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Show Me Your Ride


Jeff Wexler

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What I hope to see here is discussion and images regarding our work vehicles, real and imagined, present day or historical. I will have to recuse myself from this topic since sadly I do not have ANY vehicle appropriate to the task of transporting me and the tools of the trade. I have had a number of great work vehicles in the past, but now, nothing.

 

Here are a couple of shots of my VW T4 van.

The view at the rear shows the bag cart on the left in front of the cart is a row of WW2 ammo boxes to house all the bits and pieces.

Equipment cases fit into the slots on the right 2 deep.

The follow cart (a magliner) is at the bottom.

The other photo is through the side door where the main cart sits. The blue plastic is a rack from Walmart which 7-up is delivered on. These are ideal to keep equiment boxes and bags off wet ground.

The whole van is wired via an inverter so I have AC avilable to power soldering irons or power tools.

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We run a couple of long wheel base high top vans.

 

One is for the recording equipment and a work space for me in Winter on location (it is heated).The other is for all the ancillary equipment (P.A. ,carpets,sound blankets etc etc).

One is driven by 1st Assistant Sound Robin Johnson and the other by 2nd Assistant Sound James Gibb.

It means they get to park right on the lot and i find it often gets us closer to location and into tighter spaces than working off 

a big truck (it avoids the loads onto flatbed trucks for tighter roads,forests etc).

 

Here is a picture of us recording a stunt sequence on 'Kick Ass 2' where we were following an action vehicle which had multiple actors lav'd and a couple of radio schoeps for a moving fight scene.Out of frame in the back of the truck is my sound cart with faders up and levels set.I had decided it was more important to get the sharks fins pointing directly at the action than sit down and monitor the recording.

 

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Cool shot, Simon! I was just about to comment on the double-duty for the driver, aiming the antenna ANDS driving, then remembered the whole right hand drive thing...  I think it is great that you have 2 vehicles and that the main one is an actual working vehicle to do tracking shots like this. In the U.S., certainly on a movie, it would be difficult to pull this off with our Teamsters (but the good transpo departments in my experience have been really helpful in supplying and driving a vehicle to accomplish this sort of thing).

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In reference to Simons pix...

More n more in LA commercial world I'm seeing us do dialog with camera on a Pursuit Arm Car and I've had to get in line with the parade of cars/vans and mix it wirelessly which I then send a mix out to the camera, the people mover for the agency and the director in the Pursuit Car. I always have a fail safe recorder in the picture vehicle between my rf feeds for safety. It gets crazier every day.

CrewC

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That's me in front of my "many locations on one day" setup.Sorry for the crappy phone pic.My cart's modular design allows me to use just the top unit which is self-contained. The base unit serving for storage only is placed on the left, large wheels unmounted.

The only things I had to take out of the car on that shoot was the antenna mast/stand, the boom, and the stool I'm sitting on. We shot five different street corners in downtown Munich in just one afternoon.

 

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Simon's dual van system looks terrific.

 

Has anyone looked into the insurance liability issues in North America? What I'm asking is, if you are hired on a production and they are paying you a rental fee for your own mode of transport - what happens if you are involved in a pile up before you reach set and your equipment is a total loss? Or as it sits idle over a weekend?

 

Would they still pay for loss as opposed to if it were on a production truck under their control, with their drivers?

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Great question Richard - worthy of its own thread... I went the safe route and made sure my commercial insurance covers that just in case a production ever did try to balk in the event of something like you describe. I would imagine a total loss ($100k's, including gear and vehicle) would likely wind up in litigation before any kind of a claim was ever even considered to be paid. It's definitely worth looking into.

"The devil is in the details", right?

~tt

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In LA commercials, I'm issued a certificate of insurance by the Production Company before each job. It covers me and my gear and van to and fro from the job. Our teamsters drive all the big trucks and pass vans, but VTR n I and I'm not sure who else are covered with insurance cert for each gig.

CrewC

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  • 2 weeks later...

I remember back at Coffey Sound I sold some stuff to a sound mixer (can't remember his name) that had a HUGE full size conversion van. It had a little shower and everything. The cart fit in it completely set up. He never had to leave the van. It was really cool. 

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