Giddy-up

Giddy-up

So I had breakfast with Clint, the stunt coordinator I worked with on my previous shoot to talk about the action trailer he's going to do when he can find a window this month. It was pretty informal with two other stunt guys--one of which I also met on my previous set--and a girl who would be sharing duties with me. I think our official titles are production coordinators, but I was led to believe during the discussion at breakfast that we'd potentially be asked to do everything. Exciting.

After that Clint and I went out to one of the movie ranches in Santa Clarita to scout out some of the locations. Clint's a pretty animated guy, and he seems to know exactly what he wants. I saw he had a copy of Once Upon a Time in the West sitting on top of his TV when we stopped by his house, and he has a scene in the script that almost exactly mirrors the family massacre scene in said film even down to the placement of the picnic table in the scene (Nick, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about). He'd say what he wanted, I'd throw out questions and suggestions of camera placement, and sometimes he'd go through an entire scene using me as the camera position to give me an idea of how certain shots would play out. Par exemple:

CLINT
Okay. You're the camera. You're gonna be down here. There's gonna be a horse over here just out of frame.

ME
Which way am I going to be shooting?

CLINT
You'll be gunning this way.
Turns; points.
Now once you get full horse and rider in frame we're going to have the horse do a fall.

ME
Uh-huh.

CLINT
Now, we can get these suckers to rear up to that branch up there.
Turns; points

ME
Shields eyes; looks up.
Yeah.

CLINT
We just put down some peat moss to absorb the impact, and we're cool. Once we have the horse committed--we know it's going to fall--we're going to have two directional mortars go off: one going this way, one going that way.

ME
Right.

CLINT
So that happens and we have someone standing over here just outta frame, and just as the second mortar goes off he's going to fall on his face right in front of the camera and block your view. Then we cut.

ME
Right.

CLINT
...unless the horse falls on you, then we have to do it again.

ME
...

CLINT
Heads back to the truck.

ME
...right...

So we scouted a few more spots, talked about finding some doubles to shoot some long and extreme long shots while we wait for the actors and actresses, and I made up a generic contact list for the cast and crew. Productivity, baby. Yippee-ki-yay, mother-hugger.

D