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Tony the Production Assistant: Capturing Idiocy
We Are Movie Geeks welcomes guest blogger Tony Fernandez, a production assistant taking us inside the underworld of indie filmmaking.
This week I captured and logged footage for a DVD series titled ‘Choppahead: Animal Thugs and Mayhem Machines.’ Choppahead is a motorcycle shop in Massachusetts; the Choppahead crew is a lot like the American Chopper guys, except real. The crew travels around the U.S. and sometimes to other countries to deliver their custom made bikes and also interview and profile “backyard builders” and their personal projects.
I would like to say that after sitting down and going over 11 hours of footage that I had learned something about motorcycles, but I hadn’t. I did however learn to appreciate the work put in to building your own bike, but mechanic type stuff has always gone over my head.
Growing up, I was more interested in saving 8-bit princesses than I was in getting my hands covered in grease. Instead of busting my knuckles on engine parts I was busting Mario’s knuckles on brick blocks.
What I did learn from this project is that the crew from Choppahead acts like a group of teenagers left without adult supervision, or like a group of college kids constantly pledging for a fraternity. And they have a camera.
The crew loves to goof off and have fun and it’s pretty awesome that they have made careers out of doing something they love — building bikes and goofing off. It would be adorable if they weren’t so tough looking.
At some points I would look at the production notes, completely perplexed. Nut-slap? Hat on fire? What am I working on? Don’t get me wrong, I love the low-brow; I have a soft spot for blue material. Sometimes though, the antics (genitals) go a bit far for me, not because I can’t handle seeing it but because I have to pay attention and log the details.
Ok, so he pulls out his penis and wraps it around his wrist, how should I log this clip? Wait, got it.
LOG NOTE: Penis Bracelet.
Those are two words that my brain has never put together. And the image is burned in there right along with the words.
Besides the onslaught of male nudity, I actually had a fun time capturing the footage. The most fun was the footage of the crew’s release party for the previous installment in the DVD series. At the release party, they had a contest to determine the winner of the new DVD. The contest was a Bitch-Slap Fight. Three rounds, each man gets one slap each per round, the winner gets the DVD.
Now, I thought I was over this type of behavior. I was convinced that my sense of humor had matured and that my sensibilities would no longer find this type of thing funny. I was wrong. There’s something about watching two grown men slap each other with all their might, to win something that is relatively cheap, that makes me laugh.
It’s sort of comforting to know that these guys will never grow up. They’ll be forever 14 inside.
And so will I.
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