Brooks Robinson Diary Page

Iron Man 3 -  Wilmington, North Carolina - shot by John Toll ASC 

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 

Tonight was our first real night of shooting.  Call time was 5:00pm and we were slated to go until the sun came up.  Our location was an hour north of Wilmington (same spot as yesterday), so we went on the clock at 4:00pm.  Mike T rode in with me, and it was a nice drive.

We did a few shots in the gym of a Presidential news conference (three set walls that looked like the White House Briefing Room) while waiting for the sun to go down.  We then moved to a small scene with Robert on a payphone just outside of the gym.  While we were setting that up, John approached me about doing steadicam outside in the rain…crap.  I let the day-playing C camera operator (Frank) take over my shot while I went to the camera truck to prep my rig for the night’s work in the rain.

Steadicam is tough work on the best of days, but is absolutely miserable in the rain.  Wrapping all of the electronics with waterproofing makes the rig bulky and hard to get to when a change of batteries or a reload of the camera is called for.  The monitor is hard to see, and the rain covers blow around in the wind.  Waterproof clothing is hot and makes a sweaty job even more so, so the idea of heading out in the elements wasn’t appealing.

We broke for lunch before beginning the exterior work.  During that time, the rain stopped, and it became quite pleasant outside.

First up for me was a steadicam shot with Robert.  He started up in a fire engine, jumped down with me leading him, then in profile to see him lean into an open news van and grab some cable.  From there, I followed behind him as he ducked unnoticed past police officers, and avoided another fire truck as it backed up.  I chased behind him as he made his way to a news van and entered it through the back doors.  Easy right?

John wanted me to start in front, and spin around Robert at the beginning of the shot to reveal him as he jumped down, following behind him looking over his shoulder to see where he was going for a few steps, before kicking it into high gear to overtake him and lead him to the first van.  We did a few takes of that before Robert approached me and asked if it would be better if he just dropped into frame.  I was in a tough position, as John wasn’t there, and it could have been a potentially tricky political position.  I told him that yes it would be a cleaner shot, but that we should involve John.  Robert sought Shane out instead and told him we were going to change the shot (shows you who is running the show).  I got hold of John on the radio and told him the shot was changing as per Robert.  With that resolved, we did several takes that went quite well despite several issues with the extras (firemen, medics, news reporters, etc).  In the end, I think we got one take that was fluid, and worked from the start to the finish without any obnoxious behavior by the background actors.

From there, we moved to a shot of Robert on the phone talking with the kid from a week ago (the one with the acting deficiency – sorry – sad but true).  It should have been a nice dolly shot, but turned into a bullshit steadicam shot.  Bullshit because the camera moved to move, with no motivation or reason to be moving.  Robert entered the shot walking left to right with news vans and cop cars in the background.  He walked towards his car while talking on the phone…so far, so good.  He took off his hat and put it in the trunk.  He then walked to the front of the car and finished his phone conversation sitting on the hood of the car.  All of that was fine, except John wanted me to add “action” to the end of the shot.  I would drift around when Robert was on the car waiting for a specific line of dialogue when I would push into a close-up. 

Robert was talking quietly, so I got a pair of Comtex (wireless headphones) from the sound department so I could hear him.  Because the shot was free-form, John wanted to talk to me during the shot, but I wasn’t wearing a walkie (I never do when doing steadicam as I can’t concentrate on the shot, footing, and everything else when someone is telling me what to do in my ear).  Clyde was trying to pass along the info, but of course that meant that he was whispering as Robert was talking during the shot…not good.  I finally said fuck it, and not happily put on my walkie, which got in the way of the arm and the vest.  I got pissy for a minute or two and later apologized to my team.  Nothing was directed at them of course, but it isn’t good to outwardly show frustration…I’m better than that.

