it was reflection off this wall that was causing this phase shift, if that is what it is.

About one-third in, there's an unidentified knocking noise in the left speaker from the woods. It is hard to hear, and it does not sound human, unless it's the Blair Witch. Soon after that, there's one slap of one Birkenstock sole, mine yes, against the concrete underfoot. There are some distant cars, and you might be able to hear the neighbor's air conditioning under all the commotion, but this might have been lost in the data compression.

I don't mean my neighbor. This was not recorded at my house, or there would have been interstate traffic overhanging the whole thing.

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Ghost Wars Calls It

Folks who know me often hear me talking about the modern history book Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll. The book gives extensive information on a lot of events and decisions that lead us not to predict the 9/11 attack. In pundit land these days, there are a lot of oversimplified, accusatory statements about what Bush and Clinton and other government officials did wrong. One thing Ghost Wars does is to show the complexity of these matters and the difficulty in making decisions.

Dick Morris says in Fahrenhype 9/11 that Clinton had the chance to hit bin Laden in 1999 with cruise missiles while bin Laden was at a hunting camp in Afghanistan, and did not. The implication is that Democrats are weak and friendly to terrorists. Ghost Wars says (page 448 of my paperback) that several prominent sheiks and royalty from the United Arab Emirates were also in that camp. Many CIA officials said we should bomb it anyway, but others had very specific concerns. Richard Clarke had built a relationship with the UAE involving arms deals, basing agreements, intelligence exchanges. Much oil flowed to the US from the UAE, and its ports were the most frequently used in the Arab world by the US Navy. An $8 billion deal for UAE to buy 80 F-16 fighters from the US was in the making, and our defense contractors were very happy about the deal. Bombing bin Laden at that hunting camp likely would have killed these prominent UAE people and ruined relationships with that country. Clinton called off the attack. Now, ask yourself honestly, since when has a Republican taken an action that would ruin an arms deal? Would a Republican president have done anything different? And if Clinton had attacked bin Laden there and ruined relations with the UAE, wouldn’t the likes of Dick Morris criticize him for doing so?

Some Reports say that Sudan offered to give us bin Laden, and the Clinton administration declined to accept him. The implication is that Democrats are weak and friendly to terrorists. Ghost Wars says (page 323 of my paperback) that, in 1996, there was some discussion with Sudan about their helping us with intelligence on bin Laden. The Sudan government has said that it did not formally offer bin Laden to us, but instead said that they would give him to us if we could make a legal case against bin Laden. Several senior American officials from that time have said they never received such a message. Nevertheless, there was some discussion in Washington of a hypothetical case of Sudan offering us bin Laden, and the question of whether we could indict him if they did. Sandy Berger said that we did not have enough evidence of bin Laden having commited crimes against the US to indict him. Some federal prosecutors talked of having a grand jury probe of bin Laden to produce evidence to indict him, but American law prevented the Department of Justice and the FBI from telling any other government department about such an investigation.

Looking back on this, it is all too bad. It would have been great to get custody of bin Laden then. But the Clinton administration was standing by the general tenet of our justice system which is “innocent until proven guilty.” This was not being friendly to terrorists, or weak. We all benefit from this tenet of our justice system, and isn’t it one of the aspects of freedom that the pro-war camp continues to say we are “defending” in our Middle East wars?

Ghost Wars tells where everyone came from. When I hear that the anonymous author of Imperial Hubris and Through Our Enemies' Eyes is Mike Scheuer, I think, “I wonder if he was in Ghost Wars,” and I check and sure enough, he was. When Daniel Benjamin or Paul Pillar appear in the news, I check up on them in Ghost Wars. Same goes for when Milton Bearden appears in the credits for The Good Shephard. Lots of information about these folks and more is given in Ghost Wars.

Re-reading parts of it in the past year, the oversight by our intelligence agencies before 9/11 that seemed most significant to me was that surrounding known terrorists Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi. Pages 569-70 of my paperback say that in mid-July of 2001, as part of the ongoing scramble to figure out exactly what al Qaeda was going to do, the CIA discovered that these two terrorists had unrestricted visa access to the US and were probably in our country. But neither was put on a watch list, and the CIA did not formally notify the FBI.

My own thought was, if they had been put on a watch list, they might have been discovered in their cheap hotel nearby in Laurel, Maryland. And if they had been discovered, the specific 9/11 plot may have become clearly understood before it happened. This might be the single most clear instance where the ball was dropped.

In recent days, a CIA report has come out describing errors that agency made before 9/11. The highlight of that report, according to this New York Times article, is that al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were not tracked within our country.

Ghost Wars called it. Go get it, and keep it next to the dictionary.

