Counterstrike: Cobra

Everything started about one week ago when I got a call from my old-time school colleague Paul Meschuh who desperately needed an additional camera operator for his documentary he was working on for two years now. I hesitated, but after a few day of thinking about it I called Paul back.
Enjoy the slide show there or click on “Picture List” to select large versions of the photos!

I agreed and so he invited me to the final briefing for today’s shoot yesterday at 9pm. About 15 to 20 people gathered at Paul’s office – more than I suspected. I learned that Paul is shooting a documentary about computer game-addicts and wanted to have some scenes from the games Counterstrike and Everquest in it. But the publishers didn’t want to have any content of their games in his film. So Paul decided to reinact it. Wow! The Counterstrike part took place today in the power plant of Voitsberg from 6:30am until about 7pm. It was picked because it resembles the Counterstrike Map called de_nuke. His brother Oliver, trained SteadyCam® operator, was director of photography and responsible for Schimpi, another friend from school, and me. I discovered Schimpi in the unfamiliar faces quite late, he thought I was ignoring him.

After the one-hour briefing Oliver showed us the cameras – two Sony HDV camcorders with Leitz objectives. “Have you ever shot in HD before?” Oliver asked. “Nope” I replied. I was too anxious to admit that I haven’t even seen a HD picture on a screen before. Actually I still haven’t. “Most important is focusing.” Thanks to Digital Production I am totally familiar with that. Luckily he didn’t care much about white- and black point adjustments – well, lucky for me. Oliver’s cam was a big Sony HDCAM I even haven’t dared to touch.
After insufficient three hours of sleep I crawled out of my cozy bed at five trying to get online to find decent directions to the power plant – in vain because of an error 504… To the sounds of my favorite radio station Ö1 I drove sleepily to the meeting point at the front entrance. Only Paul had arrived so far. And it had chilly -5°C (23°F)…

The first bright drips of dawn blended with the pale black sky behind the cooling tower when the other people were arriving – only the two cops from the Cobra Task Force arrived way too late, and they were our passport into the facility.

We followed them to a huge factory floor about 200 x 200 x 200 ft housing a giant boiler, probably built in the 1960ies. It was out of service, but still… hissing sounds were flowing through some of the countless pipes.

The old, ancient, freight elevator lifted us quickly to the top floor of the building, the Kesselboden, where dim fluorescent lights seemed lost like fireflies in the night. Some of us went out of the door and suddenly stood on the threadbare grating of a windy catwalk, 200 ft above the ground. On the horizon orange tongues of the clouds licked along the now dark blue sky and left all of us in awe for a short while. On the other side the catwalk’s stairs led up on another tower. “That’s the starting point of the terrorists” Paul explained. After taking a peek down the giant building we took the elevator down again, to the starting point of the CT’s, the counter-terrorists.

Then everything began to take shape: The actors got their original police uniforms and the terrorists camouflage outfits, including guns (AK-74, Steyr AUG A1, and pump action guns) and armor. The two Cobra people gave them instructions on how to handle the guns and how to walk and hold the guns properly. Meanwhile I discovered my “best friend on the set”, the coffee vending machine, which only wanted mere 20 cent for a cup — yay! I emptied a lot of PVC-Cups and talked a big deal to the catering girls/set-runners before the actors were properly trained.

After three and a half hours after arriving, at 10am, we finally started on the first shot: The Terrorists, the Ts, on their spawn location, cocking their guns in unison and slowly walking across the catwalk into the facility, aiming from a sniper location down to the from above visible CT spawn point. Paul got a little bit grouchy because it took us so long to, then things got worse. During the big shootout across four levels and the whole facility I was afflicted with bad batteries. After the first one had run out after three hours the five additional batteries were only working for a few minutes — and usually gave up in the middle of a shot before a major shootout. In fact I don’t have a lot of shooting shots on my reel — I was ordering the runners up and down fetching me new batteries from the ground level where we had sufficient power outlets. The two HMIs on the advanced levels had to be powered via long cables, hanging free down the dusty hall.

