Dear Backers’ Club Members,
Wild Bill
Davin here. Just like yesterday, we were shooting in just one set all day today. It was a bit of a quiet day on set. As your eyes and ears on set, I ducked out of the studio to look for an interesting story to film, and I found one! Wild Bill Mahoney.
Bill is our craft server. At lunch we all line up at Jeff the Chef’s trailer, but it’s Bill that comes to us on set with snacks during the day – PBJ and ham sandwiches, a rainbow selection of candy, pasta-in-a-bowl, morsels of cheese, pepperoni sticks and so on. I personally blame Bill for 5 new pounds of Davin since the start of production! We were able to sneak away from set for a few hours to watch Bill work his magic. You can try and keep up with Bill in our Video Blog for Day 08.
If you’re having a rough day on set, I recommend overhearing Bill belt out a curse-word-ridden rendition of Radiohead’s “I’m a Creep.” It’ll make your day.
Lights, Camera, Action!
The phrase “Lights, Camera, Action!” is well know, but truth be told, is never really used on a set. In my on-going effort to turn you into a real film production veteran, I thought we should familiarize ourselves with the calls or instructions that you would hear being belted out during a shoot. Ready? Two steps:
- Step 1: Watch the Mini Feature that we uploaded to the Backers’ Club called The Calls.
- Step 2: Read the rest of today’s Blog below, brought to you by my camera guy, Dave.
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Dave Lam here. This part of blog will be dedicated to things you might hear before and after we’re rolling. Don’t forget to watch The Calls so that you can see each of these instructions in practice on the set of Corner Gas: The Movie.
Locking it up! – The assistant director tells the crew that they’re about to shoot the scene and to lock up the location or studio by stopping traffic or stopping people from walking in or out of the studio doors.
Rolling, Sound, Please – The assistant director prompts the sound recordist to start recording audio and the camera operator to begin recording video for this take.
Rolling – The first assistant camera, or someone from the camera department, lets everyone know that video is now being recorded.
Sound Speed – The sound recordist, or someone from the sound department like our boom operator, lets everyone know that sound is now being recorded. Why ‘speed’? Back in the day, sound was recorded on magnetic tape and it would take the analog sound recorders a few seconds to spin up to speed, so traditions die hard and sound recordists still say “Sound Speed” to indicate that the audio recorders have caught up to speed.
91 Alpha Take One. Marker – The slate loader reads out the current take. In this case, “91 Alpha Take One” means that we are in the 91st scene of the script, shooting the second setup (we add alpha for the second, beta for the third, and so on), and shooting the first take of this setup. [Just a note, we wrote “9-01” in the related video, but have since corrected that to “91” for this blog] The slate is clapped together. This acts as an audio cue as well as the visual cue for when to sync up the footage. We say “Marker” just before the clap so that someone listening to just the audio knows what the sound means. Sometimes this is shortened to Mark, which must really aggravate any film crew named Mark.
Settling – The sound recordist or one of the assistant directors calls this out to indicate that they are still waiting for things to settle before they can actually start the action.
Frame – The camera operator tells the director that the camera has settled into it’s ready position and that they can start the scene whenever the director is ready.
Action! – The director tells the performers that they can begin playing out the scene.
These are the basic calls that you’ll hear on almost every single shot on this movie. There are, however, dozens of bizarre terms and phrases that you might hear that would throw you for a loop or make you giggle. Here’s a few of our favorite.
Second Sticks – To call for a second clap when the first clap was not clear on camera or inaudible.
Window Shot – This is the last shot of the day. In the old days, this was the time when the crew would start lining up at the accountant’s window to get their paycheck.
Lunch-a-Half – We are behind. Everyone only has a 30 minute lunch instead of the regular full hour and the production is paying for that 30 minutes for each and every single member on set.
Martini Shot – Last shot of the shoot. When you break out the martini’s and start celebrating.
Davin, Dave and the Digital Team