We ended up getting the shot before moving to the next bone-job of a steadicam shot.  This one started on feet, as a team of bikini girls came around the corner of a news van.  As they rounded the corner, I slowly tilted up their bodies to see faces.  I tracked back with them a few steps before using their forward momentum to tilt up to the top of the news van.  Sitting on top of the van was the engineer Robert met and talked to in the van a few weeks ago.  After seeing him, I pushed in to a tighter shot of him.  This proved tricky…

In order to push in with the camera, I needed to cross the path of about 10 bikini girls and firemen.  They were told from the get-go that I’d be tracking with them, then part through them with the camera…got it?  Yes?  Great!  Take one had me backing up with them, then going forward as planned and hitting one of them full on in the bikini clad breast with my monitor.  She kept walking as though nothing had happened.  Cut.  

After Lars (our 1st AD) talked to them, and we tried again.  And again.  And again.  They refused to get out of the way.  They refused to utilize their peripheral vision to notice that a 75lbs object connected to a large man was heading their way.  I’m not sure how many takes of this we did, but it was more than we should have.  

Mary Jo texted me at 2:00am (12:00am Montana time) to wish me a happy anniversary.  I did a quick check to make sure I hadn’t missed it (I hadn’t…it is on the 12th, and she was texting me as it rolled on to our day).  This is our 15th anniversary, and I wish I was there to celebrate it with her.  I was quite pleased to get the text as it boosted my spirits after several tough shots and got me back in the right frame of mind.

Last thing…with the big lights out to film at night, the thing most affected was the local insect population.  Looking at the lights from a distance, you could see thousands of bugs flying head-first into the huge lights, with a constant stream of smoke rising up.  Later, I walked past several of our lights on my way to the camera truck.  Imagine my surprise as I walked through a graveyard of millions of moths and other flying bugs.  They were everywhere, up to an inch thick of fried bodies on the ground covering a huge swath of terrain. 

Mike T and I got back to the hotel at 7:00am.  He fell asleep several times during the ride back, which is easy to do when you’ve worked 15 hours at night.  Hopefully the night hours won’t be as long going forward.

Fantastic Four - Baton Rouge, Louisiana - shot by Matt Jensen ASC 

Friday, June 20, 2014

Today started in the conference room, which we shot at a few weeks ago.  It was hot last time because of the large lights used to light the room through the windows, and the fact that we couldn’t use the air conditioning much because it would blow the smoke (atmosphere) around.  Today was no different except for the smoke.  It was hot and sticky and my camera did all but two shots.

The real action happened after that scene.

We broke for lunch and the caterer had a party set up for us as it was officially the half-way point of the show (assuming we don’t go over schedule, which isn’t a good assumption).  A three piece band (drums, keyboards, guitar) was in our tent playing loudly and well and it was a great time.  We had oysters, peel and eat shrimp, and crab legs, in addition to chicken and everything else we usually have.  It was great and a nice surprise.

After lunch, we were back to the hallways for a huge steadicam shot with Toby (Dr. Doom).  My right calf started acting up earlier in the day and I ignored it as I didn’t think there was any steadicam.  Silly me…as the day wore on, it became apparent that I’d either pulled or strained the muscle, and I had a slight limp by the time we were ready to begin rehearsing the big shot.  I saw the medic and she gave me some Advil and an Ace Bandage.  It didn’t make much of a difference.

We would be tracking with Toby down four hallways with three turns from behind, and two sizes from the front.  Each variation would be done in its entirety, and I covered a LOT of ground each take. 

We started from behind Toby as he walked down the hallway at a brisk pace.  Along the way, he would motion with his eyes, and people would collapse dead onto the floor, or fly through the air into walls.  The overhead lights would flicker and turn on and off as he passed by.  My job was to trail along behind him in a shot wide enough to see the action happen on either side of him as he made his way towards the long hallway at the end.  Waiting for him there were 10 armed guards with machine guns, each loaded with 15 full rounds.  The hall walls were concrete, and the sound in there was deafening as all 10 guns shot their 15 rounds.

I was equipped with a face mask and two layers of ear protection in addition to a long sleeve shirt.  Ray (A camera 1st AC) saw my Ace Bandage and dug up some compression socks from the wardrobe department to help my calf, and I considered them an extra layer of protection for my legs against the particulate and shells from the guns. 

