Written and directed by Archie Arenas.
It's late fall semester of 2005. Frustrated about having to put off chasing the golden Production Option for a whole year, I wanted to crew on other student films to at least be doing some production in film school. Being only the start of my second year in a new university, and a new city, I didn't know many FEA students outside of those I saw in my classes. I wasn't making a great effort to meet and mingle with my young colleagues, either, because I had a wife and son I preferred to go home to. Critical studies and histories were the bulk of my required curriculum, but I made sure I always had at least one class about the practice of making films. My first semester it was Electronic Editing with Jack Tucker, A.C.E. My second semester I devoted to getting the critical studies completed. This was my third semester, and I wanted to learn about craft, damn it! I carried a load of 17 units and took the only creative courses left available to a Media Option student without prerequisites, Writing the Short Script with Berlin and Audio Production with Pounds. I still wasn't satisfied. I came to Cal State Long Beach to learn how to and make professional quality movies. So far, I had only been on one shoot, for Giacun Caduff, who was actually setting the bar high. I kind of guessed that most of the students were as ambitious as he was (most are not, actually) and that I needed to be right there with them. How do I meet Production students when none of them are ever in my "Media Studies" classes? This was the lament I shared with the Equipment Room guys after returning a Marantz CD Recorder for the Microphone Exercise in my audio class. The head of the room, Greg Crosby, broke my gloom with a whimsically optimistic suggestion. He said, "But production students are looking for crew all the time. You know what you should do... You should just post your name up on this door with your phone number." I chuckled at the solicitation aspect of it and asked for a sheet of printer paper and a Sharpie. My sign read:
NEED A BOOM OPERATOR?
ASK JOHN E. WALKER!
About a week goes by. I just take my seat in my American Film Genres class and look around the room at the faces. One face seemed like it was thinking about saying something to me. It was Archie. He said, "Is your name John E. Walker? I had my boom op cancel on me and I need one for this weekend." Absolutely. This is great. Suddenly, I'm on a crew again. This time I get to do one of the fun positions. I won't knock anyone's job, but being a P.A. was bor-ring my first and only time. Most of the time I just had to stand around and wait to be needed, and the A.D. never allowed me near the action. I could only watch a small director, small actor, and small camera team move a small dolly over by a big frame of silvery fabric and hope for some orders. No, boom op should be cool. Archie emailed his script to me, and my son's name is in the title.ASK JOHN E. WALKER!
Friday, November 18, 2005 I showed up to the news that the sound mixer can't make it until the afternoon. Wow. Even better. I get to try both roles. They had a DV Pro Mix 3 from PSC for microphone input and level control, sending the output direct to the camera, a Canon XL-1--still holding its rep as the hot fad cam for indie DV shoots at the time. I'm pretty sure the mike was a Sennheiser ME66 with KP6 power module. It was, like, the only short shotgun in our department (there were about six of them) until I discovered some ragged cases with Old Reliable* inside. I took the Gitzo boom pole in hand, and ...
By the way, I didn't know all the names of the gear back then. I'm rather enjoying thinking back and realizing, "Oh. That had to have been a---"
... I felt a surge of energy travel up my arms all the way to my ears. The boom pole started to glow in my hands and I could hear the slightest ring of a pure 1 kHz tone. Somebody nearly tripped on my microphone cable and I snapped to attention. Something magical had happened. The boom pole chose me! I took to the task like a natural during the morning shots and the peak meter LEDs on the mixer were making me feel ... happy again.
Then ReyRonald showed up and took the mixer away. I was the dedicated boom op. My first time out, of course, I wasn't exercising the best form. No one knew how to show me, but I was attentive and thoughtful about it. Since we didn't have any wireless mikes, or hardwire lavs, I was the entire production sound track. Rey didn't bring his own headphones, so gave him mine. I kept one eye on how on-axis I was and and the other eye on the matte box on the camera lens. If the D.P. tilted down, I llet myself lower the mike closer. I also would peek at the peaks on the mixer. The LEDs were so bright, it was easy to see when Rey let the signal overmodulate. A row of green, yellow, and red! I mentioned that his meters were showing overload, but he assured me it was okay. He knew what he was doing. He used to be a DJ. Well, since I had only been on a shoot with the sound department for a few hours, and all my audio schooling had been a number of weeks, I kind a let that slide. I might have been wrong. But I wasn't.
Archie's thesis shot for three days. I met some cool people: Sam Yano, Matt Dow, Lendi Slover. And some people met me.