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No Gettysburg Address

Apologies to Mr. Linkin for overwrought stagecraft and the longest blog post ever

Photographs by E

It’s 98 degrees out here and I don’t have a tent. The call sheet says it will be hot and to bring tents. The coordinator, B, had a tent on his list of things to get. I assumed it would be here. Never assume anything. I’m more worried about the equipment -- the fancy hard drive recorder rented from Nashville, TN -- than myself. I call B.

“Oh, I forgot to set that out for JD to take with him,” B says. He says he will bring it over.

I had thought that maybe the PA sound system guys would have a tent that I could squeeze under, but they only have a 10X10 Easy Up, and they’ve put sides on it and pretty well sequestered themselves. Next to them I’m like the new guy in the shanty town, lacking shelter and needing to find the materials to extend their shelter another unit.

At least I have my Rock ‘n’ Roller cart with shelf to put my gear on. This is one thing I don’t have to think about in advance, because I have it in my car, always.

Cameraman H comes over to kindly ask if I need anything. This is rare. Usually audio is something that non-audio people give a wide berth to, because there’s always something going wrong and they want no part in it -- they just want to be able to say later, when problems are revealed during editing,“Talk to the audio guy about that.”

But H is really nice and he also has little to do during these setup hours. He only needs to point and shoot later. He offers his umbrella and stand, and I gratefully accept it. When he brings it, its shade is dwarfed in the face of this blaring sun, and it covers only the equipment.

I head for the Port-a-Let behind the Revolution Stage, and JD comes toward me from the tent where the bands will be interviewed.

“What’s this about you stealing our tent?” he says.

“I’m not stealing your tent,” I say. “B is bringing the one from the office. Or wait. Where did you get that one you’re using?”

“I saw it in the office yesterday and threw it in the car.”

“Oh, so you got the one from the office already.”

“Yeah, B said to take it, so I took it.”

So there is no tent for B to bring to me. I call B back and tell him JD did get it.

“Well if JD has it, then you should be fine,” B said.

No -- JD is in one place -- the interview tent behind the Revolution Stage. My post is out in front of the stage in the mix/monitor station. On gigs that are unusual for us locals, there is a constant struggle to get the clients to explain the situation, and then for us to explain it each other. My first call about this show had my job totally wrong. B called me to work on this thing with a "Lincoln Park." I had barely heard of them. I pictured some band that had come up through the ranks performing on the mall in Washington, DC, in front of the Lincoln Memorial, amid pristine grass, marble columns, and overweight White tourists in tank tops swaying and clapping their hands.

I was told I would be following a camera person around shooting a host who would be documenting the bands that day. I would also be overseeing two production assistants who would be doing the same as me but with other camera operators, on a less important scale. The local company where B works, which was coordinating this, had all the necessary gear. This type of work was right up their our alley, and mine as well.

Two days later I was told that no, I was to be recording a feed from the sound board and also recording audience mics, meaning mics planted on the stage to face the audience and get its noise. The two audio production assistants would be handling all the roving camera audio work. I told B that doing that roving sound work would be too hard for non-sound people to do alone. He said he had told client/producer M that, but that M had said that their jobs would not be crucial.

I needed a 4-track field recorder with about two business days notice. Around here, there are not many 4-track recorders that have timecode, that are portable and reliable. I checked with one company, but theirs was being used that day. Some folks use laptop computers with audio interfaces for 4-track recording, but I don’t like laptops on set. They are notorious for crashing or acting funny, especially in extremes of temperature. I wanted something that I knew would work reliably. So I said I knew where we could get a recorder from Nashville, TN, but B said shipping would be expensive, so we should see if the producer, M, could bring one from Chicago. So I stayed up painfully late that night typing up our options for what we would need from Chicago in certain scenarios. For instance, there were additional mics we would need to rent, but if they were not available locally, then I would need M to get those in addition to the recorder.

The next morning, I called the local rental company and they did have the mics I could use to cover the audience. We would not need these from Chicago, just the recorder. I told B.

That night I called B to see if M had gotten the recorder from Chicago. B said to call M directly. M said he had not gotten it. But he had gotten the microphones I had said he would need to get if we could not get them locally. B had not told him that we had gotten these, and he had gone ahead and gotten them without checking with us.

We talked about which rental company, the local one or the Chicago one, would be cheaper for these mics he had rented redundantly. I wondered if M would really want to bring the extra case on the plane. “Do you have everything that goes with them?” I said to him. “The zeppelins? Windjammers? Stands?”

I really wanted to get as much as I could from my own sources that I knew would have all the accouterments straight.

“Yeah, I got those,” he said.

