Your Mother's Lover

I was BBE on set today for a music video for a band called "Your Mother's Lover". The job of the BBE or best boy electric, is to run cable or power lines evenly among different circuits in so a fuse doesn't blow. The house we were shooting in had very old electrical wirings so it was interesting to say the least. The idea is that if there are multiple circuits it's easier to give power. However, on the bottom floor the dining room, family room, kitchen and hallway were all on one circuit. This makes things dicey. If you plug in two big lights to any combination of these rooms you blow a fuse. Also, since the wiring was fried it was near impossible to use a circuit finder to map out the power grid. After much trial and error we finally figured it out. It was fun.

One highlight was a 5k watt light which weighs about 80-100 pounds was needed to light a window from outside. they require a special, heavy duty stand, which we didn't have. So we frankensteined this thing to stand on a plastic light case being held together with wires and c-stands and it was a disaster waiting to happen. And then it happened. Wind caught a tarp that was shielding it from the rain. The tarp caught the light and the light hit the ground. CRASH. 100 pounds of expensive, precision machinery. It started smoking and it was raining pretty good so there was the threat of electrocution/fire. We unplugged it quickly and averted any disaster.

Another was we hooked up a smaller light which had never been used before. Within five minutes a large BANG occurred. The bulb in the light shattered with such a force it destroyed the steel reflector in the light. If the light had an open face and wasn't covered the glass shards would jettison out destroying everything in its path. With that said it was an awesome shoot.