A weekend of running... (day 1)

What a crazy weekend.

About a week and a half ago, I got a call from Chris wondering if I could keep my weekend clear.  It turns out he got a call from Zane Lamprey's production to see if he and Paul could be PA/Runners for the Tempe shot of his new show, "Drinking Made Easy."  Zane got picked up by HDNet to put together his new show where he will be traveling around the US visiting local drinking establishments and putting a bit of comedy flair into it.  Also during the filming of this show, he is doing live stage performances at each city he is visiting.  http://www.zanelamprey.com

Well, Paul couldn't make it, so I was able to step in to take his place.  Once that was settled, Chris and I were pretty much in the dark as to what the weekend had in store for us until we received rental car reservations in the mail.  Holy Crap.  We aren't just runners for them, we are driving them to/from their shoot locations!  Not only that, we were asked to run for both the Tempe and the Tucson shoots.

We picked up the rental cars Friday afternoon and just prepared for whatever happened over the next couple of days.   We started nice and early on Saturday morning, when I drove over to Chris's house to pick up the rental van I was driving.  Our rendezvous time was 8:30 at the Marquee Theater in Tempe.  Chris and showed up on time, only to find out that the tour buses had not arrived yet.  After a bit, the busses finally rolled in - quite the site to see those tour buses with Zane and Pleepleus plastered on the front.

The first person to jump out of the buses was Steve McKenna.  He approaches us and says, "Hey I know you guys!  Are you here just to greet us?"  Quite the surprise to him to learn we were working for him for the next 2 days.  :)

Okay, I'm not going to detail every single conversation, that would take me a while.  So I'm going to jump into the various locations we went to.

After introductions and sitting around, the crew was split up to enable us to shoot two separate locations at the same time.  Chris was unit 1 (which had Zane) and they went to Four Peaks Brewery in Tempe.  I drove unit 2 to Desert Highlands for a bark-mitzvah.  Yup, you heard it right.  A bark-mitzvah.  The location was a fancy house with older folks and their dogs.  The main pooch (forgot the name) had a yarmulke on.  The main idea for this shoot was for Marc Ryan to talk to the originator of Brewdog beer, which was a beer made specifically for dogs.  No hops (apparently bad for dogs) and no carbonation.  chicken and beef flavors.  Do I need to say more?  Marc set up various shots including the interview and other comedic gags including the dogs.  It was topped off with the dog of honor jumping into the pool and the owner jumping in after her.

After finishing up the shoot there, we headed out to Giligin's Bar for Steve McKenna's food challenge.  Originally, were were supposed to go the Heart Attack Grill where Steve was supposed to try to finish the quadruple bypass, but that was scrapped for Giligin's where they have a midget bar, tended by Chuy and various food challenges, including the 5 lb tater tot challenge which McKenna was attempting.  :)  After setting up the scene in the bar, they wanted to do a time lapse of Steve's tackle of the tater tots.  Unfortunately, they didn't have a second camera to accomplish that.  They ended up using my point and shoot camera which has 720P capable video capability to do the time lapse.  We taped the camera to a toy basketball hoop and we were set to go.

I gave Ed the heads up of where we were going, so he was there to meet up and enjoy the spectacle of Steve McKenna attempting to eat 5 lbs of tater tots, making tater tot balls, spinning around a pole with tater tots and basically throwing tater tots into the trash.  We were supposed to head to the Salt River for a shoot after this, but it was getting pretty late in the afternoon and with the River closing up at 3:00 pm, there was no way they could make it to the shoot.  As that was scratched, Unit 1 (with Zane) headed to Giligin's to top of the shoot with Steve.  Chris, Ed and myself were placed as extras in the background of the shot so I wouldn't be surprised to see us and Ski Patrol (as Ed introduced himself as to Zane) in a few shots in the episode!

We headed back to the buses so everybody could prep for the show in the evening.  After sitting around for a bit, I was tasked with taking a couple of the camera men to shoot some B-roll footage of the city.  We hit a few sites, including Mill Ave, ASU and downtown PHX for shots of Chase Field and US Airways Center.  We wanted to shoot the sunset skyline of the city, but the location in which we wanted to do it closed at 7 (Papago Park).

After the B-roll shots, the performance was getting primed to start.  Chris and I basically hung around and performed various jobs during the performance.  Mainly we sat backstage and watched the show - which was quite entertaining.  Paul, Shauna, LJ, Tiffany, Ramon and Doug were in the audience and we met up with the a few times during the performance as well.

Once that was done, I took some time to take Paul and LJ home as they were in no shape to be driving.  Arriving back at the venue we finished up packing up the bus and learned how the next day was going to be.  They really wanted to get more B-roll of Phoenix, so I got the task of picking up Gio at 5:00 AM for a sunrise shot before driving down to Tucson.  What time was it at this point?  11:46 PM.  UGH