Transcript
For a very short time, I worked on a few commercial sets starring the likes of – you ready for some name-dropping? You better be. I worked on a few sets for a few days on which the key talent was Jessica Alba and Jessica Biel, and a couple of other top tier actresses. And today, I’m just gonna jabber at ya about one of those shoots. Because it’s Christmas and settling in for a little story time is just what I need. My sincerest apologies if that’s not what you need.
Intro
Greetings good humans and welcome to Tabletop Alchemy, where sometimes it’s story time and sometimes it’s an episode to listen to in the background while you hobby, because it has very little to do with anything actually hobby-related. But it does fit our apparently photography-themed December.
And we thank our patrons for sticking through and supporting such a wild momentary shift of topics in the alchemist lab.
Now, I’ve got two tales to tell from this brief section of my day job career, but the first has a much more universal and applicable anecdote we’ll explore in another video down the line. Today’s story is the second and is really only about one key detail that will open up some relevant discussion, maybe, regarding technological progress and creative endeavors.
So I don’t remember what year we did these jobs, but it was probably sometime around 2006-2007. My buddy was producing some behind-the-scenes stuff for television commercial shoots for cosmetic companies like Revlon and Maybelline. And he hired me on as a camera operator for a couple of those, and this particular one I think was a Maybelline shoot. I think. It might’ve been Almay. Anyway, the model in this particular commercial spot was John cougar Mellencamp’s wife, Elaine Irwin.
Now I wasn’t on the official crew or anything like that – in fact, it was kinda cooler than that, barring being on the camera crew of course. My job was to run around with my Panasonic HVX200 – which was one of the first prosumer cameras to record full 1080p HD on solid state media – and capture cool B roll of whatever was going on. The house the production had rented was amazing, of course – I mean, when your budget for a one day shoot is upwards of 1 million bucks, I guess you’re gonna get cool location.
Now, here’s a weird aside: I’ve never had as gourmet a lunch as I had from the lunch trucks on these shoots. I’m not kidding, the lunch plate was a shock. This is back before taco trucks became the culinary sidewalk wonderlands they are today, like, you know, before the movie Chef came out. But on a normal shoot, at least back then, you’d head out to the meal truck when lunch is called – if your production even had a truck – and everyone goes to stand in line for their, you know, typically you’d have a choice between like a hefty breakfast burrito or a decent tuna melt on sourdough toast or something.
So when go to lunch on the first of these commercial shoots I worked on, I’m just expecting the typical paper plate holding a burger or something. But then I get up to the ordering station and I see this menu with filet mignon on it and, like, crab cakes and lobster and I’m looking at my buddy like what the hell is this? He just grins and when we get up to the window to place our orders, I can see there’s like this fancy chef guy in there plating stuff like he’s in a five-star restaurant and not really inside a taco truck. And then when I get my lunch, it’s on a ceramic plate and it’s got little colorful sauces drizzled over it and swirly designs and artfully placed asparagus and it was just sorta mind-blowing. And of course, very, very good. I don’t know what it’s like now, but back then, television commercial jobs were where everyone made real money. Like you’d work for a day or two, and make as much as you would normally make for like a week on a narrative project.
In other words, advertising is always where the money is.
But anyway, back to the production. So they’ve rented this house up in the Hollywood Hills, it’s up there in those spiffy neighborhoods above the Greek Theater and the Hollywood Bowl – it’s a pretty spectacular location. Nowadays I’d guess a house up there goes for something in the neighborhood of say 5 to 10 million, depending on the size and the view.
One thing I’ve never forgotten was, upon first entering the place, noting that the flooring was entirely poured from that epoxy composite stuff high-end countertops were made of back then. I don’t know why I remember that, it just struck me as … expensive. And there was a lot of floor.
