Tony the Production Assistant: The Gear, Part One

We Are Movie Geeks welcomes guest blogger Tony Fernandez, a production assistant taking us inside the underworld of indie filmmaking.

I have worked for McFarland and Pecci for quite some time now and we had gone from an employer/employee relationship to being close friends with one another. This past week I put that friendship through an enormous amount of stress.

Mike Pecci agreed to let me borrow his camera so I could take a few photos for my blog while I did some assistant editing work for Ian McFarland. I wasn’t sure what camera or which lens to bring, so I brought his whole kit — two camera bodies, three lenses, an LED light, extra batteries, battery chargers, and two 8 gig and one four gig compact flash cards. All packed into a black Pelican case.

I am an idiot for bringing the entire kit with me that morning.

After a whole day of assistant editing work, I hopped on the 77 bus from Arlington to Harvard Station. I sat behind the rear wheel well on the driver’s side, behind the partition adjacent to the side door. I placed the Pelican case on the seat next to me. A few stops later I placed the case next to my feet to free up a seat.

I sat and listened to the Warren Zevon/E.L.O. playlist I had made the night before. Everything was perfect; cool tunes, a day’s worth of work put in and an empty seat next to me.

I was the last to get off the bus at Harvard Station, insisting on letting every person off before myself. I was feeling great and in no rush to get home. I walked further down the loading bay and waited for my next bus. I stood and rocked out to Zevon’s “Lawers, Guns, and Money” while waiting for my ride home.

I was about halfway through “Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner” and three stops into my
bus route home when it hit me. I didn’t have the case with me — This is my “Oh Shit” moment.

Holy shit, I lost the case. I left it on the 77. I hit the stop button and headed off the bus and started walking back toward Harvard Station. I had a massive pit in my stomach. I wanted to puke… and cry… I screwed up big time.

How could I have left it? I couldn’t believe it. I’d always been extremely careful with the camera gear. This is so unbelievable; this is the worst thing that has happened to me since I started working in this industry.

I arrived back at Harvard Station and immediately began asking for help. I found the floor supervisor; he called central dispatch for me as well as the lost and found. I knew the bus route number, 77, but not the number to the bus itself. He told me he couldn’t do much without the bus number. He did, however, point me in the direction of the lost and found office for the station — which is right above the station, across the street from where my bus home exits.

The woman at the lost and found office wasn’t very much help. She gave me the same story as the floor supervisor, without a bus number there is nothing she can do. I wandered back into the station and asked every person that worked there for help. Nothing. It seemed like no one cared. I felt so helpless I wanted to break down right there.

I headed back outside, my head in a daze; I had spent the past couple of hours trying to get people to care about what I had lost. I decided to walk up to one of the MBTA trucks that were parked alongside the street. I asked the man inside for help and I told him my story.

“Did you already talk the supervisor inside the station? Someone should’ve called that in already. What’d the case look like?” he said. He took all of my information and called central dispatch, he then put out a call to every operating 77 bus. Finally someone who cares!

I sat with him for over an hour, no news on the missing case. He told me to go home and that if
he heard anything he’d give me a call.

The trip home was the worst bus ride of my life. I kept replaying the past few hours over and over in my head. How could I lose an entire case full of gear? Everything that was in that case — the camera bodies, lenses, the extras and the case itself costs thousands of dollars. And I left it on a bus.

How do I explain this to Mike?