For those of you who don’t know, “process trailer” is Hollywood slang for a big flatbed trailer that you park a car on so you can put a camera outside the window and tow it around and make it look like the car is moving, even though nobody is driving it. Last week I got to ride outside one and pull focus. In our case, the tow vehicle was a modified ambulance. The director and all the production staff rode in the back of the ambulance and watched playback on a monitor. Check it out:
Here’s me swapping very expensive lenses (don’t worry, the trailer isn’t moving in this shot):
And here’s a picture of the “hostess tray” that hooks onto the picture car and supports the camera:
Big step up from your first steady-cam or that B&W camera that had to be plugged into a VCR to record, right?
P.S. I saw World’s Greatest Dad. I thought it was fantastic, though that may have been clouded by the obvious parallels I saw with the suicides at Poudre back in the day. The Wholesale Souls Inc. connection is pretty clear too. But anyway, I was blown away, so I highly recommend it.