Because of my recurring battery problem I was able to listen to today’s most bizarre telephone call: One actor playing a terrorist spoke into his cellphone some kind of the following words: “So just stay in the line, hun, I’m gonna put the phone away and then you can listen. I am a terror getting blown his brains out. Ain’t that wicked? I shoot at the police and they shoot at me and kill me. Do you listen?!”
At last, the only battery that worked was the one I had put myself into the charging device, I don’t know what happened to the other batteries. In fact, I don’t even care; I am just glad that the afternoon shots were manageable.

After the major shootout Paul ordered Schimpi and me, along with assistant director Kathi down to the CT spawn where he gave the commands via radio and Kathi. After he had finished his work high up on the catwalk Schimpi and I had about ten minutes to shoot our own interpretations of the CT’s guns-up, cocking, walking, door-opening, disappearing inside sequence. I was low on the ground, Schimpi up on some stairs. We used our freedom with my most favorite shots, graphically composed low angle shots and Schimpi’s, cite: “Terry-Gilliam-Shots”: Fisheye rulez! Funfact: During this time of the worst time-pressure I got a call from Paul Maresch, a colleague from the FH Salzburg. He wanted to know why I called him. At first I couldn’t remember but afterwards I realized that I tried twice to call him around 5:15 am because I wanted to talk to Paul the director. But the names Paul Maresch and Paul Meschuh do look alike when you’re sleepy!

When Paul had finished on the top-level and shot his interpretations of the CT-spawn shots, Schimpi and I did 2nd unit work again, this time up near the clouds. Faced with way too fast vanishing daylight, frosty temperatures and bad angles for two cameras making different shots. At least it wasn’t as inscrutable as Oliver’s shooting schemes and multi-level SteadyCam® shots with pans and zooms. Staying out of the frame was more a matter of luck than of thorough planning.

The light outside was nearly gone but we needed some additional footage of terrorists dying or running around the scaffoldings and catwalks. We used a single staircase and the ugliest lighting: A blunt HMI without any filters – hard shadows, harder contrasts and a gain of +9db on the camera — hardly usable but working.
I admit: I didn’t focus manually more than two shots this day. Push-Auto was a faithful ally during wide shots, the infamous AF when it came to pans. I just hope my footage is usable, though…

Schimpi and I were wrapping our equipment — we were done. We went down where we had to convince Paul that fill-shots with the terribly direct-focused HMI just won’t work. He gave in before daylight disappeared completely, and we shot the crew-photo on two different locations.

Oliver and Paul continued along with some assistants working indoors with the HMI and the blue screen on shots of the different guns for later mock-up with the 1st-person SteadyCam® shots. Meanwhile I tried to sense my toes again – I had cramps in my legs because of the three times I didn’t use the elevator to get to the top-level and my heels hurt like crazy because I hadn’t taken a seat for 12 hours. I’m such a girl!

“It’s a wrap!” Paul shouted around 5:40pm – we cheered but it took us about an hour to actually wrap. I was so terribly tired – I just wanted to see Lisa, have a nice tea (way too much coffee for today) in the Café Promenade in Graz and go to sleep. Tomorrow I’m gonna drive to Salzburg and back to Graz so I can take part in the briefing for the shoot on Friday. I have a strange way of having holidays.

Paul seemed happy, and so did Oliver. They both thanked me much for being part of the team and my work so far. It even got a little emotional and creeped a bit. I even got a hug from Nina, the set runner/catering girl for talking way too much about coffee and the weather — applied navigation in the inter-discourse. Paul told me that the whole shoot was planned within one week, the premiere of his film is on February 26th 2006 in Graz. Now that’s what I call a tight schedule!

Like from every shoot I took a souvenir also from this one: A blank 12mm buckshot cartridge I found on one of my ways up the stairs, the parking permission with the big Cobra Task Force seal on it and some ugly hearing protection plugs – in my ears they got dark gray from all the dust around. At home the first thing I did was taking a shower, but partly filled with melancholy: This supremely manly smell of dust, sweat and gunpowder won’t come back in the near future.

Everything started about one week ago when I got a call from my old-time school colleague Paul Meschuh who desperately needed an additional camera operator for his documentary he was working on for two years now. I hesitated, but after a few day of thinking about it I called Paul back. Enjoy the slide show ...

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