Is there any work that you've been a part of that we would recognize? Anything you want to show off to us and be like "Yea, I was a part of that production team"?
My favorite project is a short film promo for
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes that was funded by Vice/Motherboard and sponsored by Fox. We shot it on film (no one uses film anymore these days) for $100k. It's also been the most expensive job I've managed to date. Despite getting the job done, I learned that I am not yet 100% ready to manage jobs of this caliber yet. It was really tough for me.
We shot at 4 locations in Downtown LA over the course of a weekend. 3 of the locations were on Saturday, and we had a split day on Sunday (split meaning that we started our day around 3pm and went well into the early morning). We wrapped out day 2 at something like 7am on Monday morning. The guy who gets murdered is actually the owner of the residence. He did a good job considering he had never acted before. One of the extras tried to sell me some weed. And that dog is the brother of the pup from Anchorman (the original Anchorman pup has passed away).
Judging by YouTube hits, the most popular video I've worked on is:
I was the Asst. Prod. Coord. on this, which entailed coordinating for art dept, some of production, and casting/booking all of the concert extras.
We shot the rural areas in Piru, CA on day 1, the concert scenes in a parking lot in DTLA and the cityscapes on day 2.
Now that you know the world of yo-yo's exist, will you buy one? They really are hella fun.
I'm interested! But it would have to be one of those fancy gyros. I don't think my dollar store yo-yo will cut it.
What was the best 'fad' craze you had while growing up?
Dude, I loved pogs. I still have a small stash in my comic case. My favorite slammer was:
Slap bracelets were fun, too.
And, playing pencils. The goal is to break the other players pencil with a flick of yours.
One of the bad ones was Cross Colors and backwards clothing. I was pretty poor growing up and lived in an area that was one step up from the hood. Thankfully, I wasn't interested in Cross Colors and I couldn't make sense of how to pee with backwards pants on. They were both very short lived.
Do you ever make your interns or assistants do weird things just to mess with them?
I make them wear blue dresses and bring kneepads...
Actually, if I'm working with people I know, one of my favorites is freaking out and telling a greenie that we lost the keys to the dolly. The dolly requires no keys.
Some other people like to ask the new PAs to find the keys to the lift gate.
I feel like this one is too easy to figure out, though, because some of the lift gates are finicky and require the driver to do something special in the cab. The interior light can be that way, too. Plus, the PA can ask other members of their team for the answer. The dolly gag requires the PA to bug the grip dept and camera dept, which they typically view as a no-no. It's a do-not-speak-unless-spoken-to sort of deal with the other departments.
When I first read this, my dog was asleep on my chest and my fat orange cat was laying on my left leg. Otherwise, I have a day off today!
