How's your Summer Job?

Luke Leslie June 2006

Being a film student sucks sometimes, there's very few female film students, your sometimes expected to work late nights on shoots with no overtime - and often no pay (it's for the experience asshole!), you have college 5 days a week - all day, and your lecturers know when you miss class because the classes are so small, and worst of all you get no respect from friends who all think because they own a few collectors edition DVD's with hours of special features they know more about film then us. So in summary Boo-urns.

But it has it's upsides...

I've just spent the last 3 days being an Assistant on a very very very cool Video shoot. Did I mention it was cool? Assistant brings images of being shoved around by Andy Dick or Donald Trump as you rush around with their water and/or bathrobe, or frantically try to sell yourself in board room interview dressed like a tosser. Well thats not the kind of assistant that I was - It was 2 fold - Camera Assistant - and assist the production manager (Production Assistant) , when and wherever needed. Sounds boring huh? Not when your shoot is from a helicopter that has to film almost all of county Clare in the West almost entirely from the air - with 7 hours flight time over 2 days - perfect scheduling was required to get the helicopter to the various locations with precision accuracy to coordinate with the parts it was filming.

Co. Clare - We Dubliners might say: "What's there anyway- Sheep?" yeah that and...

The Cliffs of Moher.

In-fact that's what the whole things about - Martello Media is doing the Exhibition in the Cliffs of Moher visitor center - and this 12ish minute Journey Video around Clare is just one of many parts that will be in it. So the idea was to fly across the beautiful scenery, popping down close to ground level to get a closer look at some of the various exciting characters you can find around Co. Clare. Then when your down close we change over to a ground shoots, for close ups etc - these were all shot on different days. So no that's not just sheep - the list includes,

Speed boat on the Shannon - with dolphins jumping in-front of the boat which I got to edit a while ago
Rock climbers on the Mirror Wall - a very high, very steep cliff,
Scuba Divers - seen on a Rib in-front of the cliffs and then rolling back into the sea - then following them under the water.
Cavers going down Po nGolum - which Sam and JJ and myself assisted with last April,
Surfers on a newly discovered 40-ft wave below the cliffs - which are also being featured in what is to my knowledge Irelands first Surf Documentary

So - as camera assistant that meant getting up early and helping set up the HDCAM camera - which was specially brought in from England for the shoot - it costs about 100,000 Pounds Sterling. Weighs a ton and comes with about 7 bits of equally heavy kit including monitors, a fuck off heavy tripod and other misc bits of gear I will never forget hauling around- not because of their use - we often never used some of it - but I'll instead remember their ridiculous weight - it seems price is gauged by weight with the high end gear. And when I wasn't needed with the camera gear - which really was a fair bit of the time, I was Production Assistant - which meant helping coordinate the helicopter when it buzzed in at 100-ft out of nowhere before fucking off somewhere to blow tourists off a cliff face or spook some cows.

But man! I can't believe I got paid for this! - How's your summer job? Sorry -- but I got to ride a helicopter, and help coordinate it from dive boat dressed up in full dive gear bombing along at the bottom of the cliffs of Moher - the Helicopter 50-ft away on our left hand side! All in the most amazing weather I've ever witnessed in Ireland - non stop sunshine - for 3 days! I even got a tan - all while being paid - which all goes to pay for my own, much cheaper but non-the less bad-ass HD Sony Camera.

Hick-ups, well lets see, the divers cancelled and we had to organize a new lot at a moments notice, thankfully Carol the Producer knew someone who kindly obliged and let us use his rig, Oh - the Helicopter has to radio in before take off, and on Tuesday morning nobody was in the tower, the man had gone for a tea break as there were no commercial flights expected at Galway "international" airport for an hour! What a joke! They had to go find him - which was pretty funny, all except for a few minor delays - the Shoot went off without a hitch, and was absolutely fantastic, Jealous?

Yeah - I thought so, Don't feel bad! You can all go see the film in the Cliffs of Moher Center which I think is opening in January 2007 - I'm even in the video - you can see me on the Dive boat wearing a black and blue wet-suit and a fro to end all fros. Beats Tesco I think... but I could be wrong. I may even get to help edit some of it, as I did with the dolphin segment!

Well thanks for reading - and remember if you have an interesting story or Editorial to contribute - send it my way and I'll put it up here in the words section.

The Cliffs of Moher.

online since Jan 06

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