G-Force

I just got off of a movie called G-Force. I saw some awesome driving stunts, a simulated hamster and got to spend a few days overlooking the Port of Los Angeles. Not half bad, but it felt very, very long. I mean, like, super long. Sure, 12 hour days are never short, but I think I prefer a day or two rather than four in a row on any show to break up the monotony.

It took an hour to get to the location for a 6AM call time. Going in, I knew it’d make for a long ride home because when I’m on a car call, that means we only work during daylight hours if we’re called in that early. I was working with my ’06 Mustang on this one.

The first day, I spent many hours in holding. Over the course of this gig, I read an entire book about Medieval Seige Warfare. Not half bad, but also a little dry–which makes any book the wrong book to have on set. But it was what I had in my bag, so I did enjoy it between conversations with other extras.

Something odd about this gig was that the set was about 5 blocks long and holding was on one end rather than in the middle. And we were on a rather steep hill…one of the blocks reminded me of a non-crooked version of Lombard St. in San Francisco. It wasn’t quite that steep, but after the third time walking up it…you get the picture. Thankfully, when I did have to walk up and down it during the shot, I didn’t have to go far. The SUVs in were hauling ass, doing stunts in the street, so the most I could travel was about 20-30 feet during any given take.

I got to drive a little on one of the days. That was nice. I always enjoy driving.

Watching the stunts was fun, too. One had an SUV coming down the hill, going around a car, as another SUV came around a corner, cutting off the car and following the first SUV as it swerved around another SUV while yet another SUV came around another corner and joined the fray. Lots of squealing tires and good, fun automotive mayhem. I heard the drivers came within inches of a few of the vehicles…cool! I dig that shit.

I missed the big stunt on one of the other days because I was forgotten in holding. I heard it didn’t go off as planned, though. A little too much ramp and the SUV exchanged the intended target for an unintended target. There wasn’t any massive carnage or anything and it looked great on camera, but it wasn’t what the script required so they had to do it again.

That one I got to see. The SUV went up the ramps and landed on an old RV, shattering it. Awesome shit for me. I’ve seen a few other similar stunts, but it had been quite awhile. I’m always amazed at the prep time before and after a shot like that, too. It seemed to take forever, but was, of course warranted. I mean, if I was anywhere involved in the action, I’d want to make sure everything was right, wouldn’t you?

I just realized that I mentioned the hamster in the beginning and never got back to it. Well, I’d snuck a peek at the story board on the first day. Apparently, we were filming some sort of car chase between a CG hamster in a giant motor-propelled (I think…it was hard to tell how it was propelled because it looked like the hamster was driving it, not running in it) ball. It looked really bitchin’ on the story board. I definitely want to see this movie when it comes out just so I can put together all the pieces of the shots I was part of and see what we were actually doing. I had my back to the action on several occasions.

Sometimes, to simulate the hamster, they used this weird home-made-looking car-like contraption that I can’t even begin to describe and do it justice. It was kinda like a go-cart, kinda like a dirt track car, kinda like a “hey guys, I got some metal and an engine, let’s build a kickass-fast race-buggy” sort of thing. It was really nifty and I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve never worked in a scene where heavy CG stuff was going to be added later. (I didn’t work with Doc Oc when I was on Spiderman II.) So, when they brought out the sort of camera tester balls of various materials plus the ones with various furs on them, at first I didn’t make the connection. That was what made me try to steal a glance at the story board. The weird car, the groups of balls, just what the hell kind of show was I on? Then, everything made sense and I started really diggin’ it and wondering what it’d be like from the CG animators point of view when the footage landed in the queue. I’ve never been on that side of it, nor had I thought about it before. Fascinatin’ shit to me…

The weather was odd. The first two days had hot sun (thank goodness for the sunblock in my generic survival kit in my gig bag) with icy cold sea breeze. The next day was miserable hot sun with no breeze…and then rain. We went home “early”–about an hour earlier than the previous days–and it took me two-and-a-half hours to crawl home because it was Friday night, too. That sucked. The last day was perfect. Warm, but not hot. The breeze was cool, but not freezing. I wish more shoots could be like that.

I doubt I made it into the movie. Us extras were mostly just little blurs of movement on the sidewalks. When I rent the DVD, I’ll have to freeze-frame it to maybe see myself. There’s a pretty good chance of seeing my car, though. The camera was right next to it in one of the shots, so maybe they were using the row of cars parked there. That’d be good enough for me.

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