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Jeff Balis - Lunchtime Surprise
There is a moment in this week's episode when the film camera dies, the rig we've built on the car won't support the backup camera, and as we try to break the crew for lunch so the grips can reinforce the rig, we realize that the caterer has yet to arrive. In addition to paying thousands of dollars in meal penalties, we had an understandably starving and grumpy crew on our hands. As we struggled to find a workaround to this confluence of back luck, I couldn't help but think, "this is going to make the TV show producers happy."
On all the movie sets I've seen, the caterer cooks the food on-site in a truck. Unless the caterer gets so pissed off that he drives away without telling anyone, there is virtually no chance of the food just not showing up when the 1st AD calls lunch. The worst case scenario is that it tastes like shit. "Stolen Summer" was a lower budget type operation, though, and we went with a caterer who cooked the food off site and delivered it before lunch. This is a cost saving measure that is apparently used regularly and with success in Chicago. Everything is great about this type of caterer, except when there is an overturned big rig on the freeway and no one can reach the catering truck to find out where it is. The catering company kept saying that the driver had left "awhile ago" and should be there "any minute." Our Chicago crew had worked with the company many times before, so there was no reason to be nervous. Or was there?
To this day, I still don't know what else we could have done in this scenario. There were quick workarounds, like McDonald's hamburgers, but that would have only pissed off the crew more. Truth be told, it is very difficult to round up hot food for 100 people in under an hour. We did order some Italian food, but it arrived an hour later--at the same time as the caterer. The crew said they were "okay" with having lunch delayed, but what choice did they have?
Frankly, there wasn't much that we could do. A suggestion was made that we should have had a backup caterer, but that just wasn't feasible with our budget. The real solution is to NOT take the word of the catering company who says the driver will be there in five minutes, and NOT take the word of the crewmembers who have worked on dozens of films with this catering company in the past and have sworn to the company's infallible track record. The solution is to foresee that it is possible, even if just slightly, that the food might not arrive, and make sure there is another restaurant in the area that can substitute in a pinch. While the food might be hotter and tastier if it arrives a half-hour before lunchtime, that doesn't give us enough time to make alternate plans if there is a problem. What we should have done before this day, and what we did as a result of it, is have the food arrive early enough to give us time to avert any similar mistakes.
The real lesson here is command accountability. Not to equate making movies with saving the world, but command accountability is the standard demanded by the Navy of its ship captains. Captains are 100% responsible for what happens to their ship, especially since they are often incommunicado for long periods of time. The individual circumstances are irrelevant; if something goes foul, the commander can be held responsible and court martialed. It doesn't matter who bumped into the console and inadvertently launched a missile at West Palm Beach, the shit lands on the captain's lap. While the film business doesn't have a court martial at present, there is a similar need for accountability. Every minute on a film set costs money-a lot of money-and so it is a big deal when time is wasted. No one cares why the food didn't arrive. No one wants to hear about the accident on the freeway. They just want to eat their penne pasta. It's all about the bottom line.
If lunch arriving late sounds like a small deal, it isn't. The film business is centered around food for some reason and everyone takes it very seriously. The crew busts their ass and they just expect a little hot food in return.
By the way, the decision to shoot in a moving car comes under fire in this episode. The moving car footage was originally supposed to be only in the beginning of the movie, but when you watch the film, notice how we used the footage again to great success (in my opinion at least) to help solve an editing problem.
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