I was thinking, there’s no way he would bring heavy stands for outdoor use on the plane. No way he had all this stuff.

Then he said, “Wait - what’s the zeppelin?”

We decided he would cancel this part of his order and go with the local stuff.

I was left with one more more business day, which was Friday, before the day of the show, Monday, to get the freaking recorder.

So on Friday they finally let me call Nashville, and Nashville had one. They could send it to arrive on Saturday. I had planned to be at my Dad’s on Saturday visiting him and his wife, but now I would have to delay that trip so I could receive the gear, take it to Raleigh, put it together with our other gear, and check it all out.

I did all this, spent an hour in Raleigh checking things over, then went to my Dad’s for Saturday night. He and my stepmom were going to Vienna and Prague soon, and I took my travel books to them.

On Sunday, I drove back to Raleigh, put all the gear in my car, drove to Chapel Hill, picked up the other microphones there, and came home. By then I had in my car twenty 25’ 12/3 stingers (heavy extension cords) which may have weighed 150 pounds altogether. I also had ten 15 pound sandbags to hold the C-stands for the audience mics down on stage in wind -- that’s another 150. Then there were the C-stands themselves, maybe 30 or 35 pounds together. Then the audio gear in a couple of bags - - not just the gear for my part, but also the mixers and booms and mics and wirelesses and batteries and harnesses for the two production assistants who were to do the audience and band interviews. My car was sinking low in its wheel wells. The rental folks in Chapel Hill said I should be careful going over speed bumps.

All this prep had sort of mushroomed out of the initial deal of doing “walking interviews,” which we are already prepped for. Now there was all this planning, this calling, this waiting in town for shipments, this rounding up gear in my car. B told M we were doing much more work than expected, and said he would need to pad in some extra payment for us. He said I could get $100 in addition to the payment for the actual work day. It wasn’t really enough, but it was something.

And nobody had really talked about who would round up this gear. This job had simply fallen to me. I decided I would put my mileage on the invoice too.

I explain to B on the phone that I still need another tent and he says he’ll bring it. I go to the Port-a-Let, and then to check on JD and C, the production assistants who were to do the roving audio work. We had planned for them to simply let the host use a stick mic with a transmitter. All they would have to do would be to monitor that one mic.

Now there is talk of adding in body mics. M says there will be multiple band members being interviewed by the host, and he isn’t sure how to handle it. I tell him we had not arranged to do this, but there are body mics in my car and we could do that if necessary.

This discussion gets interrupted when the director wants to have a crew meeting. Surely this will be a waste of time for me. We gather ‘round and the director tells everyone that this is a Rock and Roll show, and the important thing is to have fun. I always worry when they start saying we should have fun. It makes me think they are not paying attention to important things. He asks if anyone has seen a certain Pink Floyd video. I look around at the cameramen's faces. They are all familiar -- they shot Hurricane Fran, they shot the Duke Lacrosse scandal. They do whatever you need. None have seen the Pink Floyd video. The director says he wants this show shot like that video -- not too shaky, but with nice . . . somethings. Zooms? I don’t know what he says here. I just want to get back to getting the audio organized and laying cables and stuff like that.

The meeting breaks into smaller groups where the director will try to convey his vision to the camera guys.

I show C and JD how to calibrate the mixer with the camera levels. I show them the transmitter gain knob on the stick mic and say that that will be the most important point not to distort because they will not be able to adjust that knob on the fly. “Look at this little meter here,” I say to C. He is looking off across the parking lot at some babe or something. “This meter here. You need to watch this. C? Look down here.”

M is presuming that I can just “show them about the levels” and they’ll be good to go, but he doesn’t realize the ADD we’re up against out here, what with having been raised on televised Rock such as we are making this very day.

I ask JD and C if they want me to get the body mics from my car. We look at each other, all three of us imaging what a mess that could turn into for non-audio guys.

“Do you want my car keys?” I say to JD, meaning, they could get the wirelesses from my car if they want to.

“No,” he says, and the body mics are thus nixed. JD was a sonarman in the Navy. Though he doesn't bill himself as an "audio guy," he is way overqualified for "production assistant doing audio." I figure he'll make it work, whatever they do.

JD is not only being a sound production assistant; he is also renting us his laptop computer and backup firewire hard drive. While I hate to depend on a laptop for field recording, I do need it to burn the audio files onto DVD’s later. And since JD has brought a backup hard drive, I think it will be nice to have the recorder simultaneously record the audio in it too. The recorder’s instructions say this will work. But out here in about as much of a “field” as you can get -- the dusty parking lot in front of the Revolution stage -- I can’t get the hard drive recorder to recognize JD’s backup firewire drive. He comes with me back to my station and he can’t get his laptop to recognize his hard drive either. “It worked yesterday,” he says. I say it’s okay -- it was just backup anyway. So the backup was down, but the primary thing, the hard drive recorder, was still okay.

