Poop Shute

The Propaganda Machine

Just got in from a late night shoot a few minutes ago. Tonight I was on a commercial shoot for a burger chain that shall remain nameless. Just know that they're big in the midwest and they've just hit the AZ market. And they may or may not rhyme with Pulver's but start with a C instead of a P.

It was a lot of fun. Lots of cool people, lotsa laughs. We shot out on the patio of the new Deer Valley location out under the night sky.

There was only one minor snag.

The commercial is due to be airing from early to mid spring into the summer so they had me and the guy I was paired up with in t-shirts and jeans. It got down into the low 40's.

Keith, the other guy, and I were forced to sit on our marks shivering and teeth chattering between takes while the directors chatted or grips tweaked some of the lighting or some such thing, and then when the call came for "action" we had to focus all our attention on not visibly shaking as we smiled and ate our burgers and fries. The illusion will be foiled anyway by the huge white plumes of visible breath coming out of our mouths, but they can clean that up in post I suppose.

After a while Keith and I reminded ourselves that the shaking is the body's attempt to generate heat. Keeping this in mind we developed a strategy to maximize our time when shivering was okay. We began to purposely exaggerate our shaking to create even more heat so that when the time came for another take it was slightly easier to not shake any further.
Slightly.

They would yell "cut" and instantly we'd leap out of our seats and hop and dance like there were fire ants nibbling at our jumblies. We were told later by the ladies inside the shop that were watching us that we provided them no end of entertainment with our temperature driven antics.

The first A.D. (Assistant Director) actually came up to us and chuckled at our hopping up and down and rubbing our hands together and actually said "man up." He said this from under his wool beanie hat and behind many layers of warm clothing. I guffawed out loud. Last I looked it was around 40 degrees on the dot, and I'm in a t-shirt. Man up?! That's like watching a man crawl through death valley in July while you lick an ice cream cone and call the poor wretch a sissy.

Without thinking I blurted out "Man up!? Really?! Really, Mr. Two-sweaters-a-scarf-gloves-and-jacket? Because from here it looks like you're sitting next to a gas heater too. How about you turn that off, strip down to your t-shirt, wait a couple hours and then try saying that to us again. How about it? Sound good?"

I said it with a big grin, and he took it in the spirit it was given. He gave me shit, I gave some right back. All in good fun. Thank Cheese he took it that way. You never know when someone might get touchy on you and get their panties all in a twist, and the first A.D. on a SAG project is not someone you want to piss off.

The one small blessing was the crew had these little warmer packs that are the perfect pocket size. They work a lot like glow sticks; you crack a packet inside a packet and a chemical reaction produces the heat. Keith and I had one in each shoe, one in each front pocket and one in each back pocket. They only helped marginally, but we were willing to take anything we could get.