Anyone experience unfriendly crowds on set

[Mark LeBlanc]

Howdy,

Had a surreal encounter on set today. Outdoors in a public city park. Very small crew with no security. We had some kids come near us and at first all was OK but after a while they just felt the need to start cursing at us as loud as they could.  It was extremely uncomfortable experience, I felt bad for the actors because they were facing this vocal shellacking and marshaled through it ok. I'm listening back to the tracks now and you can sense the increasing amount of angst in the crew.. Very strange day.. On an up note, it was my first day with my new Lectro SR with (2)SMa combo.  Very nice!! I use a Hawkwoods adapter to power the SR, didn't have to worry about the battery all day...

Mark L

[Mike Ford]

I've had a couple small encounters this past year. One instance where a loud, drunken civilian was yelling at members of our crew how we had ruined his night because we disrupted parking with our massive trucks in an already busy neighborhood. It was after we had wrapped for the evening but that didn't stop him from making threats to the crew.

Another occured a short time later on a popular tv show where some of the locals were firing off fireworks onto the set in an area of town that is synonymous with bad...Production never believes us when we say how bad some of those neighborhoods really can be (super busy on a friday night or just bad all round) especially after dark. I guess that a lot of people just don't realize that we have a job to do like anyone else.

[old school]

They love you till they hate you until they need you, and they love you again. Some would call it 'Fucked Up', but most call it the film business. Being in front of the public is reality.

CrewC

[Guest BobD]

I would dislike it as well if a crew rolled into my neighborhood.... What a pain in the ass....   I might even yell.....  Especially if I was drunk and unemployed... 

[Eric Toline]

Howdy,

Had a surreal encounter on set today. Outdoors in a public city park. Very small crew with no security. We had some kids come near us and at first all was OK but after a while they just felt the need to start cursing at us as loud as they could.  It was extremely uncomfortable experience, I felt bad for the actors because they were facing this vocal shellacking and marshaled through it ok. I'm listening back to the tracks now and you can sense the increasing amount of angst in the crew.. Very strange day.. On an up note, it was my first day with my new Lectro SR with (2)SMa combo.  Very nice!! I use a Hawkwoods adapter to power the SR, didn't have to worry about the battery all day...

Mark L

They know how to play the "We make noise, you pay us money to stop" game. I would guess production didn't know the rules of the game.

Eric

[pshap]

Out on location yes, on set, no. Drunk guys wanting to grab my boom mic and then getting pissed when I tell not to touch my gear.... I told the producer I would walk if she could not protect me and the camera guy from these kooks..... Another time I was outside on Hollywood and La Brea wrapping gear/cases into our support vehicle after shooting a Dr.Pepper Commercial with Jennifer Love Hewitt, some crack addict starts yelling at me from across the street. I was frantically throwing gear into the truck ignoring this guy and that only made him angrier....He comes on over and starts telling me that he promotes.. and he is fixated on this word... Promote, promote, I promote..... Luckily I had just finished wrapping when he reached my side of the truck. He gets his face up into my window and starts foaming at the mouth...... I drove away just in the nick of time with him just tripping wildly..... Security nowhere to be found..... Could have become deadly..... Hollywood at night sucks without a secure area to offload and upload.....

[Paul Graff]

People hating film crews is nothing new.  Sometimes they want money to stop making noise and sometimes they just want you to go away.  I've seen so much arrogant, inconsiderate behavior by film and TV crews that it makes me cringe.  It also makes me understand why we are so often resented.  All we can really do is to be as gracious and considerate as possible to make it a little better for the next shoot that comes through.  So much of the relationship-building and damage control must be done by locations department prior to the shoot day(s), that by the time we are there we are largely at the effect of their efforts, for better or worse.

PG

[old school]

Great point Paul. It is a 2 way street we all live on. I dislike bad behavior from all concerned.

CrewC

[Daniel McIntosh]

Disclaimer: NO DISRESPECT to LA'ers.  I tell it like I saw it.

