Tales From The Inside

Chapter Seven: WTF is a C-Stop?

My freshman year, I worked on my first student film set. It was for a fourth year thesis project. As most of the freshman, I was a "grip". In film school, a grip also seconds as a PA, a Gofer, and even an electrician. I was setting up lights and standing in the streets with an orange vest telling cars when they could go and when they had to stop. If someone needed something, they'd yell it out and I, (and ten other anxious freshman) would run to the trucks or staging area and retrieve said items. It was all pretty exciting but tiring nonetheless. The days were twelve hours and the shoots were Fridays through Monday. (Classes being held Tuesday-Thursday usually. An exhausting schedule that I never really got used to.) Working on set didn't leave much time for much of anything else. Including being fasinated. It all just started happening, me being in the middle of a film shoot. Me being involved. They were student movies, but movies nonetheless.

On one particular day, one of the members of the camera team yelled, (very distressed, I must add), that he needed a "C-stop" immediately. Now we had taken all these classes learning all the terminology of a film set, (for instance a clothes pin is called a C-47). One guy that I had befriend immediately made a mad dash to the truck. I, being overly anxious and somewhat scared by camera guy's tone of voice, went after him to help. There was no time to ask questions. It needed to be done; we were on a tight schedule! In the truck our conversion went something like this:

"What the hell is a C-stop?"

"I don't know. A light? A stand?"

"I think I've seen one before!"

(From the set) "Come on guys! We need a C-stop immediately!"

"Okay we're coming!"

"Does he mean F-stop?"

"An F-stop isn't tangible!"

"Okay so an F-stop deals with the camera and light entering the lens, so maybe a C-stop is a tangible F-stop!"

I think you get the idea. We had been joined by several other freshman, searching high and low in the truck for something that we had no idea what it looked like. I guess we thought when we saw a C-stop, we'd know. Finally defeated, we decided we'd have to swallow our pride and go ask someone with more experience just what a C-stop was.

When we left the truck, heads hung in shame, we heard uproarious laughter. Of course. An initiation prank. What could we do but laugh along?

We're told it's a tradition and who are we to argue with tradition? I had never felt more like a freshman before in my life. But it showed us to not be afraid to ask questions, and showed our wounded pride that no matter how well we did in "Film Production 101", there was still a lot to learn.

When that movie wrapped, I found I had made twenty-five new friends. The people that I had been scared of on set, ended up being pretty nice people. After that movie, I started being asked to work on sets and people would say hello to me in the halls. It was a great feeling, being accepted into this society of people. In such a small school, everyone was very close and how cool that I was starting to feel a part of that. It seems so cheesy now, but that first "acceptance" of sorts just felt really great.

Once I got through the initiation process: learning about sets, when to kick back and relax and when to stay out of people's way, when to joke, and the chain of command, I started to feel more comfortable on the sets. But I had something in the back of my mind that wouldn't go away. Post-production. I don't know why I was drawn to it. Maybe it was that computers interested me, or maybe it was the process itself, but that's where I decided I really wanted to be. I knew that at the end of our sophomore year, disciplines were decided. The process was basically you stating your top three choices of disciplines, (the choices being: editing, directing, screenwriting, producing, or cinematography), and then presenting your case in front of the faculty. After the reviews, on a given day, called "sophomore slaughter" by those who knew it well, you get an envelope in your school mailbox inviting you into one discipline. You either accepted the invitation or left the school. With this knowledge, I decided very early on to make it be known that I would like to be in editing. I went to the four editing instructors and introduced myself. I told them my intentions and asked what I could do in the next two years that would help my chances. They all pretty much said the same thing. Just get to know the older editors and try to help out on some of their projects. So that's what I did. I decided that if it was all or nothing, I was going to do everything in my power to try and get that "all". I helped some seniors out with their projects, doing little things like sound effects, or walking foley(!). I made a few friends and started helping out on set too. In our school, it was pretty common for future editors to work in the sound department. So that's where I found myself a lot of the time. I even started being typecast as an "editor". Hey, I like that title.


This is what Google thinks a C-stop is.

Labels: crewing, film school

posted by ms bct @ 6:03 PM