McDonalds

Lots a times the agency does not allow me to take set pictures. Sadly also on this job - which started to get interesting even before the location scout. I was just coming back from a job in Berlin, the plane already late, as the captain announced that were were going to have a rough landing. Wind ... interesting I thought, I'm curious what the wind will be like at the location. On the way to the location, the taxi driver was telling me that it would take longer to get there, the storm had caused big branches to fall on to the street. Interesting I thought. Were shooting in four days, usually when its like this, in vienna wheater does not change that fast. As I got to the set it was as i thought. 70 km per hour winds were tearing around. The DoP for the job was Thomas Kiennast, an excellent man, who knows what he wants - perfect light. And as we were standing outside, - in the wind, holding our hats, so they didn't come flying off into nowhere, Thomas looked at me and sayd: Well, we gotta do it right. We'll need a 20x20 Butterfly, 20x30 greenscreen, some 12x12's and some 6x6's. Some Arrimax 18k, 12k's,and so on. We have to match this material with some other stuff we'll do in sunny Mallorca. Of course, the usual. And for sure, I'm not going to be the one complaining about wind and stuff, I just love to suprise and get the job done - and he's just waiting to hear me talk about the wind. I don't. I just say, sure, no problem. He looks at me interested and then just says, great. At the time I had no idea how to solve this. The weather report sayed, it's going to be better than today, but it's still going to be windy as hell. Next day I sat down with my boys and told them what my plan was. (you must know, in Austria we sadly don't have key grips, it's all up to the gaffer) Well, it was more a vaque idea how to solve it, but I rembered having a close look at a major rock'n roll rig for a concert some time back. They put absolutly everything on massive concrete blocks. Just to give it a good base weight. And so I thought, what the hell, lets leave all our big butterfly stands at home and replace them with concrete blocks that have metal trusses built on to them. And then we replace all the butterfly rods with trusses and rig these big beautys where ever we need them. I don't care if the silk, or grid tears, but if hell breaks loose, absolutly everything will not only be save, but also look save. We all know the difference ;) Two of my guys worked as rigging stage hands, so Arthur and Alex worked out the details. My biggest concern was the loss of mobility. Luckily we were shooting on a good asphalt parking space, so we were able to move the concrete blocks around with two ... sorry I could not find the correct english therm. But theres a picture on the top! It was as fast as using stands! (if you include the time it takes to remove the ropes, sandbags, ect.) And so, using the rule of thumb, for one square meter you will need 100 kilos of counter weight, we came to the show with an extra 14 ton truck, just filled with weights. You won't notice the wind in the final commercial! And at this point I must say thanks to the line producer who trusted me to pull off this heavy stunt although we were way over budget - this was my first show where the costs of lightequipment were more expensive than the crew. And we were deffinitly not understaffed if you get the picture.
Go to the showreel of thomas: www.kiennast.info