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Motion Pictures: Necessary Roughness & Hexed

Necessary Roughness
While living in Dallas, Texas I've had the opportunity to work as a camera operator on two motion pictures: Paramount's "Necessary Roughness" and Columbia Picture's "Hexed." In both pictures I was hired as a day player, meaning that I was needed for a specific time and not required for the entire shooting schedule. Unfortunately, this also meant no screen credit. Drat.

This is the framing that I achieved from the 50 yard line. The red outline indicates an aspect ratio of 1:85, used for theatrical release. The yellow outline approximates the framing when shooting for television.

At the beginning of film roll the A.C. would go across the field and I would shoot off a few frames of the camera slate showing the camera number, scene information, etc. With a fixed focal length and telephoto lens, shooting the camera slate for synching the sound was a problem. There was no way that my AC could run across the field, hold up the slate, clap it, then run back to the camera in a timely manner. I would have to keep rolling film the entire time in order to maintain the sync, even before the shooting the scene. Ah, but never under estimate the resourcefulness of movie makers. A grip came out to the middle of the playing field with two 6 foot long 2 x 4's painted with alternated black and white stripes and joined with a hinge at one end. A giant clapper! We would all roll film at the same time and aim our cameras at the grip in the middle of the field. After clapping the marker we would return to our positions ASAP. The A.C.'s would spin the focus to where we needed to be while a production assistant with a walkie-talkie would radio in when we were ready.

I found it interesting on how the production company kept the extras around for the night game scenes. An ad in a newspaper usually draws the people in who are interested in being extras in a movie. In this situation the extras were needed to sit in the bleachers from dusk to dawn as background for a football night game. The glamour of show biz tends to wear down and become downright boring for the people waiting around for hours for a glimpse of a star. To keep the people from leaving the extras were given tickets. Every hour a drawing was made and a lucky extra would receive a prize. The grand prize would come at the end of the shoot, around 4:30a.m., which was a brand new car!

Hexed
My involvement with the movie Hexed was a night shoot located at a condemned hotel in downtown Fort Worth, Texas.

Months earlier a car dealer blew up his dealership to collect on the insurance. The resulting pressure wave was so intense that it damaged the hotel. I guess it was safe enough for a film crew to shoot in, though.

Our first setup was a shot of a stunt man dressed as the movie's hero. Missing an air rescue bag, the hero falls onto a fire engine instead. The timing was critical in panning the camera to catch the fall. The padded fire engine had a layer of talc to provide a puff of smoke as the stunt man hit his mark. The stunt man earned $700 for each drop. We did two takes to make sure we had the required footage.

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