My God, I haven't been fucked like that since grade school.

One of the most dangerous things you can do in Hollywood is driving coverage. Putting a camera in a car and trying to shoot another car on the streets of Los Angeles is, on its face, asinine. Think about it for a minute: the director is going to push for crazier and crazier action, the DP is going to push for crazier and crazier angles, and the drivers are going to push for crazier and crazier speeds. All of this pushing is happening on actual streets in a crowded metropolis and absolutely no one is really conscious of the fact that we're not on a controlled backlot.

We took it a step further and got a rig called The Ultimate Arm. It's a souped up Mercede Benz SUV with a liquid mercury balanced articulated arm mounted to the roof. Inside there are controls to swing the arm around and control the three axis head attached to the end of the arm. I got to sit in the back, sideways and wedged between the batteries that power the arm, and pull focus with my little remote focus unit. It's cramped, everyone is constantly farting, and I'm pretty sure I was breathing pure exhaust the whole time. The whole thing is, from an engineering standpoint, pretty fucking amazing. It's also a complete ass fuck when you're in a rush as we were from the beginning of this job. See, the problem is that you can do too much too quickly with the thing and thus no one slows down long enough to do anything right. We almost hit a pizza delivery kid we were rushing around so much. We also almost rear ended one of the picture cars, almost hit a divider, almost ran head on into both picture cars at once, almost rolled over, and almost ran into a bus. I bruised my head, chin, and almost broke my hand. Rushing around and yelling a lot while trying to outrace the sun in downtown LA is no way to make a living.

In the end we got the shots we needed but it left me wondering, why in the hell do I put up with any of this shit? I really need to find another career. Maybe basket weaving.

Peace out, bitches!