JD has also forgotten to bring the power cable for his laptop, but it has enough battery power to last a few hours. I say that’s okay too. I’ll only use it to burn DVD’s later, I won’t keep it running for the whole concert. We close his laptop and assume it has gone to sleep.

While I’m trying to talk to JD, the PA emits a blast of crackly, shimmery white noise sounding like an afterburner pointed right at you, something I once recorded from a distance. It’s like we’ve come out to some desert to witness a UFO landing, and the PA speakers are our Devil’s Tower. There’s an emphasized frequency in the sound that rises, as if in a phase shift, from bottom to top where does that “flipping over” effect and comes back down again. I love that sound, but not while I’m trying to think and work out my own problems. It stops and, I presume, the PA system is tested. It’s too bad I didn’t have the recorder rolling on that.

M, the director, and some woman with black hair and a dyed blond streak in it come up to me. The woman looks like she’s “somebody,” and I recall that, on the call sheet, there had been mention of talent named Metal-- somebody. She leans on the barricade surrounding the audio monitor area and waits while the director talks to me.

“So, we’ve all done this before,” the director says, and I don’t tell him I’ve never done this before.

“What are you recording on?” he asks me, as if there’s any time to change it. I tell him.

“So, if you mix . . .” he puts his hand to his head, thinking, and I think, “’Mix’? I do not like the sound of that word.”

Metal is wearing a low-cut tank top that I’m deliberately not looking down. I wonder what the big deal about all this is -- the “metal” thing, the black with a blond streak, the death imagery on the tank top just below the cleavage. Days later, I look her up and find out she’s Iranian, and I know exactly what it’s about. Rowrr, go sister! Lead your people out of religious submission and into the cesspool of free love, free market, freedom that your teenagers are reported to adore.

I cut off the director’s thinking and say, “I’m just recording four tracks. It wouldn’t make sense to mix them out here, wearing headphones. I won’t really know what it sounds like.” Not to mention, I never never ever actually mix music for a particular taste. I only mix voices, when I have to, to minimize phase problems and overlapping noises between “talent” members. I’m not the Rock and Roll guy this director presumes M has hired for him out here.

M concurs, and the director is appeased for now. They go away.



Another production assistant, E, comes to me and says he’s been told to help me. Thank goodness. E is a former student of mine, a great worker with a way of doing things slowly and quietly and getting it done fast, without your realizing he was even really doing it. On another set once, someone needed a light adjusted and E came out of nowhere with a ladder and was halfway up it before anyone else had noticed him. Someone said, “E’s” already on it -- he’s the stealth grip.”

I ask E to run mic cables up to the stage for the audience mics. The sound system PA guys have run all their cables in one bundle up the center of the audience area, from center stage to their mix/monitor station. This is a dirt and gravel parking lot -- there is no place other than alongside their cables to run ours. I know I’m gonna get an induced hum from being so close to their cables. And all they’ve got to cover their cables are rubber mats -- no proper cable crossovers to keep the moshing feet off the cables. But this is okay with them because their cables are very robust. Mine are not nearly so sturdy.

I go up to the stage and ask the road crew up there where I can put my audience mics. Their leader shows me exactly where I can put them, right up front at the edge of the stage. They are directional mics, but it’s still going to be a challenge to minimize the amount of PA audio that gets on them. There are the huge PA speakers, and then there are smaller towers of monitor speakers flanking the stage pointing directly across it to the other side.

I carry the C-stands up there, the 8 sandbags (4 per stand), the boom hooks, the booms, the mics. It’s kind of silly to have these audience mics on boom poles on C-stands, because I do not need the extension that the booms can provide. The reason I have them is it was the only way I knew of, on short notice, to mount such a mic on a stand. But collapsed, the booms don’t hold themselves firmly in the C-stand mounts, and I’m worried they won’t stay.

E appears on the gravel below the stage. “We can gaffer tape that in,” he said about the boom in the mount.

But we never get around to taping the booms into the mounts.

To my surprise, when I go back to my little sound board and turn up the faders for the booms, they sound fine. No hums. I convince E to go out into the audience area and yell out like he’s the audience. In my headphones, he sounds like the last person on earth hollering alone in wilderness. Slight gusts of wind kick up dirt and make swirling clouds. To the side there are generators making their awful noise. I reckon those will be drowned out by the audience.

