On this, my first blog entry, I would like to write a heartfelt “Howdy!” to all of you interested-in-film people and all of you working-in-film people.  I work in The Business as a stand by painter, or stand by scenic artist.  Although I sometimes work as a simple scenic (or as I like to think of it, a faceless drone, one of many), my favorite and most exciting job as a scenic is doing “Stand By” for a film.  This is a mysterious position, because nobody is really sure how you got there, or what you need to know to do your job—sometimes not even you, the person doing the job.  Although, if I think about it, and then put it into words, maybe we’ll all learn a little something about the process of becoming a stand by painter and what you might need to learn in order to do a good job.

It’s different for everyone who does what I do, but my particular path, though roundabout and maybe even (because I like to use big words) labyrinthine, is clear enough in retrospect.  So I’ll start at the beginning—eventually. But because we are dealing in the written word and communicating via cyberspace, we are unencumbered by real time, so I intend to jump around in the time stream as it suits. Please, do enjoy the ride.

I’d like to tell you about my last stand by job as it happened, once I get some exposition out of the way.  That gig was working on the  feature film version of the Stephenie Meyer book, Twilight, which, as I learned during shooting, has become a huge teen and pop culture phenomenon with thousands, maybe even millions of devoted and sometimes (dare I say it?) demented fans.  A shout out to y’all!  You are legion!

After reading the script, then the book, then living and working with all the vampires in the book, as well as the book’s protagonist, Bella, for the past several months, I now see evidence of Twilight mania everywhere.  It’s something probably akin to the experience of buying a certain model of car, say a Mercedes Slk 350, and then suddenly seeing other Mercedes Slk 350’s just like yours everywhere you drive.  Or in my case, after my most recent vehicle purchase, suddenly seeing stripped-down Toyota trucks with raised camper shells tall enough to fit my special cart and its plethora of tubs containing the bizarre artifacts and substances of my trade.  Put another way, without the metaphors, working on Twilight has effectively altered my perception of the world.

And that is something about film that I treasure.  Whether watching or working on films, I love how, because of them, the world changes, my horizons are expanded and my understanding grows in unexpected ways.  Strangely enough, I never planned to work in film, never suspected when I started working for living decades ago that I would eventually earn my paycheck toiling on a movie set.   I had an altogether different plan for my life.

But here I am—many years after the all those plans fell through, and bitterness is probably a large part of my being, although I try to exorcise it whenever something good happens.  I tell myself, “Hey, looky here!  Something good just happened right in front of you!  You got your wish, which proves the universe isn’t a mindless abyss of empty darkness.  Yep, irrefutable proof, and you’d better remember this the next time you start moaning about how your life is so far off course, you big, dumb idiot.”  That is indeed what I was telling myself as I left the office (a trailer, parked inside a huge warehouse in a place called Clackamas—look it up on Google maps if you’re curious) of Chris, the lead set painter for the film version of Twilight.

Chris had just told me I got the job, coveted by most of my dearest scenic artist friends and feared by the rest, of stand by painter for the shoot.  I would start in a few days, when real production began.  The full crew would be on set and the shoot would truly be off and running.  But today only a smattering of the upper echelons of the shooting crew were doing test shots of the vampires’ make up.  Out in the darkness of the huge (we’re talking aircraft hangar big) warehouse, the director was talking with the actor who would play Dr. Emmet Cullen, the leader and father figure of the pretend “family” of good vampires.  She stood in a little pool of bright light a few feet away from the camera.  Her name was Catherine Hardwicke, and I actually knew her from the very first job I ever had in The Business.  We were both miniatures artists for a special effects studio which has since vanished in the way of the dinosaurs—evolution of CGI made them too dumb and ponderous to exist alongside the new species.

Through a lecture by a screenwriter local to Oregon, where I have lived for the past several years, I had recently learned that Catherine herself had evolved to the level of director, up from being a long-time production designer.  She had zoomed up and crashed through what is an almost impenetrable glass ceiling.  Not only are women directors a rarity, but production designers who make it to directing are perhaps even rarer.  During the lecture, I had been distracted by my bitter self, who was bemoaning the fact that I was not much farther along in my “real” career than during that first job that Catherine and I worked on back in the ‘80’s (a lie, but the bitter Renee does that all the time).

Anyway, it so happened that less than a year after the lecture, fate would bring Catherine to my home turf of the great northwest, and because I had known her before, it made me the first choice for the job I now had—a job that would be fun, with months of long hours and overtime which would fill the near-empty coffers of my union health care plan, and begin to pay off my monstrous credit card debt which reflected the scarcity of film work in my state over the past few years.  Bitter Renee shut up and went to sleep or whatever it is that she does when life has become an interesting and well-paid adventure once again.

“Shall we go and talk to Catherine?” Chris asked.  I was only a little hesitant.  Then my excitement at being on a feature again as stand by took over, and I realized this was a great opportunity to meet the DP, who is my closest superior, along with the director.  A good relationship with both is essential to doing stand by on a feature.  We left the trailer and walked quietly into the darkness, heading for the spot of light and the little knot of people around the camera.