by Matthew Howe
For those of us in the freelance film business, corporate videos are a mainstay of our livelihood. There are a lot of pharmaceutical companies in the North-East and a lot of work making videos for them. One subcategory is the video-taped lecture. If a doctor or scientist can't make it to an important conference to present his findings on a certain topic, he'll simply videotape his power-point presentation and that will be shown in place of a live appearance.
We get the call to do such a shoot in Delaware. Since the doctor we're taping is going to be arriving at 8am sharp, it makes sense to set-up the night before so everything is ready to go without us having to drag our asses out of bed at 2am. (It's a four hour drive to the location.).
For those of us in the freelance film business, corporate videos are a mainstay of our livelihood. There are a lot of pharmaceutical companies in the North-East and a lot of work making videos for them. One subcategory is the video-taped lecture. If a doctor or scientist can't make it to an important conference to present his findings on a certain topic, he'll simply videotape his power-point presentation and that will be shown in place of a live appearance.
We get the call to do such a shoot in Delaware. Since the doctor we're taping is going to be arriving at 8am sharp, it makes sense to set-up the night before so everything is ready to go without us having to drag our asses out of bed at 2am. (It's a four hour drive to the location.).
So the night before the production team makes drive to Delaware. We load in and set up our shot in one of those giant corporate meeting rooms. Then it's dinner, drinks, sleep and we're on set at 8am sharp, raring to go.
Only no doctor. 9am rolls around before we hear he missed his plane out of Chicago, but will be on the next one so should be in by 10am. This is the first we've heard of him coming in from Chicago, but whatever. Our job is not to question; our job is to wait for the doc when he arrives at 10am.
Only he doesn't. He missed that plane as well. So now he'll be there at 11am. Only 11am rolls by with no doctor. Then 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, us just sitting there, getting constant updates on all the planes this guy is missing as well as promises that he will absolutely be there at X time only to get notified at X+15 that he's going to be late.
It's 8pm when he finally walks in.
We've been sitting on our behinds for twelve hours. We're already into massive overtime and haven't rolled a frame. Worse, we all have early calls on other gigs the next morning and chances of us getting home before 2am are dim.
Only no doctor. 9am rolls around before we hear he missed his plane out of Chicago, but will be on the next one so should be in by 10am. This is the first we've heard of him coming in from Chicago, but whatever. Our job is not to question; our job is to wait for the doc when he arrives at 10am.
Only he doesn't. He missed that plane as well. So now he'll be there at 11am. Only 11am rolls by with no doctor. Then 12pm, 1pm, 2pm, 3pm, us just sitting there, getting constant updates on all the planes this guy is missing as well as promises that he will absolutely be there at X time only to get notified at X+15 that he's going to be late.
It's 8pm when he finally walks in.
We've been sitting on our behinds for twelve hours. We're already into massive overtime and haven't rolled a frame. Worse, we all have early calls on other gigs the next morning and chances of us getting home before 2am are dim.
The doctor sits down; we put a lavaliere mic on him, and roll. We have a Teleprompter on the camera. A prompter is TV screen suspended below the lens that projects words or images onto a flat piece of glass angled in front of the lens. The on-camera subject can read the words off the prompter (or see power-point slides) while appearing to look directly at the camera.
So our prompter operator puts the first power-point slide up and the doctor begins his presentation. Only he screws up halfway through the first slide. No problem. He goes back to the beginning and starts again.
Another slide one screw up. And another. Then he makes it all the way to slide two before screwing up and going back to the beginning. It's all minor stuff, a word missing here, a sentence out of order, a pause, but it throws him off his game and he insists on going back and starting from the very beginning again, no matter how many times our director cheerfully tells him "it's fine, just work through it, we'll go back and do it again then cut it all together. No problem."
But the guy can't do it. He just can't get past the first two slides. And there's forty-seven slides total.
We're there for two hours trying to get this guy to make his presentation, not getting past slide two. Finally, after another screw up, the doc stands up. "That's it, boys, I'm done." He takes off his mic, drops it on the ground and walks out.
Fourteen hours for nothing. We pack up and drive home and are all virtual zombies on our gigs the next day. The only saving grace is that we're all used to it by now.
So our prompter operator puts the first power-point slide up and the doctor begins his presentation. Only he screws up halfway through the first slide. No problem. He goes back to the beginning and starts again.
Another slide one screw up. And another. Then he makes it all the way to slide two before screwing up and going back to the beginning. It's all minor stuff, a word missing here, a sentence out of order, a pause, but it throws him off his game and he insists on going back and starting from the very beginning again, no matter how many times our director cheerfully tells him "it's fine, just work through it, we'll go back and do it again then cut it all together. No problem."
But the guy can't do it. He just can't get past the first two slides. And there's forty-seven slides total.