I’ve got to split out more outputs from my audio set to feed the camera. I ask E to listen to this message that’s come in on my cell phone for me. While I work, he repeats the message out loud.

“B called. He had to go home to get his credit card to pay for the tent. While at home he locked himself out of his house. He had to get his drug-dealer neighbor to break into his house for him. He’ll be here with the tent shortly.”

The PA sound guys turn on some new amp somewhere, and a buzz appears in my left audience mic. I don’t think there’s a whole lot I can do about it. The PA guy says I could lift the ground, but he doesn’t think that’s the problem. “These people know how to do power,” he says. And anyway, I can’t find my ground lifter. Shit. That’s been lost on some other show.

So I make up a reason for the buzz. I figure, it is being induced in the audience left mic by power running to the sub woofers at the foot of the stage. I ask E if he can pull the cable for that mic out away from the sub woofer and run it just behind the audience barricade instead. I think this will never work. But it does. The buzz goes away.

Cameraman A comes and sets up his camera on the tripod near me, and I start feeding audio cables to it. We had not known if there would be a camera close enough to me to feed audio to it. If we had known this -- known, even, that it would have 4 tracks, unlike most cameras that have just 2 -- then we would not have really needed to rent the recorder from Nashville. I split some outputs from the mixer with Y-cables, and also use auxiliary outs. I run tone through the system to calibrate levels with the camera, and then it’s a major tour through the audio menu on the camera to turn off the irrelevant options and turn on the relevant ones. Two cables have to go in the front inputs on the camera, and I have to figure out if these receive line level or mic level. It’s mic level, so I have to go back and recalibrate my mixer to the recorder so that those two mixer outputs can run at mic level. Then something is wrong. One of the 4 inputs to the camera is not getting anything.

I have run these cables to the camera without taking time to label them. I was thinking that I should get everything set up as quickly as possible, and I would label cables later if I had time. Now I have to follow the cables through the spaghetti tangle in the dirt to switch things around and figure out why I’m not getting signal to channel 4 in the camera. All the cables and adapters seem to work, so maybe the problem is the mixer’s auxiliary output. But I am out of splitters and outputs from the mixer, so I don’t have another way to feed input 4 on the camera. So, again, it all comes down to the hard drive recorder from Nashville. It is the only recording device getting all four tracks okay.

The tent arrives. B and E and another PA raise it and then carry it into place over me.

The cameraman has stood by patiently while I have been fussing with his camera. I finally let him step back up to his camera. He says, “All these other camera guys out here have never done this before. I know what [shots] the director wants. But we don’t know if they know.”

Somebody opens a floodgate somewhere, and the parking lot fills up with teenagers and twenty-somethings, many trying to emulate, apparently, Metal's garb. They start chanting, hollering, and my audience mics are working fine. The first band comes out, makes their first ear-splitting howl into the microphone, and I yank the gain down to get control of it. The bass rumbles in my chest, the my skull. My super-isolating Remote Audio headphones do a good job of keeping this excess sound out of my ears, but not out of my bones.


On every musical accent now, on the right audience mic, there’s a crackle of distortion. I click on the -20 dB pads, readjust gain, but this does not help. The left audience mic is fine; only the right keeps distorting. And between songs, when the audience screams, the afflicted mic gets an extra roar like wind that shouldn’t be there.

I stand and look over the tops of heads at my mics on stage. My mics really stand out like video equipment does anywhere. The rest of the stage is black, creating the scenario of death and revolution. My furry boom mics on silvery C-stands are as intrusive here as any boom is when it drops into a scene. This whole time I’ve felt like I’ve been tacked onto this show as an afterthought, and now it really shows in the way my equipment looks against theirs. Did I mention that we are doing this for MySpace? They want to “televise” these concerts and make them look like they’re happening “live” while being viewed, even though that’s not the case of course.

I think that maybe the problem with my audience right mic is its positioning. I take careful note of how the audience left mic is positioned, and plan to adjust the right one between bands.

I see a man carrying a woman out of the area. She is upright, stiff, and he holds her against his hip as if he’s pretending to dance with a life-size blow up doll. I presume she has heat exhaustion. I see three more women get carried out by their male escorts during the 3 to 4 hour concert.

After the first set I leave my post and go dodging between people to the stage. I have a badge that gets me back there. The stagehands are moving the previous band’s instruments off the stage, and I see the drum set for the next one on a cart ready to be rolled on. The stagehands are all wearing black, and I’m wearing all white and a brown belt and a red hat. Dodging stagehands and cables, I dance out to the front of the stage and reach around the monitor speakers and adjust my mic, praying that no sudden blast comes out of them and startles me into falling off the stage.