Despite the protection, each time I got towards the area where the guns would fire, I was concentrating so hard on Toby and where he was in the frame that I completely forgot I was about to be shot at.  This happened on every single take.  Thankfully, I was able to keep the camera steady despite my surprise due mostly to my two layers of ear protection.

As we got close to the firing soldiers, Toby did his eye trick and they all collapsed to the floor, several of them having sparks blow off their masks.  About that same time, the lights in the hall went out completely, only to snap back on but at a much lower level.  This made framing difficult, because Toby could hardly be seen.

We did about 9 takes walking behind Toby, not including the multiple rehearsals.  Somehow I was okay when we rolled and I didn’t notice my leg during the shot, probably due to adrenaline.  When we had several takes in the can, we changed it up and turned the camera 180 degrees to lead Toby through the halls.

This was quite an undertaking, as we had several real issues to contend with.  The first was walking backwards through a sea of bodies on the ground.  Toby walked down the center of the hall, so we had to clear a path down the middle so that the parade of bodies (myself, Clyde, Dan (dolly grip), Anthony (boom operator), Cliff (1st AD), and at least one or two others) could walk backwards in the total darkness. 

Once all of the legs and arms were cleared, we had to figure out a game-plan for the darkness.  The lights went out completely at one point near the end of the run, and I had to hold my frame and hope that when the lights came back on that Toby would still be in the same part of the frame as he was before they went out. 

We did two rehearsals with a wide 27mm lens and did only two takes before moving on.  Why would we only do two takes of the money shot, after doing 9 takes from behind?  Who knows.  We then switched to a 40mm for a close-up of Toby.  We didn’t do any rehearsals, but only two takes.  Again, I was pretty happy with what we shot, but it would have been nice to have more than two takes of such a big shot.

At the end of the night, I wasn’t as sore overall as I was yesterday, but my calf really hurt, and I had a limp by the time I was done shooting.  It is something only time will heal, so I’ll be wearing the compression sleeve MJ bought for me at Dicks today until it heals.

Inception - Alberta, Canada - shot by Wally Pfister ASC

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

It was very wet on the mountain.  Lots and lots of snow, coupled with high winds.  Mercifully, it wasn’t too cold.  I got off the snow cat this morning in total darkness wearing my dark tinted ski goggles because the snow was blowing so hard in the wind that it hurt. 

I started the day with a camera that wouldn’t cooperate.  It was fogging terribly.  We think that the internal camera heater was causing the lenses to fog, but who knows.

We did a lot of circling around the fortress today.  One of our actors, Tom Hardy (Layer Cake, RocknRolla) runs around the base of the fortress planting explosives and shooting bad guys. Later, Tom’s stunt double throws a grenade from the second story of the fortress to the third, then jumps down to the first to escape the blast.  As he is in the air, the grenade explodes in a huge ball of flame behind him.  We did two takes.  On the first, the wind blew the explosion to the right, so it didn’t happen in the sweet spot of my frame.  I shifted my position to compensate for the wind, and take two was perfect.  The huge blast was directly behind the stuntman, filling the frame nicely. 

We did lots of explosions today.  The last one I was involved in had Tom throwing a grenade towards the main complex.  There are several stories in the complex, each with a balcony, and guards on each floor.  I had a tight shot of the complex, seeing several guards.  The guards on the lower level run towards the rail of the balcony for a better shot at Tom when the grenade explodes in front of them.  The entire frame filled with fire and it looked great. 

It doesn’t look like we will use the steadicam up on the mountain (hope I didn’t just jinx this), and we packed it up today.  We are starting to move our gear, since we will be blowing up the fortress in a few days, and we are using the second floor as a camera staging area.  It obviously wouldn’t be good to have camera gear in a building that is set to explode. 

Tomorrow, we are back to shooting at the “far side” location.  This is the choice spot where we had 100mph winds the other day.  Nobody was happy to hear we’d be going back.  I brought home several extra layers of weather gear, as I won’t be able to stop by the camera room in the morning to restock and the snow cats will take us directly to our location.  It was cold the last time we were there, and I wished I’d had warmer clothes.  I hope to be better prepared this time.

