Welcome to Winter

I flew out of LA in early December, and on descent into my layover at ATL, I was startled to hear “We’ll be landing on time in Atlanta, where the outside temperature is 17 degrees.”  Oh yeah, it’s winter in the rest of the country!  After months of shooting in the humid swamps and hot deserts, I hardly had long pants with me, let alone a decent jacket.  So the walk across the tarmac to my puddle jumper to Wilmington was REAL cold.  And it was strange for it to be that cold without any snow on the ground.  Hana was coordinating the production, and picked me up from the airport that night.  My first priority the next morning was a trip to Dick’s Sporting Goods, to buy warmer clothes.  I bought what I anticipated to be two full sets of cold weather gear to alternate between.  In reality I usually ended up wearing all of them layered on top of each other, since it was usually about twenty degrees out with a stiff wind coming off the ocean.  The first day was just prep at the hotel, and distributing gear to the crews that were going to spend the next two weeks on ships sitting off the coast.  I was informed I was going to be one of the drivers, and all of us were sent to the base to get permits and clearances.

 

The next day I was handed a radio and the keys to a Suburban, and I led the caravan of fifteen production vehicles to Camp Lejeune.  I was driving McCoy, who was directing the production, as well as Jeff the executive producer.  Once we got on base, we followed the military liaison around in circles as he tried to figure out where we were supposed to be.  During this time, the Marines were using our caravan for targeting practice for their attack helicopters.  It is a bit unsettling to look in the mirror and see a Cobra helicopter tracking you.  We finally got to the correct training area, which was quite amusing to see.  It was clearly designed to be an Eastern European village, constructed during the cold war.  But as times had changed, it had all been painted sand brown and had Arabic writing everywhere.  We piled out of the vehicles and began setting up.  I put my laptop and hard drives in one of the buildings we were staging in, and helped unpack the camera gear.  Shortly after that, a large group of people arrived, who were locals hired by the military to be extra civilians.  Some of them were actors, who actually had roles to play in the unfolding scenario.  The scenario had not been made clear to the crew ahead of time, but involved surveying the aftermath of a suicide bomber, and disposing of a second explosive device found in the village.  There would be a full company of marines dropping in from the ship off the coast.

 

After scouting around with McCoy a bit, I pointed out that our guys could get lost in the streets, and miss some of the action, since the place was so big.  I recommended putting someone in the top of the church steeple to keep an eye on things, and direct camera crews to the action.  He pointed out that if someone was there, they should also have a camera to get shots, and requested a 600mm lens be sent up there on a camera.  Then I was unexpectedly given that role.  Usually I received data cards from the camera crews during the shoot, to be offloaded and reused.  So being located at the top of a six story stair case didn’t seem ideal for that role.  But they decided that the shoot should be short enough that they wouldn’t copy the footage until it was all over.  So I had my first role as a camera operator.