Leaving the stage, the ramp at the rear is blocked by equipment going down it. I vault off the edge of the stage and run back to my station.

The second set starts, and I realize that my other audience mic, the left one, has become dislodged in its mount and tilted upward to point at the sky. We never did tape that down. Remarkably, despite its bad positioning now, it picks up the audience sound pretty well -- so well I can hardly believe it. I wonder if, by some optical illusion, it seems to be pointing more askew than it really is. In any case, it’s embarrassing. I hope nobody notices and thinks I don’t know how to point my freaking directional mics.


At the next break, I push through the audience to the front and up onto the stage again. I reset my mics, trying again to make the audience right mic sound decent. I do this at every break between bands, and every time, I dodge the stage hands to get to the front of the stage, lean out around the monitor speakers, run back and vault off the side of the stage because equipment is blocking the ramp. I never get the audience right mic to sound right. And the audience left mic swings up to point at the sky another time. I never find out if someone is bumping it, or if vibration is doing this.

I think, maybe the problem with the audience right mic is the mic itself. There’s not much I can do about that, but I can check it later.

I wonder if it is the mixer input. I put this idea out of my head, but in following days I think that this probably was it, and that I should have changed its input at some point.

Four days later I get my hands on this mixer again and you check the input, and there is no problem.


After just three band sets, of vocals amplified to foghorn levels, guitars played like nails under hammers, a bassline that seems to have been one single amorphous, continuous note that seized our guts like anacondas, it’s over. The music has been, for me, like Metal’s garb: why the big deal? What are you revolting against? The only thing revolving here has been my eyeballs over the whole nonsense of the thing; and yet, with my own equipment difficulties, I hardly have grounds for acting superior. I never did get that audience right mic to sound right. But I have the audience left track, so the producer and director will have something. And we had cameras up at the stage shooting the audience, so if they had their camera mics turned on, they probably have lots of audience noise too. I hope they had their camera mics turned on. There wasn’t time to check on this, and you can’t count on anything.

The crowd disperses pretty quickly, leaving a layer of empty water bottles on the dust and gravel. “Don’t they know this is a green tour?” someone says. I know I gotta get my mics off the stage before the stagehands start yelling “Who’s are these?” and toss them aside.

JD comes running up to me. He’s been doing audio on band interviews at the interview tent, and he says, "[The director] wants to send audio to two cameras. How do I do that”

He can use my Y-cables, which I’ve just finished using. I pull them out from their connections and go with him back to the interview tent.

“He’s being a dick,” said JD. At the interview tent, they have been cycling bands through, and they’re going to continue interviewing the bands that will go on the main stage, which I will not be recording. (Linkin Park was to be on the main stage only, so I did not get to see them.) In a sense, JD has a harder audio job than I do today. I reroute JD’s audio using my Y-cables, and he says he’ll be okay. I go back to my recording station out in front of the stage, where Latino workers are now picking up the water bottles from the parking lot.

I feel free, relaxed, when I now traverse the parking lot. The recording is done, such as it was. Like live TV, once it’s over, you can’t go back. I just have to hope that the audio files are not corrupt in the hard drive recorder, the only recording device I could get to completely work during the frantic setup.

M comes up in a golf cart and I tell him about the troubles with one of my audience mics. He is not worried. Through all this crazy preparation and setup, he has been jovial, and I kind of admire this, though I can’t say his last-minute prep and cost-cutting have made our jobs easy.

On my shelf cart, JD’s black Apple laptop has become covered with dust. I dust it off with my hands before I open it. When I do open it, it won’t wake up or turn on. I hold the button down for a few seconds, and nothing happens.

I walk back to the interview tent and tell JD, who is not working on an interview at the moment. He comes with me back to my cart, and he can’t get it to work either. Apparently it did not go to sleep when closed, and the battery drained. And he has forgotten the power cable today. I’ve had this major malfunction on other shoots, when I can’t get the files off the hard drive recorder and I have to send it back soon.

We carry the laptop and the hard drive recorder to another tent, near the interview tent, where another production assistant, LL, is importing media from the “P2” cards used to record audio and video in the cameras. There is an extra Apple laptop power cable there that we can use, and we get JD’s working. I connect it by firewire to the hard drive recorder, and the files start going over. Whew.

It’s past four o’clock, and my work now is to pack everything up, get the audio burned onto DVD’s, and get to the Fed Ex late dropoff desk by 8:30. I have not eaten since I had breakfast at home at 6am. There was a chance to eat breakfast at some crew tent this morning, and another chance for lunch, but I never felt like I had time to stop working and go get it. As it was, I worked constantly and got sub-optimal audio.

