As the resident producer for Entity Eye, I’m easily identified as that short girl in the back mumbling “It costs how much”? Here’s how it works:
Entity Eye productions have minimal (miniscule, tiny, itty bitty) budgets. Craft services consists of whatever we have a coupon for or which pizza delivery place has the best deal.
A. I’m a happy, smiley kinda gal.
B. I have the basic human desire to be liked (although my ultimate goal is to be adored worldwide). And nobody likes the girl who says “You can’t have that. It’s too expensive.”
C. We’re perfectionists who care about even the most mundane detail in an irritatingly sincere way.
Therefore, A+B+C = How can we get what we need and stay in budget?
A case in point:
STRONGHOLD (No One Saw It Coming!) episode one, scene one: War is raging. Light from falling bombs illuminates Voodoo’s bedroom...cut. In order to simulate the flashes of light from the bomb explosions, we flashed three strobe lights covered in orange and yellow gels. The effect was realistic but the strobes caused pixelization of the final product. Then we used a dimmer for one of the lights. There was some improvement but we decided we needed dimmers for all three lights. Dimmer switches that can handle 500 watt lights are crazy expensive, so we decided to make our own.
Our first stop was the hardware store. We bought a couple of 600 watt three way dimmers (our first mistake); two extension cords, boxes, and lids (our second mistake); and a wire stripper apparently made by Fisher Price. Then we went to Fernando’s Dad’s house because he knows about these things. After he stopped laughing at our wire stripper (they come in adult size - who knew) he decided to help us, probably out of pity.
We put together the first dimmer as best we could. The directions for the three way dimmer looked like they had been drawn by a very drunk Andrew Pollack. The light worked but the dimmer didn’t. We tried the other dimmer and got a light that dimmed. Our victory dance (very ’80’s in a Footloose-cool kinda way) was short lived. The box and lid were too small for the dimmer.
At this point, it’s late, it’s raining and it’s cold and I just want to go home and eat cake. But Mr. Perez the Elder shortened the metal dimmer with a fancy machine that made a lot of noise. So...back to the hardware store where we bought a simpler one way dimmer which we hoped wasn’t defective (it wasn’t) and the right size box and lid. A little wire stripping and twisting later - sounds like porn for electricians - and we had three working dimmers on extension cords that could handle 500 man-sized watts of electricity.
EPILOGUE
Keep in mind that this is not a “how to”, this is a “how we did it”. We’re not electricians. We have a legitimate fear of electricity, especially near water and prisons. Every time I plug in one of our rigged up devices the crew takes a healthy step back. No one has been injured yet, but it’s just a matter of time before we hear a heartfelt, desperate “someone call 9-1-1.” Then why do we do it? Why risk becoming a smoldering baked potato with a bad Toni home perm? Because it was within our budget and because now the scene looks awesome. See for yourself at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2o5_GRC8ksY
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