We're there for two hours trying to get this guy to make his presentation, not getting past slide two. Finally, after another screw up, the doc stands up. "That's it, boys, I'm done." He takes off his mic, drops it on the ground and walks out.
Fourteen hours for nothing. We pack up and drive home and are all virtual zombies on our gigs the next day. The only saving grace is that we're all used to it by now.
Now, compare that to another shoot I did with Jim Cramer, he of the wildly popular Mad Money show here in the states. Jim's going to be making a pitch for a financial product he's selling.
It's a high-pressure shoot. We only have Cramer from 9am to 11am with a ton to shoot. There's a two minute script, a one minute script, a thirty-second script plus several alternate versions of the one minute. In all we have twenty-fives pages of text, which translates to about ten minutes of copy. Way more than most people shoot in two hours.
As with the disastrous Delaware doctor debacle, we show up early so the set is lit, camera and sound are ready, and teleprompter is fed with the script when he walks in.
Which he does. Promptly at 9am. The day is looking good.
Except it isn't. It turns out we don't have Cramer until 11am. He has to be at his next appointment at 11am. We've got forty-five minutes, tops.
Quiet panic. We rush Cramer through makeup and get him onto the set. I hear hushed discussions about which alternate scripts to cut. Everyone is barely containing their freak out.
Except Cramer. He doesn't seem worried at all. He steps in front of the camera, clears his throat and tells me to roll camera. I roll camera.
It's a high-pressure shoot. We only have Cramer from 9am to 11am with a ton to shoot. There's a two minute script, a one minute script, a thirty-second script plus several alternate versions of the one minute. In all we have twenty-fives pages of text, which translates to about ten minutes of copy. Way more than most people shoot in two hours.
As with the disastrous Delaware doctor debacle, we show up early so the set is lit, camera and sound are ready, and teleprompter is fed with the script when he walks in.
Which he does. Promptly at 9am. The day is looking good.
Except it isn't. It turns out we don't have Cramer until 11am. He has to be at his next appointment at 11am. We've got forty-five minutes, tops.
Quiet panic. We rush Cramer through makeup and get him onto the set. I hear hushed discussions about which alternate scripts to cut. Everyone is barely containing their freak out.
Except Cramer. He doesn't seem worried at all. He steps in front of the camera, clears his throat and tells me to roll camera. I roll camera.
He then proceeds to rip through all twenty five pages of copy in one take without making a single mistake. The two minute script. The one minute script. The thirty-second script, all the alternates of the one-minute script. He nails them all, straight through, no breaks, perfect pitch and energy, his first time.
Stunned silence on set. No one has ever seen anything like this.
The director manages to get his awe-stuck brain unfrozen long enough to ask me to reframe for a close-up. I do. We roll camera and Cramer does it again. Twenty-five pages, straight through, no mistakes.
Another stunned pause. We've shot all of the scripts twice now and we still have fifteen minutes left. Now the director works with him to tweak a little, more energy on this word, more of a pause here. Cramer nails everything. He's a machine. I think he makes one mistake. One. As he puts it later, "when you've done over a thousand episodes of a TV show like I have, you learn how to read a prompter."
When it's time to go, he thanks us, shakes hands, even takes the minute to pose for a few pictures, then walks out the door. We stare after him with the awe of poor townsfolk watching the heroic gunfighter who saved them ride off into the sunset.
What a great day. Right?
Wrong. Because when they finally make the spot, they decide not to use Cramer on camera. None of what we shot makes it into the spot. Like the doctor who couldn't get past slide two, the whole shoot, Cramer's magnificent performance, was for nada.
Although a three-second clip of it did end up on my DP reel. So that's something.
Stunned silence on set. No one has ever seen anything like this.
The director manages to get his awe-stuck brain unfrozen long enough to ask me to reframe for a close-up. I do. We roll camera and Cramer does it again. Twenty-five pages, straight through, no mistakes.
Another stunned pause. We've shot all of the scripts twice now and we still have fifteen minutes left. Now the director works with him to tweak a little, more energy on this word, more of a pause here. Cramer nails everything. He's a machine. I think he makes one mistake. One. As he puts it later, "when you've done over a thousand episodes of a TV show like I have, you learn how to read a prompter."
When it's time to go, he thanks us, shakes hands, even takes the minute to pose for a few pictures, then walks out the door. We stare after him with the awe of poor townsfolk watching the heroic gunfighter who saved them ride off into the sunset.
What a great day. Right?
Wrong. Because when they finally make the spot, they decide not to use Cramer on camera. None of what we shot makes it into the spot. Like the doctor who couldn't get past slide two, the whole shoot, Cramer's magnificent performance, was for nada.
Although a three-second clip of it did end up on my DP reel. So that's something.
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