In this temporary home away from home, some scene of a movie, TV show, commercial or rock video will be captured on film, video or Hi-Def for the world to see. If it’s a big movie, they’ll be lucky to boil down the day’s efforts into a minute or two of usable footage. If it’s a TV show or Movie of the Week, they’ll end up with five or eight minutes of cinematic gold.

It’s no wonder somebody from the grip crew or set dressing department is sprawled out on the tailgate catching some rays. They’re exhausted. In reality, they probably got up at 5 AM to shower and get to this location by the 6 AM crew call. They have to unpack the trucks, unwrap a mile or so of cable to get the lights and cameras in position for the day’s work that will be lucky to get underway by 8 AM. They have to hook up all the other trucks to their own separate generator. They’ll eat at noon, keep shooting until 6 or 7 PM, re-pack the trucks in an hour and then drive home for about an hour of civility with their better half, kiss the kids goodnight before they hit the wall and crash into bed. The alarm clock goes off at 5 AM the next morning and they get up to do it all over again. And they wouldn’t have it any other way because these are the lucky ones whose job it is to help create a world of make-believe that the outside world can’t seem to get enough of.

The Circus is parked here because some location has proven to be irresistible to the powers that be that decide such things. It is deemed cheaper to spend the extra dough today on cops, permits, location fees, fire marshals, parking fees, extra drivers, extra trucks, overtime, noisy neighbors, nearby traffic, etc., etc. than staying onstage and building the equivalent. When the entire production is already burning through 50,000 - 100,000 a day, what’s another 15,000?

The set dressing, camera, lights and grip trucks belch out enormous amounts of gear onto the sidewalk. On a sound stage, there is a big space waiting to accommodate the beehive of activity. Out on location, all kinds of adjustments have to be made. Improvisation is the order of the day for the crew. A few entrances have to be breached to accomplish the task at hand. I’ve had pianos hoisted up to third story windows where we had to take out windows and doors to gain access. Once needed a flying car to land atop a twelve story building in downtown L.A. That required a very big crane.

Leaving the comfort zone inside the studio walls is a logistical challenge that would make any military tactician proud. A thousand details must be successfully dealt with in order to pull off the day. The actual physical shooting is the easy part. It’s getting there, setting up, and pulling it all down at the end of the day that is the bitch. But you wouldn’t know it to look at it. Everyone inside the bubble seems to be traveling in slow motion. I used to wonder why so many people were required to make a movie or TV show. Somewhere between 70 – 150 people are organized into small platoons who all have their marching orders. The crew never all works at the same time. They attack in waves until the location has been properly invaded and prepared for the actors to arrive and deliver their pearls in front of the cameras. Then the army disengages, having conquered the locale. All the extra bodies that have been hanging around are suddenly thrown into the fray so that the dreaded double-double overtime (after 12 or 14 hours) can be avoided.

In the beginning of the day, nothing less than perfection is acceptable. Discussions take place ad nauseum about the best angles to shoot from or whether throwing a fifteenth or twentieth light into the picture is going to improve the composition. Often, divine inspiration suddenly seizes the director that will cost a lot of money. The producer might be the only person who can point out the obvious that, “Yes, it’s a great idea but we don’t have the time or the budget to properly execute it and you don’t want us to do something half-assed that you’re going to be putting your name on, so let’s just stick with the original game plan for the day, okay?” If, however, the director is one of the Golden 100, we may need to repaint a wall or knock it out altogether, stop traffic on the freeway outside or tranquilize the barking dog next door. Can we re-route the air traffic because it keeps ruining our takes? The plan of the day has to be flexible enough to roll with the punches because they’re definitely coming.

The Location Manager watches out for the wooden floors or expensive coffee tables that the gear will inevitably scratch so we won’t have to pay for the repairs. By the end of each day, the attitude of the crew has changed 180 degrees from the leisurely pace of the morning. It’s become, “Screw it! Say the lines right. Pray the first A.D. says the words, “martini shot” (meaning the last shot of the day), check the camera gate to make sure no hairs or dust have crept into the lens frame, thus ruining the shot, and causing us to shoot another take because we all just want to go home!”

As a young man, I would pull over to the side of the road whenever I encountered The Circus. I’d meander over and pick somebody out who was sitting around and ask, “What‘cha shooting?” They would answer with the name of some project and I’d nod as if I knew what it was all about.

I remember being drawn like a moth to the klieg lights one night in downtown L.A. to discover a crew shooting the pilot for TOMA, a prime time cop show featuring Robert Blake with a talking parrot on his shoulder. (This was prior to his own troubles with the law, back when Bobby was about to resurrect his career for the umpteenth time.) I ventured past the invisible boundary of The Circus perimeter over to the tailgate of a truck where an old man was sitting, rooting around in his toolbox and struck up a conversation.

“And what do you do?” I asked.

“I’m the special effects supervisor.”

“Uh huh. You mean like STAR WARS spaceship stuff?”

“No, that’s visual effects. I’m in charge of physical effects; gunshots, exploding windows, bullet hits. Things like that.”

“Uh huh. Have you worked on any shows I might have heard of?”

He paused for a moment and sized up the gangly youth with the inquiring mind before plunging ahead.

“Yep. I was the Special Effects Supervisor on Gone With The Wind and How The West Was Won.”

“You’re kidding me!”

Nope and he proceeded to reel off ten other famous films I had either seen or was aware of. I was blown away. What was the Special Effects Supervisor from Gone With The Wind doing in a downtown parking lot sitting on the back of a tailgate shooting a TV pilot in the middle of the night?

Now I know. He was just making a living doing something he loved. The Circus is in town and we’ve all run away from the real world to join it. Wouldn’t have it any other way.