KH Films

This fall I am fortunate enough to find myself on the east coast shooting in NY on the 2nd Unit of the action comedy feature film “The Other Guys” starring Will Ferrell, Mark Wahlberg, & Samuel Jackson.  Once again I have found myself again working with a top notch camera department, though this time the crew is mostly from NYC.  The 2nd Unit Director is long time stunt coordinator and 2nd Unit Director Conrad Palmisano.  The 2nd Unit DOP is Paul Hughen who I was fortunate enough to have had the opportunity to work with for some days on both “Hancock” and “Fast & Furious”.  The call to come out and shoot on the 2nd Unit was a pleasant surprise as I knew the film was shooting in NY  but had heard that they would be only hiring locally.  As it turns out the production was having a hard time finding another action shooter so I got the call and shortly thereafter I was headed to New York.

Like many of the other Action Units I have worked on this one also involves shooting high speed car chases and crashes.  Fortunately for this job we have plenty of toys to help in the execution of capturing the sequences.  We have a minimum of four cameras rolling on most of the set ups and often times more.  Depending on the shot we may be shooting hand held, with the Pursuit Arm,  the motorcycle mounted Libra Head, or a Techno Crane. Due to some recent restrictions in NYC some of our high speed chase sequences had to be shot in Albany so we spent the first two weeks of production filming there before moving down to NYC where we will be filming until late October.

Shooting on any large budget feature film can be very stressful as time is money and there is little if any room for error or multiple takes.  Shooting on a large budget action unit can be even more stressful as we often times don’t get to see a rehearsal before a big car crash, explosion, or action sequence that has taken hours if not days to set up.  A colleague of mine described it best when he once said that action unit cameramen are like sharp shooters in that most of the time we don’t get a second chance and have to nail the shot the first time around.  I suppose the stress lends itself to much of the satisfaction I get when shooting on large 2nd Units.  When I eventually see the trailer for a movie I have worked on and see that most of the footage in the trailer was shot by the action unit I was a part of there is tremendous satisfaction.