Re: [MV] Renting the humvee for a movie ??$

From: chance wolf (chance_wolf@shaw.ca)
Date: Wed Aug 11 2004 - 08:22:10 PDT


----- Original Message -----
From: "Steve & Jeannie Keith" <cckw@comcast.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Wednesday, August 11, 2004 7:49 AM
Subject: Re: [MV] Renting the humvee for a movie ??$

> Back in the late 80's I got $400/day for my CCKW with meals (GREAT!!!) and
> lodging for myself. At one point they wanted me to be in a scene for
> $15/day, but I would have lost out on a days pay for the deuce.... I
traded my movie
> career for
> a few pieces of gold!

Cool. The way it's supposed to work is that the vehicle rental and the
engagement of the driver are separate deals, despite the fact you own the
vehicle. For instance, your truck typically will get rented through
Transport, where you as the driver are actually paid out of the Casting
budget as a "Special Abilities Extra" (SAE). Different areas have
different arrangements, I guess, but that's the way it works here in
Vancouver. The nearest thing to your "$15" thing I've ever come across is
when extras are hired to work as extras, and the production suddenly needs
10-12 average cars to fill up a street scene. When that happens the extras
are sometimes offered an extra $35 to lend the production their vehicle for
set dressing that day.

> They sprayed "mud" (special something other than mud) on the trucks. We
had
> an agreement that no one else could drive the trucks. Actors could sit in
them,
> but that was it.

That's by far the best arrangement, but sometimes they need a rolling shot
close-up featuring the actor, in which case it becomes...difficult. My
favourite had to be recently where one actor had to drive our 8 cwt CMP Ford
F8 through a scene in the middle of the night which might've been okay but
for the fact buddy had never driven a standard in his life - much less the
WWII variety in the cramped quarters of a cab designed for people who
seemingly never exceeded 5'3". :)

> An interesting experience and the most disorganized thing I ever saw!

My pet phrase for it all is "managed chaos". The "movie-mud" isn't usually
real mud/dirt because it has to appear the same way in different scenes
stretched over all the shooting days. Sometimes they're nice and just used
a mixture of water and Fuller's Earth, but other times they'll use nasty
combinations of stuff featuring rubber cement. There's also the dreaded
"Whiskey Wax" temporary paint which is only "temporary" if sprayed on a 2004
Budget Rent-a-van with a nice shiny paint job, otherwise it nicely soaks
into older matte/lusterless finishes and is very reluctant to let go.



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