I'm a few days behind on this one, but last week I had the honor and privilege of gripping on a music video shoot in Oakland, CA. This was my first trip across to Oakland since being in the Bay Area, and I found it to be quite an interesting experience. Finding out the location after midnight the night before and having to make the hour and a half commute for an 8am call was quite a bit.
But after all, we're making movies.
After meeting fellow crew members around the call time, we began to plan for the opening shots. Set in front of a liquor store in Oakland's famed, "Nelson Mandela Parkway" I found myself just a block away from the scene of a fatal shooting the night before. I found this made the experience that much more intriguing.
The talent of the video, J. Stalin a hip-hop artist from West Oakland arrived on set shortly thereafter and by about 10am the shoot had begun. I worked under Joey Mullen, an experienced grip/lighter/well-rounded filmmaker who was a wealth of knowledge and found myself instantly learning new vocabulary. My other pal on set was Ryan, a filmmaker who was not much older than me but has been working freelance for a couple of years. I was very thankful to be working with him as he caught me up on a lot of previously missed experiences.
After about a 14-hour shoot day, we wrapped around 10:30pm and I grabbed the BART back to San Francisco. I was wiped but learned a whole lot from the experience. I really dig being able to do these gigs throughout the summer and know when I go to produce my thesis in the Fall, these experiences will help me to respect the process that much more.
One final thing I learned: Being a good grip is having really good common sense.
No comments:
Post a Comment