Nightstalker

August 23, 2005
Episode: The Five People You Meet in Hell
Location - L.A.

Another long day. I clocked in at 11:00 am and clocked out at 1:12 am, next morning. The office set of the Los Angeles paper that Kolchack works for is on the 16th floor of a Downtown L.A. building, and base for the Background is on the 15th floor, so today meant a lot of elevator rides up and down. It also meant that when I was not on set, I was in an air conditioned office space with a view of the L.A. downtown. Being as I have issues with heights, I didn't make much use of the view, but one could not ignore it given there were more windows than extras on this set.

Today (and tomorrow) I am a staff writer for the Los Angeles Beacon, and as such, I got to sit at a desks and pretend to be busy. As a background artist, I am expected to remember what I did, so that each time the cameras shift location to film the scene from somewhere else, I will repeat the actions the same way in each shot. This allows the editor to cut the scenes together while having some level of continuity. In one long scene, I wrote out my actions as I did them.

Paper, Phone, Write, Hang-up, Book, Phone, Write, (Long wait).

I picked up a paper, examined it, picked up the phone, spoke to the person on the other end (i.e. talked to myself (without talking)), wrote down information, hung-up, picked up a book, again picked up the phone and wrote down more information. The last action was longer as the scene was long. This was easy enough, because before each call of "Action" by the director, is the call for "Background", which is our cue to start doing whatever we're to do. By the way, the director relies on the production assistants, or director's assistant (2nd 2nd) to place and direct the Background. He may call for more movement or bodies, but what they do is not his concern (unless it takes away from his scene).

By 12:30 am, things were getting harder. All I had to do on the "Background" call was walk from off camera, into the scene and away out the door at the far end of the office. The only problem was that the guy who yells "Background" was not given his cue and so neither were the Background artists. For quite a few takes, we background folk were relying on telepathy to know when to go. This was the last scene, and the last camera angle, so everyone was rather beat.

During one scene, the director was upset because a simple 3 line scene was taking too long to set up. He hollered that if things didn't get moving he'd shoot himself. Then he added that he would take a few others with him first. Crew pointed out that they did not have budget for bullets, so he was out of luck.

By wrap, several of the Background artists had to be nudged to get them going, as they had fallen asleep. A good thing, as many of us will be back on the set by 11:00 am next day. Less than 8 hours of sleep away.