February 28, 1997

Fun And Games In The Valley

Bank holdups and setting up lights.

Today I got started a little slowly and made it out the door by 10am, figuring that it only takes 10 minutes to get to Babylonian anyhow. As I got on the 170 (Hollywood) freeway, I heard the d.j. on the station I was listening to say that there was some kind of police action at Laurel Canyon and Victory and anybody in the vicinity should just avoid the area.

Well, I thought, the 170 does go right over Laurel Canyon and Victory, but...except for a couple of lookie-loos, what could the problem be? So I got on the freeway.

An hour later, I pulled into the parking lot at Babylonian and wondered if maybe I should just go home again, this time taking some other route home.

In between getting on the 170 and arriving at the studio,

Traffic slowed almost immediately after I got on to the freeway;
I stopped counting the helicopters (police, media, or tourist) over the area when I got to seven and it was interfering with my driving;
I got off the 170 at Burbank by following the herd that was exiting off the on-ramp (who was the first brave soul to try that one, I wonder);
I tried to go up Lankershim, but the hilarity of the police chasing the suspect or suspects forced me to detour waaaaay around.

Whee. Ha.

At Babylonian the bank holdup/police shootout/subsequent house-to-house search was all anybody was talking about or watching on the ubiquitous television sets. "They knocked down the shed and the guy wasn't even in there!" "They're using tanks!" "They don't even know how many suspects there are!"

And, of course, from Jeffrey: "Diane, why'd you rob the bank?"

"I just bought a house. Wasn't my idea to have a shootout, so I split with the loot."

Jeffrey was wrapped up in a one-man project today, so the two things I did were: review a director's reel for a possible directing slot (I gave the director high marks; I hope they hire him) and hang out on set after lunch. The scene involved getting a close-up of a character speaking on an subway car. Simple, right?

You have never seen so many damn lighting problems in your life.

They had to get the shadows on his face right. They had to bring strobes in to mimic the motion of the train, and, because there had to be strobes on both sides, they had to set up a complex series of flags to dampen the glare of the strobe from the front...where the camera was and where the audience should think the other wall of the train was. It took two hours to set up and get the shot.

I knew they were going to have to do the same damn thing again to get the reverse angle (the reaction shots) for the other character in the scene, so I left. Standing around was both a)hurting my back and b)putting me in the way of a lot of foot traffic. But it was fascinating, seeing how they set up the shot. I can't wait to see it on TV, because simultaneously my brain will remind me of how the shot was done and be convinced that they're in an underground train.

I love this business.