But anyway, we break out our cameras and we start shooting. I’m grabbing B roll of all the activity, you know, like Elaine in make up, grips putting up flags and silks, electricians putting up lights, stuff like that. Camera crew building the camera, dolly grips setting up the Chapman dolly, et cetera. Eventually they start shooting and we’re a few hours in and the director has Elaine moving around this living room sorta space and he’s telling her to dance and do all these different little moves and, well, now I don’t know who the director was, he was probably a TV Director – but at one point the ad agency people kinda pull him off to the side and they start arguing because he’s shooting all these random things and he’s been doing it for like an hour and half. And this stuff was apparently not in the brief nor the storyboards and the ad reps are like, hey, we need you to shoot what we need for the commercial, right? All this stuff he was having the model do was apparently completely unnecessary. At one point everyone’s just stopped working while the director and the ad reps duke it out. I remember the director was not necessarily a uh convincing figure.
Anyway, they finally move on to getting the next scripted shot and this is what was to me the coolest thing
I remember about that day. So this house is one of those houses that extend out over the hillside, so part of it’s on stilts, right? And it’s there’s a living room type space that’s projecting out into empty space. And it’s got windows on three walls, all with floor-to-ceiling glass, so you get this pretty epic view of Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles, just the whole area.
So, I know they’re setting up for a shot, I just don’t know what the shot is. Now this commercial was for some kind of eye makeup, probably mascara, if I remember right. So I’m shooting the crew set up this like nice leather chair near one of the windows and it’s got this kinda crazy device on it, kinda looks like some kind of medical or dental apparatus and they’re putting this big lens on the camera and they fly in this other model. Flying in just means they brought her on the set by the way. She’s blonde but doesn’t really look like Elaine Irwin, in fact, she doesn’t even really look like a model. But she sits in the chair and leans her head down into the crazy cradle thing. Then the DP the Director of photography, has the camera brought over on that crab dolly and raises the camera up on the little jib arm and tilts it down and starts to frame the shot. So the woman is laying like sideways in this chair her head tilted over into this cradle the and camera is angled down at her face. And now we can see on the video assist screens across the room what the shot is actually gonna be.
And when I realize what they are doing, I was like, oh THIS is freaking cool. So the model turns out to be specifically an eye model. And the lens is like a macro lens. And they’re using this chair rig to keep the model’s head and face positioned exactly right and without her being able to move – because on a macro shot like that, any movement is wreck your focus and frame. Because the shot is framing up just one of her eyes basically. And the detail this whole set up turned out to be for, was they were getting the image of the downtown Los Angeles skyline reflected in her eye.
And I just thought that was the coolest thing. I mean c’mon!
But of course nowadays, no one would ever do something like that. You’d just do it digitally and it would take you like five minutes.
Which brings us to the point I wanted to talk about. We are living in what a lot of us old fogies would call “the future” because we grew up, you know, before the Internet. And all kinds of other stuff. So now, if I can just go to Midjourney – or any other generative AI – and type in a prompt and get a super cool, bad ass, artistic looking image in 20 seconds, why did I bother spending a bunch of hard earned ducats and time and energy shooting my own set of images in the real world? <snap> Images that are in the end, admittedly, digital?
But why bother going through all of that when there’s just no practical reason to?
My answer is, because I wanted to. I just wanted to do the thing myself. I wanted to collaborate with other human beings, I wanted that experience and I wanted to use my hands and my creativity – what there is of it – just because I wanted to.
There are other times when I do just go to Midjourney and punch in a prompt and grab an image to use somewhere or do something with.
But I think that this might be the promise of the future – well, I should say “potential” promise. Humans are more and more becoming able to do things just because they want to.
Obviously, there’s all kinds of caveats to that and no, it’s never going to be super simple like that, but it is, at the very least, interesting. And interesting, to me, is … interesting.
Anyway, it’s just a thought – and yes, I stole that from Beau of the Fifth Column. Good artists borrow, great artists steal!
Someday I’ll tell you about how I messed up real bad on a commercial shoot starring Halle Berry. Until then – go do something just because you’ve always wanted to.
See ya! Oh, and Merry Christmas!