Kina and me sitting by the lodge window waiting for a weather window.
The beauty of shooting in a studio is that you can control more of the variables. You’ve got power where you want it, the weather is on a thermostat, the audio is contained…you get it. Alternatively, the big, wide outdoor world–especially in the mountains where we are for this gig–is about as far from a studio as you can get. And we’re experiencing that for our 5th day out of the past 8 days.
Yesterday, Mother Nature pulled a fast one on us… Today we planned on having none of it so we were up early, atop the mountain and we literally sat there, at the ready, for any break she gave us. For the entire day. And lo and behold, she gave us no breaks. It dumped snow all day and blew up to 50 or 60 mph for hours on end. All the while our entire crew sat inside the mountain top lodge, waiting for a break that never came.
This is not the first time this has happened in my career, or even the 20th, and it certainly won’t be the last. Through these times, I’ve learned… … that there are two primary thoughts are typically in my head. 1) this sucks, but the only thing we can do about is…2) be ready for it when the weather clears. Keep tweaking the plan, stay ready. By keeping our knees bent, ready to roll cameras when the opportunity presents itself, we’re staying sane, and doing all we can.
Our location scout Tim braving the elements as he puts in his time on weather watch.
Once you’re in that position, and you’ve stared out the window enough, sometimes you go a little stir crazy. That was the case today. We rehearsed as much as we could. We ate junk food. We laughed. We napped. We were bored. We were hopeful. And we were disciplined as all hell. And at end of the day we still had nothing. The redeeming quality of it all was that we were there. Waiting. In a sick sort of way it felt good to stand up to Mother Nature and let her know that we were there waiting. Knocking. Half out of respect, half out of spite, half out of there’s nothing else you can do. Three halves make a whole.
Scott begins the senseless antics that result from a long weather hold.
AD, Jason and superstar athlete, Kina make the best of the bad situation with humor.
Working with Jason the AD on getting the storyboard even MORE nailed so we're as ready as can be when we get some light.
The crew stepped outside for a little rehearsal at one point. Here you can see Scott struggling to even walk in the pounding storm with high gusting winds.
And you know what? We’re doing it again tomorrow. We’ve decided with our producers that the plan is to be back on the hill at 7am when the sun rises. Waiting. We’ll take a snowcat to the summit and wait some more, until mother nature deems us worthy. Until we get what we need.
We slid off the mountain at dark. And funny enough we gathered–the whole pile of us…20 or more at this time now in the shoot…at Honga’s restaurant for what was supposed to be our “wrap party.” In the event you don’t know what a wrap party is, that’s the party that ends almost every production in our biz…where the crew gets together to celebrate a job well done. If you’re asking why we’re celebrating before we’re done, that’s a fair question….
Recall back, if you will, to the beginning of the shoot–and my first blog post in this series–where I called this out as “an 8 day shoot.” Well, here it is, day 8, and we’re not done. Yet the producers had planned tonight’s for us well in advance. So we’re finding ourselves “celebrating” before the work is complete. For good reason, the mood at the “party” is festive, but subdued. Normally, people are seriously unwinding after a week of 18 hour days like we’ve had. But tonight’s gathering is more like a Sunday dinner with family. No glorious toasts, no pictures, no hooting and hollering. It’s warm and polite, but we all know there is work to be done. A few toasts – mostly in hopes of good weather tomorrow – and just one or two rounds of drinks, and we’re all headed back to the hotel.
Most of us were originally scheduled to fly home tomorrow. But that can only happen if we finish. There’s a lot on the line. Besides all the blood, sweat, tears, and the emotion of the crew, there are thousands and thousands of dollars on the line in for the client in airline change fees, extra hotel, talent, and crew fees etc etc if we don’t finish. Suffice it to say, we’re ALL feeling hopeful that all goes well. It’s not fun watching a client spending more money than they had planned. For anybody.
So… if you’re reading this, now is the time more than ever that we could use all your weather mojo. Send whatever weather chips you’re willing to cash in on us. We need it for tomorrow. If Mother Nature gives us even the hint of a chance with the weather, we’ll nail it. You have my word.
As someone who has been on the client side of things in this kind of situation, I can feel for you here. It’s nice to hear this perspective for a change. The thing to remember is that the images you can get in the wild should be stronger than what you get in the studio, but in the wild you are subject to mother nature’s whims. I think the client will understand when you deliver an excellent product at the end of the shoot.
I will try hard to turn those winds and snow toward NY.
Good Luck and thanks for once again, sharing everything.
Chase,
A huge thanks to you for publishing this series of blog posts. As an aspiring photographer, it has totally opened my eyes to the kind of commitment and work involved to make it in this industry!
Keep up the good work, hope the weather gives you a break soon.
All the best from England.
Lee
amongst all of the chaos, how do you guys manage to keep a track of all the gear you got to the site and make sure its all back to Seattle again?
and also to get my earlier Q answered, I post it again:
Quote “Now…how do you manage to protect you gear from all that cold white stuff and the weather. I do know that Nikon and B&H does support you well on that. For for amateurs like me who cant afford spoiling gear…anytips….precautions to be taken.?
Moreover do you or dont u think that if one has no particular experience in that helicopter stuff…thats a potential risk to gear?” Unquote. 🙂
Best,
Abhi.
Abhi,
Thanks for the question. As Chase’s first assistant, It’s my job to see that all of the equipment is kept track of and is protected from the elements. We have more gear than Chase, Erik and myself are able to carry around on the mountain on skis, but with the help of a couple of other members of the crew, we can travel around on skis with gear enough for a still and commercial video shoot.
Each member of the crew is very good at keeping an eye out for each other, to the extent that we all know that a pair of sunglasses laying around goes back to Deb, the stylist, and that a lens cap or memory card needs to make it back to me. This combination of Chase, Erik and myself keeping our things in good order, and a savvy crew taking up any slack keeps our bags tight and gear accounted for. Once the job is done we’ll take mission critical gear for our next project (starting immediately on our return) with us on the plane and ship the rest through an expediting company we’ve worked with many times and with great success.
As to keeping it out of the elements, it’s a challenge. We use the best gear we can because the magnesium bodies and environmental seals that Nikon markets in it’s high end gear is the real deal. High end pro gear is very good in the elements. That’s not to say that you can’t break it. A member of our crew had a personal SLR camera malfunction on this shoot because water got in the HDMI port, this could just as easily have happened to some of our gear. Because of this, we try to keep gear covered from the elements as much as possible, and carry backups of anything we can’t live without.
Would not like to be hauling a bag of primes and 70-200mm up that hill! And your Macbook, and 2 bodies, oh lord!