A short war story:

I was working on a lower budget feature way downtown Manhattan.  It's 3 am, we're on a very narrow, very quiet street (Hanover St, I think).  Enter the 3 very souped up/screaming motorcycles with stunt drivers who barrel down the street and do "lay-downs" (crashes) way too many times.  Once during a quick repair job/reset a tenant in a 3 story bldg right above us stuck his head out and blearily asked if we "knew what time it is?", and if we were going to be finished soon. The Gaffer, from LA- he was getting lots of razzing from the G&E's (he was wearing FLIP-FLOPS!), suddenly screamed up at the guy at the top of his lungs, "Shut the f**ck up, what do you expect? You're living in New York!". 

Ouch.

[studiomprd]

two words come to mind:

permits

security

[bigmaho]

One night on American Gangster we were shooting in one of the last truly bad neighborhoods left in New York, under the El in Bushwick.  We just did a take of the scene where Denzel is shot at as he gets into his limo.  Just after we cut there were 6 shots from another direction.  Our vans were doing roundy-rounds taking the crew to lunch (at midnight).  As they came back for another pass some kid opened up and shot 3 of the vans just missing one of the drivers (though later, the other drivers were charging a buck to ride in the vans with bullet holes).

Later than night, just before dawn, I had my sound cart set up about a block from the main action (it was the only place to hide from all of Ridley's cameras).  A junkie staggers up to me and says 'whatcha shoodin?'.  I told him, and he comes closer to me.  Nose to nose, and says 'You tell Ridley he ain't got nuthin on his brother.'

Everybody in this town is an f-in critic.  Probably the guy with the 9mm also.

Billy Sarokin

[Chas Gordon]

As some of you might know, Denver is no LA or NY. HA! But we are having to pull more and more permits to do any production larger than one camera, a producer and an audio person. Small things slip through the cracks, but if its any larger than that, folks notice. And by folks I mean the cops. Pulling the permit is only a good thing for the production. It means that you are allowed to be there, it also mean that the production folks can call the cops when freaks start to cause huge issues. Usually a few dead presidents can take care of most issues, but only once was I involved in a production that the Denver PD had to be involved. And because the producers pulled a permit the cops backed us up.

Being the audio guy with a ENG/EFP package means that I don't usually get the attention that the old "asshole magnet" gets, but freaks will be freaks! The nice thing about having a boompole in your hands is that in a quick flash your hand at the rear of the pole can become a nasty weapon. I had to protect my camera guy once on a shoot in way, way Northern California. Orleans, California specifically. We were out in this field, ruins of a burned down house we needed to shoot when seemingly out of nowhere pops this small, wirey fellow wearing camo pants and no shirt. He was obviously high as a kite as he stood in a sort of bent knee fighting stance and demanded of us, "What you doooooing on my peeoplessss laaaaannd?" He had snuck up on the left (blind) side of the camera guy and I was on the right side of the camera. His stance and attitude was very odd at best, creepy at worst. I didn't know if he was about to pull a knife or what, but thought it best to get over to the other side of the camera and be ready. The shot was already a bust so I walked right in front of the lense and stood to the side of this guy as I shortend the boom pole. He didn't like us being there at all. We tried to explain what we were doing but it didn't make a difference to him. He didn't even budge on the "It's a mayonaise comercial." He was a real goof. Eventually we named a few people we had talked to in this very small town and he decided to let us live. That and maybe it was because we both had at least a foot in hieght on this guy and we weren't backing down. Also, I never let the shortened boom pole down below my waist just in case.

[Marc Wielage]

I'm waiting for K-Tek and Loon to come out with the "telescoping knife" accessory for their boompoles. Perfect for those situations.

--Marc W.

[Chas Gordon]

And that incident was before the martial arts training! And, just like in basketball, elbows high are also useful tools/weapons.

Back in the 90's when all the stupid Jon Bennet Ramsey media crap was going on in Boulder, CO I had to use those elbows on another TV crew member. The camera op I was working with is a short guy and was totally getting bashed by another camera guy in a complete press scrum of news event. The taller camera op was using his Anton Bauer batteries as a battering ram on the side of my camera guys head. They had a history of not getting along and I didn't like where this was going. So I got into position on the left side of the aggressor camera and popped him once in the tempel with my elbow and told him to cut the crap. Of course his head banged into the side of his Beta-cam so he got the double whammo. Man, the look he gave me! That was OK, I didn't care much for him and have never regretted doing that since. Of course I have never since then nor will ever will work with that guy again.

So I guess maybe that says that it's not just the freaks on the street you have to watch out for.