More on set visit

Susie from Propstar had a camera and I have pictures of my tech (Drew) and I in the senator's office, in front of the United States seal and other such memorable pix. During our positioning of the phones, lights and cords there was some guy sitting in the senator's chair. I thought to myself, he looks a lot like Tom Cruise. Well, he's Cruise's stand in. While they are setting up camera shots, lighting, rehearsing moving camera shots, etc. they use stand ins to do the scene. The stand in for Meryl Streep and Cruise were very similar in body type, basically they are supposed to be doubles, so same hair/eye color, same skin tone, same height, same body type, wear the same clothes, etc. This is for lighting, camera angle, prop placement, etc. Because we sure wouldn't want Meryl Streep standing around while they got the lights right, eh. She was lounging about in her Star trailer while all this was going on.

By the way, I forgot to tell you that I saw all 3 of the stars, Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Tom Cruise. I only saw Cruise for a couple seconds. He's quite a short little fellow. Meryl Streep is beautful and she laughed a ton on the set during rehearsals. Robert Redford sat about 3 feet from me while he was discussing scene changes with the script guy. Him and Cruise apparently co-direct and co-star in the movie. While we were on set Cruise was acting, so we didn't really see him behind the camera. BTW, directors aren't really behind the camera, the camera guy is. The director just reviews the clip, makes corrections as he sees fit, etc. The one long (if you could call 30 seconds long) scene that I was there for too 3 hours of rehersals and about 14 takes. Some of the takes were ad libs by Meryl Streep (it was her scene), some were exactly on script and some were just flubs. Not flubs on Meryl's part of course, she was always perfect, except of course when she dropped her lipstick across the floor. hehe

Hobnobbing with soon to be screen legends....

Today was spent babysitting the set of Lions for Lambs. As you read in a previous post Mitel's phones are used as props in the movie. They are to be fully functioning props so there was concern that Tom Cruise would pick the phone up and either it wouldn't work, or more likely, he wouldn't know how to use it.

This morning started at 6:30 on the set. We set up some "receptionist" style phones which was a big deal with flashing and solid lights to make it look busy. I'm sure these lights will never be seen as the shot was filmed from the other direction this afternoon. Oh well. Then we hung around and waited, and waited and waited. I wondered why people had magazines, papers and laptops at their little stations. It was to entertain themselves throughoutthe day. We were told of the rules:

1. Do not look Tom Cruise in the eye. (hehe get real)
2. When they say quiet on the set, it's a dead stop, no coughing, no whispering, no moving, stand still.
3. Never enter the sound stage (or exit) when the red light is flashing.
4. No personal cameras. That was ok because I forgot the memory card for mine. DUH!

Around 10:30 we heard a call "The senator's coming!" That meant that Tom Cruise (Senator Irving from Illinois) was coming into the sound stage. People scurried around and got real quiet. They spent about an hour filming about 1 second of footage of Tom Cruise holding some critical piece of paper at the Senator's desk. How time consuming.

More tomorrow....

Lions for Lambs

My company's publicity department is providing the phones for this 2007 Robert Redford directed film. We have a department that specifically provides phones for "product placements" in movies, series, etc.

Lions for Lambs stars Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise. He's a senator in the film and according to the prop people a real monster if things aren't perfect on the set. Based on that whole Oprah incident I suspect he's a monster all the time.....so dramatic...... So we have to install the phones 3 days before to make sure they are correct.

The Washington, DC scenes will be filmed on the lot at Universal in the next 2 weeks. Apparently this movie has 3 different story lines that parallel one another, similar to Babel. How we are all connected whether we know each other or not. Unfortunately, due to a move in the shooting schedule I will be unable to put the phones in as I have a prior committment so I have to delegate it.