I ask E to coil and clean the audio cables that had been moshed into the dirt during the concert. Someone has fetched some white rags for the production, and E uses these and some bottled water. I pack equipment and get my car and drive it to my cart. B also appears with his van, and I dump as much as is ready to go in his van so that my car, going out, will not have the same load as coming in.

Once my car is loaded, I drive over to the interview tent to pick up the audio gear I had allocated for the “production assistant” audio techs. The director is throwing a fit because audio that C had recorded, the audience interviews, was unusable. The director has C listen to it. I’m nearby picking up stingers and more sandbags to put in my car. I wonder if I should go participate in that conversation, but I think I’d probably just muddy the waters. Producer M and C can explain to the director that C is just a production assistant hired to do what they said would be a really simple audio job. I overhear that the problem was background noise, and I think, “What do they expect? There’s a freaking metal-hip-hop concert going on!” I know that inexperienced sound folks are shy about sticking the boom in close, so probably the background noise could have been reduced some by closer booming; and I know that they did not put a wireless mic on Metal, something that would have isolated her voice a little better from the background.

Metal is lounging nearby, seemingly unconcerned that much of her day’s work, the audience interviews, may not be usable. It’s not her department. She just waits for instructions and does her job when told to.

The director calls me over to stand by him while he listens to my audio of the band. I tell him that track 4, my audience right mic, is not good. The other tracks are okay.

“What am I hearing on this?” he says, pointing to the laptop that LL has been importing media into. I say I don’t know that system and look to another guy who’s dealing with the media. He leans in and opens the audio tracks and I suggest they turn of number 4 and listen to the other three mixed. The director starts listening, and says, “It’s low,” and I don’t know if he means the audio or the camera position. We can see dancing heads of audience members, and dust arising to fill the long-lens shot and obscure the band on stage.

“Fucking dust bowl,” says the director. “Okay, these are not the shots I want.” He calls Cameraman A in, the cameraman who had said earlier that he knew what the director wanted. The director starts telling him what he wanted, and how the shots were not what he wanted. I walk away. I have work to do.

I work on separating the audio equipment. JD and C will be staying for more interviews; other gear has to be returned to three different sources. The director comes over to me and tells me the “board mix” sounds flat, with no bass. I tell him that’s how board mixes sound. If he wants better audio of the band, he needs to ramp up the audio production value and record separate tracks for most of the mics and instruments on stage, and mix them later for a richer sound. He says, “That’s more work for the editors, but okay.” He walks away. Well how the fuck does he think they get good live albums? Has he not thought about this? He’s the Donald Rumsfeld of directors.

They are gonna send JD and a cameraman into the audience again to get more audience interviews. This time, they’ll put a wireless on Metal and use the boom on the interviewees. I rig the wireless receiver into JD’s audio bag and tell them to shoot tight shots so the boom can get in close.

Days later I hear that much of this audio was not usable either! And the director, unhappy with a lot of the video footage from the entire day, wanted to pay only for the shots he could use. The local coordinator, B, had to tell them that would not fly at all. We had turned in our invoices, by God, and needed to get paid.

By 8:15 I’ve completed the Fed Ex dropoff. By 9pm, in near darkness, I’ve loaded the 20 extension cords and audio cables and mics into the secret night depository for the local rental company. Pairs of eyes shining at me from blackness between buildings tell me I’m not locking one of the company cats in the depository when I shut it. That’s good, I would hate to do that. It's been a 13 hour day.

At Golden Corral, my waitress is from the Czech Republic. I think this must be a good omen for my Dad and stepmom who are going there.

Continue . . .

Summary only...

Ask Jason Bourne

Dear Jason,

My girlfriend is dumping me because, in her words, she’s tired of my “broke, no-airconditioning, sweatin-all-night-and-never-changin’-the sheets, sittin-around-in-underpants-blogging, never-taking-her-to-Red-Lobster, punk-ass.” For me, however, living without air conditioning is part of my basic sense of identity. It’s how I keep my edge, see. Buying a $100.00 window unit which is energy efficient and would raise the electric bill by only $3.75 per month would require some kind of extensive psychoanalysis which I can not afford. So, as someone who is basically living in a constant identity/supremacy/ultimatum crisis, do you think I should sacrifice my fundamental sense of self to keep the love of this wonderful woman, or should I stick to my principles and let her go find someone who is more sensitive to her needs for living like a normal person?