At dailies, everything looked good.  I showed up at the right time (I’ll continue to ask Bob about start times) and actually got a seat for the first time.  Much better that way.

Tropic Thunder - Kauai, Hawaii - shot by John Toll ASC

Wednesday September 26, 2007

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any more miserable, we moved our location back to the overlook spot from last Monday (where we shot Danny and Nick).  Since then all of the temporary vegetation we put down on the ground has died, and mud is left in its wake.  It is SO deep.  I ended up wearing my cleats all day today because people were falling down all over the place.  It is dirty, smelly, wet, and dangerous.  Very dangerous. 

We didn’t get off our first shot until around lunchtime at 12:30 (6:30am call time).  This was mostly due to poor planning on Ben’s part.  He walked onto the set and announced that we’d start with a crane shot.  Had anyone known about it, it could have been brought up and set in place yesterday.  Instead, it was being used by second unit back at the compound.  We stole it, ruining their shooting schedule.  It is a big piece of equipment, and it took a long time for it to make the trip up the muddy hill to our location. 

By the time it was set up, it was time to break for lunch…but we wouldn’t dare go to lunch before getting the first shot in the can…so we didn’t eat again.  Anthony (our camera P.A.) made sandwiches for us on the craft service trailer and we grabbed them with our filthy hands and wolfed them down between takes.  And people think we have glamorous jobs…Ha!

At some point, Jack Black started complaining that he needed something to eat (Anthony doesn’t work for him).  He was feeling light-headed due to hunger.  Ben announced over the loudspeaker that he could eat some of his stuff.  Ben brought over something in a Tupperware-style plastic container.  Jack started eating whatever was inside.  Robert Downey Jr. came over for a look.  Ben told him to eat some if he wanted to.  Robert looked around at all of us (the despondent, wretched, ravenous crew), and announced that he wasn’t going to eat until the crew did.  Then he asked if Ben was still hungry after eating the spring rolls he’d recently polished off.  Ben got the hint and walked back to his tent to sit by himself and watch the monitors.

Today was a bad day to interact with Ben if you were a camera operator.  Both Mike T and I had run-ins with him.  Mine was during a steadicam shot in the mud.  We didn’t rehearse the shot with the actors, only the second team (the stand-ins).  The stand-ins never do what the actors do (at least not on this movie…none of them has ever done this before or likely will again), and so it is a bit of a mystery to see what will happen when we roll on take 1 since none of us has seen where the actors will end up.  It is always a surprise.  Ben decided to try and move me and the actors around during the take (while we were rolling) over the “voice of God” loudspeaker.  Here’s an example of how things went.  Before rolling we set a (Ben approved) size on the second team stand-ins and put marks on the ground for them and the camera (so everyone would know where to be).  After everything was locked in place and we started to roll with the real actors, I encountered this exchange…

Ben - “Move in Brooks…get closer.  Wait, now you’re in Mike’s shot.  Move back, move back.  Now you’re too wide, can you move in?”  Brooks - “No Ben, if I move in I’ll be in Mike’s shot”.  Ben – “Well, just make it look better…ready…action!” 

Maddening.  This continued for a while.  Finally, we moved back onto the tripod, and it settled down a bit.  Mike had a similar deal when we were “rehearsing” with the actors.  I use this word tentatively because it wasn’t really a rehearsal but more of a “by the numbers” walk through.  I got into Mike’s shot (what a surprise based on the above commentary).  Mike was telling Jay (the actor) to take a small step to the side so he could avoid shooting me and my camera during the take.  As he addressed Jay, he took his eye off the eyepiece for a split second.  The camera tilted down ever so slightly (again, only for a split second) and Ben jumped all over him.  “Why aren’t you framed up Mike Thomas?  This is a REHEARSAL!!!”  Mike tried to explain, but Ben had already tuned him out and started humming a song over the P.A. system waiting for Mike to frame up.  

And that’s how the day finished up.  We were all bitter, tired, and muddy.  It was a tough day, even though what was listed to shoot on the call sheet was one of the easiest scenes on the entire schedule.  If we’re having a tough time with this, we’re in trouble.  I repeat…we’re in trouble.