As I sit here at 5 pm typing and eating my breakfast of two donuts and a medium coffee ("breakfast at 5?" you ask, I'll explain in my next post), my mind again reverts to how hazardous filmmaking is for one's health. Aside from the exhausting long days, sleep deprivation, scalding hot lights, and annoyingly cumbersome sandbags there lies another menacing threat deep in throes of film production: the craft services table. Essential to the happiness of the cast and crew, the craft services table also introduces the hidden danger of compulsive snacking to the list of filmmaking's perils. As the sound mixer, with copious amounts of free time on set, I've found myself most susceptible to the danger of craft services.
To briefly explain, the craft services table is a fancy name for the snack table on film set. For every apple, orange, and carrot stick you'll find on the table there are two times as many cookies, bags of chips, cans of soda, and pieces of candy. You can understand how in the midst of a 12 hour day one's health concerns fly out of the window for the instant contentment that a delicious bag of BBQ chips is capable of bringing. Despite the level of technical skill that executing a production entails, it's amazing how quickly we regress to elementary schoolers in love with greasy food and sugary snacks. I discovered this about myself when the producer and the AD set up the pre-lucnch snack of chicken fingers and french fries last night.
With the DP, director, and grip and electric crew hard at work lighting a complicated night time exterior scene, I was lured over to craft services by the intoxicating aroma of french fries. I then proceeded to stand there watching the rest of the crew work while taking out the perfectly crispy wedge cut fries one by delicious one. I can't say how many I took down, but I can say that when I was finished I realized what I'd done. Eating your weight in french fries is never a good idea, kids, I don't care how delicious they smell. I'm lucky to have learned the err of my ways this early in the production period for if I had continued down this path, picking up my marathon training again in March would have been significantly more difficult.
Now back to my donuts.
Ryan the Sound Guy
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