-Extra Self Absorption

Dear Extra:

Security cameras are scanning the station from their mounts on the walls 10 feet overhead, and I know where all of them are looking. I’m telling this guy by phone where to walk so he is not seen, and I know where to walk so I am also not seen. And there’s a sniper behind the rotating advertising sign. I know this just because I see the sign and it is a place where a sniper would hide. I run clattering up a metal stairway as I often do, and there’s a guy about to come out from behind the door with a gun so I grab his wrist and pull him into the landing and swing him around and bash him into the metal railing and twist him down by the wrist and seize his gun just as another guy is coming from the same hallway. I continue this twisting motion to whirl and give the second guy my elbow in the gut which surprises him because, just a second ago, I was taking this gun out of the first guy’s hand, and this second guy thought I hadn’t seen him coming. My elbow stops him, and I give him the back of my fist in the nose while shooting with the newly acquired gun, and he goes down to reveal the third guy coming behind him whom I shoot as well.

***

I went to “Bourne Ultimatum” thinking it would be good Zen practice. I had not seen “Identity” or “Supremacy,” so I would have no context for what was to happen. I would simply be living in the moment, without judgment, without expectation.

As the movie started and Bourne was busting through his first glass shop window and raiding the medicine shelves, friend “G” leaned over and said, “See, the government made him stronger and erased his memory.”

“Like Wolverine?” I said, looking for a point of reference. A few weeks ago, at a party, this very cool woman was telling me about how she has a titanium cheekbone and femur because of a terrible car accident that occurred many years ago. I said, “You’re like Wolverine!” and then felt kind of bad for saying that.

“Not that much,” said G, “But his mind is erased. So he’s a badass, but kind of fucked up too.”

Ah. So basically, through this whole movie, he chased and was chased toward an astounding conclusion. And that conclusion was his learning that, um, he had entered a government program where they made him stronger and erased his memory.

Well, I guess you could say that he got a little more than that out of it. He regained his memory of all the people he had killed. I guess he didn’t go to “Ultimatum” school for nothing.

I was very interested to see the name of this producer in the credits. I worked as key set PA on the first movie he directed. There was a lot of talk during the making of that movie that he did not know what he was doing. I think, basically, the problem was that he was kind of dorky in manner. For instance, when trying to boost people's spirits, he told the story about how, on "Jaws," the shark had hardly worked, but look how that movie had turned out! (Everyone who has taken a film appreciation class, or not even that, knows this story. I don't know why he thought it would help anyone to tell it.)

The producers had come from a theater background, and this was their first movie too. A lot of dumb decisions were made, and the experienced first assistant director would throw tirades over basics, like the proper way to establish a shot order so that you move the camera, set walls, and lights as little as possible. We were shooting much of it in a warehouse off Hwy 70 one July, and it was unairconditioned and blazing hot. They had this lousy AC unit on a trailer parked outside pumping cool air in via an insulated corrugated tube. We PA's had to move that tube around so that its opening was always at the top of the set wall where they were shooting. After a few days, that corrugated tube was shredding, and insulation was sticking to our sweaty arms and blowing in the air. We lost time one day when this actress got a piece of insulation in her eye. This was kind of my fault actually. I was on a ladder aiming the opening of the tube, and a grip looked up and said "don't point that down here when they turn it on." Just then, it came on, and debris that had loosened inside it during its last move shot out in a cloud, and something got in the actress' eye. I felt terrible, but no one really traced the incident back to me.

The director had a lot of his newbie friends from college working on it, and they also needed a lot of "breaking in." The seasoned key grip and best boy electrician called them "FOD's" or "Friends of [the director]."

One day, near the end of the production, I was crouching on the floor at the top landing of the Gothic stairway in this library when I looked up to see that the director was standing next to me, his rear end facing me. He was wearing his shirt untucked, so I clipped a clothespin to the bottom of his shirt. This is something people do to each other on sets. They clip clothespins to each other this way, so you walk around with a clip on your shirt without knowing it. It’s just about the only time I ever did it to someone.

Once, I drove the director and this producer, also working on the movie, to the airport. She kept telling him not to listen to certain people on the crew, to follow his vision, because he really had something special. I thought she was full of it. But now look who’s telling whom what to do. That director went on to direct lots of successful movies, and then to produce others, as you can see from his IMDB listing. Me, I’m still working on local car ads. But what can you say. The important thing is who you are, not what you do. I’m just glad all the pieces for my Rock’n’Roller cart with expandable shelf kit have come in. Now, when I work on those car ads, I don’t have to carry the gear all the time on my shoulders. I can set it on the cart and push it around. Man, that day would have been so much easier if I had had my cart then. Now I can’t wait for an opportunity to use it. Other folks say good audio is in the mics, the preamps, the recorder. I say it starts with the cart.

I think Archer knows this director from college. Archer, is this true?

Continue . . .

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