Digital Filmmaking

My Experience on the set of the Surrogates

October 19, 2009 When people ask me how I got this job, I too sometimes find myself thinking “How DID I get this job?” I mean, the actual answer is easy: A colleague of mine recommended me. But how did I get here? The interesting thing with this job is that it’s not an “entry level” job. The typical route is to climb the hollywood ladder, starting out as a Production Assistant or in the locations department, an art intern, etc. But me, I inexplicably landed smack in the middle of the hollywood ladder.

My job is in the 24 Frame Playback department, sometimes known as Video Playback. I know, you’ve never heard of it. Before I was hired to work on the Surrogates, I hadn’t either. The easy description is I put copyright cleared footage on TV's and computer monitors that are seen in films. The technical description is that film rolls at 24 frames a second, TVs, computer monitors and the like display video at 30 frames a second. This causes a flicker since they don’t roll at the same rate. It’s my job to put the footage up there, but to also eliminate the flicker and to color correct it so it matches everything else in the scene.

In the time since working on the Surrogates, I’ve come to have a better understanding of why exactly I ended up there. Simply put, there is nobody in the Boston area doing 24 Frame Playback. The set on the Surrogates had 230 monitors and the producer for the Surrogates realized that all of that needed to be done was to hook computer screens to tv monitors. Why fly in and put a number of guys from LA in a hotel when anyone can hook up a monitor? He opted to hire two local guys and fly only one guy from LA instead.

So enter me and my colleague Joe. I have the computer and technological background, and Joe, a guy who’s worked on the boston sports trucks for 20 years or so, has the video and broadcast background. They flew a playback guy in from LA who was able to get us both up to speed, teaching us about synching frame rates and color correcting and so on and the rest, as they say, is history.

Working on the Surrogates got me the requirements needed to join the local film union, another interesting point about this job is that it was a union job. PA, locations, interns etc are all non-union. Somehow I landed a union job. Since I was able to get the minimum requirements, I’ve since submitted my application, and thus the work will keep coming.

I’m still not entirely sure why I was able to sidestep a large part of the hollywood ladder, but I can’t wait to find out.

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