Sometimes It’s Just A Camera On a Sandbag

I was working on the movie St Vincent, directed by the great director Ted Melfi doing his first feature which starred Bill Murray and Melissa McCarthy. Ted came to our DP John Lindley and I with an idea for the end of the movie. He wanted a shot that started in the dining room–where the characters were all eating, that pulled away from them, pulled back out the front door, went up in the air and ended on a shot of all of Brooklyn.

John is one of the most talented DPs I have ever worked with, an incredible individual, and smarter than most people in the room. We often would troubleshoot things like this together. We had a few weeks, and were trying to figure out how to give the director what he wanted. His vision posed a few challenges. The move from the dining room to the front door was around a corner and at the front door there were steep steps. I could do the move on a Steadicam and step on a  crane, but it likely wouldn’t get high enough. If we could arrange things in such a way that we could do it on a 50 ft techno crane, there were power lines to contend with, so that wouldn't work. It’s worth noting this was pre-gimbal. We talked about all sorts of ideas, disregarding the things we couldn’t figure out, but we couldn’t figure out a way to achieve what the director was asking for.

One day at lunch we sat down with Ted. John started to explain our different thoughts on the shot and what the hurdles were. At one point, John asked Ted what the shot was telling us. Ted was honest and said that it was just an idea he had come up with and that he felt it was a good way to end the movie. We talked about it for a few minutes and, when there was a pause, I offered Ted an idea.

I pointed out that Bill Murray's character, while being slightly redeemed, was still the same old curmudgeon that he was at the beginning of the movie. There was a storyline that involved his back yard so I suggested that we put the camera in the back yard on a static frame of the house–with a great deal of the house in the left-hand corner where credits could roll–tell Bill what the frame was, and that this would be for the closing credits and just let him do whatever he wanted. I pointed out that Bill Murray is the kind of actor people will watch eating a sandwich and find fascinating, and since it was a simple thing, we could do it one afternoon without really sacrificing anything.

Ted and John agreed and, one day, when we had 15 minutes before lunch, we set it up. I asked for a sandbag and threw the camera on it on a frame that we liked. It always pisses me off when people leave before the credits so I was excited to give them a reason to stay. Ted explained to Bill what we were doing, we rolled, slated, and out came Bill, doing his thing.

20 seconds in, Ted leaned down to me and whispered that he loved it and that this was the end of the movie, but that I was going to have to explain to the producers why they were going to have to cough up extra money as a result. Bill had come out with a Walkman on and was singing out loud the words to a Bob Dylan song. Not sure if it was on purpose, but everyone was happy and I never heard about it again.

Ironically, it's one of my favorite shots as an operator and the shot itself required no operating at all.