UK Production Companies turn to Fresh Coast for their Midwest US Shoots
Fresh Coast has shot a lot of assignments for Discovery Channel programs over the years, but for whatever reason, recently the assignments have been coming from producers in the UK. In March we shot an interview in Milwaukee for RAW TV. Ltd of London (http://www.raw.co.uk), and in April we provided production support for another Discover Channel program being produced by BriteSpark Films (http://www.britesparkfilms.com), also based in London.
We can’t discuss the details of either of these jobs because both program are still in development. But I can tell you a little about the BriteSpark job. BriteSpark would be sending their own camera crew from London and needed our help in facilitating what was to be a 7-day shoot at multiple locations in Wisconsin. What they required, to use their term, was a “Fixer”- typically a “local” in a third world country that facilitates the movements of a foreign film crew. I suppose to a London producer, Wisconsin may very well qualify as a third world country.
The first person that came to mind to fill this role of “fixer” was Edward Johns. Technically Ed works for us as a PA, but he’s a lot more than that. He did an amazing job making sure the London crew got the footage they needed, and even delivered them to O’Hare for their flight home. Thanks Ed for the great job.
Another successful project from “across the pond”.
In June, Fresh Coast had the opportunity to help PraeMedica Digital (http://praemedica.com/index.html), a medical marketing company based in Northern Ireland, negotiate the baffling rules of unionized Chicago hotels. Our task was to film physician interviews in a small meeting room at the Chicago Hyatt. Each was to be an on-camera interviewer and two interview subjects – all shot with 3-cameras against green screen.
Early in the conversation, PraeMedica inquired why the hotel was charging them $138.00 per circuit for electrical power. “Is there something special about the electricity in the US? About all we could say was “Welcome to Chicago”. We didn’t even want to bring up the potential of having to pay Teamsters to load-in and load-out our gear. The shoot was on a Saturday so at overtime rates, we could have been looking at as much as $1500.
The only answer was to “keep it simple”. We bought 30ft of Chroma -Green fabric to hang from seamless background stands. We used small cameras (Sony EX-1’s) and low-power KinoFlo Divas and LED fixtures. Still it was a lot of stuff (they also requested a teleprompter.)
We managed to fit all the gear and our 4-person crew into two SUV’s, pulled up to the hotel’s main entrance and generously rewarded two bellmen to haul all the stuff to the room. At the end of the day we generously rewarded two more bellman to get us out of there. Estimated savings to our client - $1400.