optional easy listening while you read:
Making movies is similar to being in the military. We both go by a 24hr clock. We both eat talk, move and sleep when someone says we can. We use walkie talkie codes. “Copy” to say yes. “21-hundred” to delicately announce a potty break. Each finite job is departmentalized. There is a pecking order. Nothing is more militant than the Camera department whose trainees are hazed practically daily.
Usually every film has two camera crews. A and B. Now Bcamera is lessor than Acamera. Any scraps Acamera doesn’t want, B camera is placed under poorly lit conditions, with a ridiculously long lens, in a contorted position to try to snap the one money shot that earns us the Cinematographer’s praise and perhaps one day the potential to upgrade, stamped Grade A beef. We are sent places Acamera prima donnas don’t want to suffer. Next to burning buildings. Wading in leech swamps. In the path of stampeding horses. It’s a test of one’s balls. A right of passage.
Today none of us were complaining.
This is Snow Queen starring Bridget Fonda and we are filming in Cranbrook, British Columbia. While the rest of the film crew are slogging on a cold frozen lake, us Bcamera guys (and their dolly grip, me) are being flown up a mountain to get those glorious white-peaked epic glory shots. Welcome to the Top Of The World.
Leaving Base
That’s the name of the mountain. Our gear was sent ahead in slings to where the survival expert had set up emergency pup tents packed with freeze dried spaceman food and silver blankets. All set. Our turn to fly. Now this is a helicopter… a lightweight finicky tin flying can and this is the rugged Rocky mountain range and this is the dead of winter in Canada…
We didn’t give a hot damn. Right now it’s sunny and this beats filming skaters in period costumes.
UpDraft
To save on fuel, our pilot aimed straight for the mountain and caught the updraft. We are rising to 10000 feet.
Landing Top of World
Normally I am a yak. It was nary a thirty feet jaunt on a slight uphill grade from where our gear was dropped to where we were filming. I felt eighty years old. Take one step. Breathe. Take second step. Breathe. But who cares. What a view! The producer arrived in a second helicopter with the actors. We filmed a few quick pops and they left us alone to capture visual effects plate shots.
Goodbye Lifeline
This is film. So things started to go wrong. The second chopper forgot to leave our lunch and I found myself splitting my hockey puck frozen power bar five ways. Mush in a tube was reserved for an emergency only. Hypoglycemic, I consider no lunch a state-wide panic. Our mountain guide had different standards. They also forgot to leave us water. I was reduced to licking an iced bottle I had haphazardly stuffed in my knapsack. Melting it in my armpit.
Unsuspecting Fools
But we are quick. We expertly rattled off our shopping list. Prepped the support gear back in the slings down the slope. Loaded the camera in the side bins. Ready to go. Hop in. Start it up. Um start? Start? Err, the throttle is frozen.
After a comic attempt to thaw the handle by wrapping it with hotshot packs, we gave up and waited for a rescue helicopter. It never came. Something about none in the area. Something about wildfires. Something about hang tight. Too much radio static.
Duh, we broke it
So how does a camera crew occupy their time when trapped on a snowy mountain? We do our own photo shoot. Snaps for our family. To impress girlfriends. To post on Facebook.
Our Last Pose
We even redid the plates with better lighting. Thoughts of plum overtime money danced in our heads. All night in that yellow wind sock? Galapagos vacation here I come! We kicked it old school. Played make-believe Canadian voyageur. Strapped on snowshoes. Raced along the ridge. Not too fast. Sweat freezes you to death. Not too close. Rotten snow. This is an avalanche zone.
Living On The Edge
Hmm, the sun is setting. Wished I hadn’t read “Into Thin Air”. Fifteen minutes of daylight left. Satellite radio squawked. “Not enough time to shut down the blades. We have to do a bump.”
What is a bump?
No time to ask. I didn’t hear it coming. The helicopter dramatically rose from below the ridge. I couldn’t see the rest. We huddled in a tight pack. Heads down. Noise. Like a million Celine Dion wind fans whipping us about. A tap on my shoulder. I turned. The helicopter had landed smack dab behind my butt. Decapitating blades whirling straight overhead.
Oh that is a bump. Very James Bond.
It was a dwarf toy helicopter. Crammed like clowns, camera gear piled chin high, we shot off that mountain and dropped like a rock. We performed yet another bump as they quickly dive-rolled us out and zoomed off for their base, taking our captain, racing against darkness…
Abandoning us, in a cow patch.
We were at least a half-hour away as the crow flies from our pickup spot. Our cell phones dead. No one around for miles but these udder beasts. Was anyone coming? Do they even know we are here? Where are we? No food. No water. Only cows. Hello Bessie.
We giggled. Snickers erupted into never ending gut slitting guffaws. Something about those mournfully cows. Something about being high on oxygen. Apparently when you are deprived of food, water, spend hours at high altitudes and then plummet rapidly to an O2 rich zone, you get punch drunk.
Two hours later a van found us. Poor driver. He didn’t get the joke.
Couple of our epic shots are in this trailer:
Film Stupidity Fact: Did you know that reindeer shed their antlers? Neither did our producers on Snow Queen. The reindeer’s bony appendages were provided by a magical visual effects team.
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