On Assignment: Davie, FL

The Redux finale ended up being one of those assignments that is just a mess. I got a call about the job last week, a portrait of Miami Dolphins defensive end Jason Taylor for The Sunday Times Magazine, right after another gig fell through for the same day. Great, no problem... but the next day the problems began. First the shoot day was moved to this week, which was already pretty full. After learning that the flat fee was less than inspiring, I quickly demanded more money thinking that I would either be making my schedule easier or my life a little more profitable. The picture editor responded in one of those split-second, I-don't-even-have-to-ask-my-boss-about-that replies to my 60% increase (I should have made it 100%!) and that was that.

Minutes before boarding our plane to L.A. I made the final call to arrange this week's shoots to include the new portrait, and minutes after landing 5 hours later all of that was fucked again. The P.R. dude was now pushing the lunch-time shoot 4 hours earlier, which over-lapped with a portrait series that I'm working on for another client. But now its Friday night and I'm on the West coast, so all I can do is wait. On Monday morning I'm up early to try and reschedule the displaced morning shoot (which was a pain to schedule in the first place). After some give and take the shoot is back on (I shot it this morning), and the Dolphins gig is a go.

Of course I then made the giant mistake of getting on a plane. After landing back in the East coast on Monday night, yup, everything is sideways again. Dolphins P.R. dude has moved the shoot time again (!) and now its in the later afternoon, fucking up yet another shoot. Shit. It's 10 p.m. and I can't do anything about it until the morning. In the morning the very nice assistant tells me that the afternoon slot was the only time that subjects could possibly do it in the foreseeable future, so I'm stuck either way. I can either throw a fit and cancel the Dolphins shoot (which is not the last impression I want to leave at Redux, of course), or hope for a change of heart with the other assignment. The Dolphins won out, despite the fact that I still had no clue what the story was even about until an hour before the job (via a pay phone call from the writer in London).

My buddy Josh and I arrive an hour early to the team's training camp near Fort Lauderdale in the afternoon to set-up. In the lobby we page our P.R. dude contact (who I'm already feeling unfriendly to) and he sends down one of an apparently giant staff of 22-year old, frat boy P.R. interns to show us to the interview room where we'll be shooting Jason Taylor. In the small room there are two big lockers that have been wheeled in for us to shoot in front of (as per the art direction from the magazine, to re-create the locker room). I immediately ask the intern to go round up at least 1 more locker. "Oh, there are only two... sorry." Fine, whatever, I'll make it work.

A couple of minutes later another P.R. intern dude comes by and starts to basically yell at Josh and I as we hurried set-up stands and lights for (a hopeful) 3 different set-ups. "Woah, you guys can't be in here! This is not your room!" Yeah it is, I reply, Harvey said we are supposed to be here, these are our lockers, this is where we are shooting! "Wait a second, wait a second," he replies, and leaves the room. Apparently they've double-booked the room with Sky Sports who needs to do interviews that they weren't able to get time for the previous day. Instead of waiting a second, we keep setting up. Back come 2 or 3 different intern P.R. dudes, scratching various parts of their bodies. Houston, we have a problem.

After a 10-minute argument where I insisted over and over that I absolutely had to have both lockers for the shoot ("Jason Taylor is a giant man! Jason Taylor is a GIANT man!"), it is decided that we'll have to share the room and we will go first since we already have our stuff set-up (which is why we didn't hold on). We are ready to shoot, light checked, card formatted - locked and loaded - and still 15 minutes before our 3:15 shoot time. And then we waited.

Thirty minutes passed. And then another thirty. Every once in a while a P.R. dude would stop by and make up some number of minutes before Jason would be ready. Another thirty minutes passed. Josh eventually found some free food in the media room to nosh on (he was starving). I drank 3 bottle of water. We waited. At around 5:30 another group of media guys passing our room asked who we were waiting for. "Jason Taylor?! Dude, he's in the locker room (yes, there is actually a real locker room in the same building, which we were not allowed to shoot in) playing dominoes for the past hour!" Completely pissed, I call the main P.R. guy on the phone and finally get his secretary to agree to call him on his radio.

Several minutes later another intern stops by to tell us that Jason was almost ready. "Are you fucking kidding me that Taylor has been playing dominoes instead of doing his fucking job over here?!" The intern was shocked long enough to make it obvious that his forthcoming declaration of Jason's time in a meeting is a total lie. Fifteen minutes later we finally have all 6'6 of the linebacker and are ready to shoot, over four hours late.

The shoot went fine and I got all three set-ups completed in under 13 minutes, helped along by the fact that Jason only has one face that he'll give to the camera. Actually, I got him to laugh twice after making a lewd joke about a funny Pittsburgh-area (Taylor's home turf) town that a friend of mine is from. Thank god I held tough about the two lockers, because 4 would have been barely enough. Ten minutes after the shoot the gear was packed back up in the car and Josh and I had decided that a few beers was warranted and needed. And that was the last one.

After a burst of energy following dinner, I edited, toned, captioned, invoiced, and transmitted the under 100 frame shoot (first in a long time) and sent them off to the client. Despite the waiting, I got a couple of frames I really liked, and today I got a call back from the other subject that they found some time for the shoot tomorrow afternoon. Life goes on.

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Comments (4)

Now that is a classic story..

that new c-stand is looking good amongst your fine collection - hasn't slowed you down yet - was looking forward to seeing the sand bags though !

It's amazing what happens when there are too many layers between what is to be done, who it is to be done for and who it is to be done with. That's when civilizations crumble.

Sounds like a classic Dolphins tale. Had the same problem last year doing a Daunte Culpepper shoot. You race to setup your gear by the scheduled time and before you know it you've waited hours for the P.R. crowd to get their in act in gear.
ridiculous.

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