SouthLAnd

The Day to Day stories of cops in Los Angeles, their on the beat stories as well as off hours drama.

That last few years have found me as the Rigging Key on this series. A very good show produced by John Wells of ER, Westwing, and many other hit shows. A very challenging show to work on as it runs and guns all over the streets of LA, 189 locations in 10 episodes! The rigging crew is focused on getting as much ready ahead of the “circus” as we can. Much of our work involves rigging the cars ahead of time, mounts, insert cars, trailers, crane tracks, etc… so the main shooting unit can roll in, put the actors in place shoot, and roll out! Michel Barrere was the first unit Key, Bruce Chimerofsky the BB, Jerry Bertolomi the Dolly, with David Gamble, Mark Hamill, and Matt Hawkins rounding out the crew.

After 25 years of filming all over LA you start to feel that you know the place pretty well and there aren’t many places you have not been but Southland will take places you “ain’t never been before” and some you don’t ever want to see again! We did not have a regular stage but used our production office area in La Center Studios for our Bull Pen and our normal base camp was a huge dirt lot in China town.

Michel Barrere (center with coffee) was first unit Key operating camera was Cameron Duncun. Hammer David Gamble is up on Jack Carpenters Camera car at right adjusting diffusion frame.

Rigging of the car shots was many times done in our base camp here in Chinatown. Some days were spent entirely here rigging and de-rigging the different cars as they came in and out. We had one car (shown here) that we tore the front end off, motor out and rigged permanent shooting platforms on. This allowed for real in your face driving shots. We rigged a lot of sliders onto these cars for wrap around shots and transitions from back seat to front seat while moving. We rigged several of our cars with platform that could be slid into receptacles on both side to allow operators to shoot while moving. This “Pod Car” has since been used on several other productions. Just a few months ago I was getting ready to do a pilot when the the best boy called me and said “the Director wants to use this thing called a “Pod Car” know anything about it?”…lol life is funny!

This was the “Pod Car” from 2010-11 where the storyline centered on the detectives and this was one of their cars. This is the basic start point rigging wise and we would move modify as we needed to for the shot. In the age of Safety monitor and Lawyers I always made sure to have railing and other safety gear in place and available, of course this gear might be modified or deemed un-necessary for the shot, but you need to have it available anyway. This car also had the ability to have 2′ x 7′ side platforms inserted into receptacles on either side (they are just visible if you look close along bottom of the car) and a second operator and assistant would be there.

This is a shot taken off the back of my grip trucks tail gate, a beautiful Los Angeles sunset over Chinatown. Spent many a sunset in this lot working on the cars.

 

What we called “Christmas trees”, mounts for small Cannon D5s that we used on some of the interior car work.Shutting down Hollywood Blvd for a bank robbery shootout!

Grip Marl Hammil checks our progress, I think we are in San Pedro.

My ten ton truck driver Bob Guemelo clowns and Grip Lenard LaRosa at the back of my “rigging” ten ton. We are building a cart for the shooting platforms that work on the “pod” car. They were very heavy and we hauled them all over, this helped immensely. Even though the show Southland is gone Id just did a pilot and John Carpenter rented us the “Pod” car, sure enough my cart showed up as well with the accessories still on it.

Below….How many times do you have to tell a boom man hes in the shot, or in the way, or you shouldn’t stand there? sometimes you just let him find out himself!

This shows one of the things grips do. Rigging an extension to the 2nd floor walkway so camera can pull around corner and get the shot.

Shooting late at nite on the streets of LA you see some real strange things. At 3am some type of fury animal has made a nest on Bruce Chimerofskys head! Bruce was Best Boy on Southland.