Producer's Diary
Filming a television series is usually a fraught exercise, especially if you're travelling on the road for long periods and especially if abroad. The crew of Cutting Edge California consisted of four people: myself as producer/director; Alex Dolan, assistant producer; Douglas Bolton, the cameraman; and Lorenzo DeAntonis -- an Englishman of Italian antecedents -- who did everything else and was general location production supervisor. (This is us below filming at the Solano Wind Farm in Northern California). We are all based in the UK and made three separate filming trips to California - in April, May and June, and September 2008. In total we spent about two months on the road.
My own personal love affair with California began 20 years ago when I was filming in Washington and flew with a colleague to San Francisco for a weekend off. We arrived on the red-eye at 2am and were taken on a moonlit taxi ride around the city and Bay area by a Vietnam Vet in a yellow cab. It was like a movie come to life.
 Twelve years ago my partner and I bought a house in Palm Springs, a hundred miles east of Los Angeles at the start of the desert which runs for about a thousand miles from there, through Arizona and New Mexico to Texas. Why on earth did we buy a house there? Well, driving through Palm Springs by chance, we discovered this charming, beautiful, pristine 1950s town with an array of fabulous mid-century modernist architecture. At that time there'd been a property slump in Southern California and we found a lot of property on the market going cheap. So we bought ourselves a holiday home for the sheer hell of it - and have never regretted it! This is the view from our house. Can you see why we bought it?
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It was because of my knowledge of California and my affection for it that I originally came up with the idea of Cutting Edge California. In proposing the idea to the BBC I had to think of and research some of the most cutting-edge developments in the state, and because California is so rich in creativity, it really wasn't very hard. In fact most of the examples I already knew about and wanted to see and film for myself. Which is why in this case the filming, rather than being a chore, really was a personal pleasure.
Which is not to say that it was any the less strenuous than filming usually is. Take the item on Death Valley which features in the programme on Natural Heritage, for example. The idea was to look at a range of cutting-edge scientific research taking place within that National Park. We had chosen Death Valley because, although very extreme, it is also very beautiful, but is less well-known than some of California's other amazing National Parks like Yosemite. One area of research we were told about was herpetology - that's studying reptiles to you and me. We got in touch with a young researcher, Andy Gottscho, who was studying the DNA of various colonies of Mojave fringe-toed lizards to trace their evolution and see what implications it has for our understanding of climate change.
We had to get up at 4 am and drive an hour and half to meet Andy and his colleague Cameron at a particular crossroads at 5.30am. Andy had stressed that because Death Valley is one of the hottest and driest places on earth, it was important to get to the sand dunes where we were going to search for lizard specimens before it got too hot. The lizards live in wind-blown sand and come out during the early morning but bury themselves back in the sand usually after about 10 or 11 am when it gets too hot.
Having met Andy and Cameron, we then had to drive our vehicles another 8 miles along dirt tracks, bumping and shaking and showering ourselves and our equipment with dust. Once we had arrived at a certain point, we had to abandon our vehicles and start humping the equipment across the sand dunes. Andy had the GPS co-ordinates of a colony of lizards and we were going there to look for them.
 I don't know if you have ever walked across sand dunes, but they are one of nature's little jokes. They always seem smaller than they actually are, and they have a nasty habit of appearing quite near and close by. Then, as you set off to reach the nearest rise, you discover that between you and the ridge is a vast valley of sand which you have to descend down into and then cross and then ascend again on the far side. When you have nearly exhausted yourself by slogging through the sand and finally reaching the opposite side, you discover that rise you could see wasn't really there after all but is about three huge dunes further on. And on, and on, and so on...
We now had to walk to the appropriate point carrying all our camera equipment - a camera, a tripod, a box of lenses, batteries, etc. etc. It was somewhat akin to an army on a forced march. Andy knew roughly in which direction the lizard colony lay but wasn't sure how far it was. A couple of miles he thought.
This was all bad enough, but as we slogged on getting tired, hot, and irritable, a quite remarkable and utterly unexpected - though very British - development began to take place. You will recall Death Valley is one of the hottest and driest places on earth. Barely two inches of rain falls there each year, and sometimes it doesn't even rain from year to year. But now, as we hiked on and on, we noticed that the sky began to fill with clouds. The wind began to blow. Quite strongly. Gradually the clouds began to get fuller and heavier and darker. Now the wind was blowing a gale.
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Then - to the utter astonishment of our American friends - an even more extraordinary thing. Lightning. And then thunder. And then more. Then, the heavens began to open and large, heavy drops of water - what we in England call rain! - began to fall. A lot of it. In fact, it was a veritable English summer downpour. We were desperate to keep the equipment dry, so we had to take off our shirts and what jackets we had to wrap it up, and then sprinted - as much as one can in a the middle of a desert downpour - to a disused borax mine in the distance to take shelter. Whilst we all took shelter in the mine Alex rummaged around in her bag and produced an umbrella! So there she stood, in the middle of the sand dunes in Death Valley in the middle of a downpour, under an umbrella looking for all the world as though she was attending a garden party in England! Only an English woman….!
Here is a picture of Alex in the middle of the desert, not what one normally expects in the desert is it?
We had to shelter for about an hour till the storm had eventually passed us and had trundled on further into Death Valley to take someone else by surprise. Finally, several hours after we had started our journey, we were able to start filming. If you look carefully at the sequences shot with Andy in the film, you can still see the leaden clouds and heavy rain in the distance!
The unexpected is par for the course in filming. No shoot ever goes quite according to plan - unfortunately. Another little wrinkle we experienced was the aerial filming we planned to do on our April shoot. We needed to shoot the new Academy of Sciences building in San Francisco from above because its 2 1/2 acre organic grass roof is its most striking feature, and is best seen from the air! We also wanted to film the famous Googleplex in Silicon Valley because it sports the most extensive solar panel system of any business in the US, covering seven of its buildings and its two carparks - also best seen from the air. (The buildings can be seen in the Buildings and Energy programmes of the series respectively). We had hired a helicopter to do the shoot later in the week and in the meantime, were entertaining a bigwig from London who had come out to see what we were up to. On the day he was due to return to London, our filming was cancelled because of circumstances beyond our control, and the weather forecast for our later helicopter shoot was beginning to look bad. In my infinite wisdom, I therefore decided to bring the helicopter shoot forward and do it that day. We had to take our colleague to San Francisco Airport but as it was en route to the heliport, that seemed fine.
The helicopter pilot managed to fit us in that afternoon but then a little snag cropped up. To shoot decently from a helicopter you need a device called a gyro-stabiliser. Helicopters vibrate like hell and the gyro-stabiliser is a heavy hydraulic device which tries to hold the camera fairly steady while the helicopter is shaking. The gyro-stabiliser we had ordered to meet us on the original filming day wasn't actually at the heliport now, and we had to make a trip first to Oakland to collect it.
 Still not too much angst. Seemed we had plenty of time. And we had SatNav. What could go wrong? Well, traffic for a start. Then a SatNav slightly confused about addresses. Us, slightly confused about addresses. A gyro-stabliser which was completely unlike any our cameraman had ever seen before, and which had to be demonstrated so he would know how to use it. More traffic. Confusion about exactly how we got into the heliport etc.
The original plan was to drop our colleague off at San Francisco International on the way to the heliport but because we were now running late for the helicopter shoot, we decided to get the cameraman to the chopper first and then take our colleague to the airport. The original plan had also been for me to go up with the cameraman but when we got to the heliport, the copter turned out to be not quite big enough to take us both, as well as the pilot. I then had to spend more time briefing Doug on exactly what to look for, where, what to shoot, how to shoot it, and so on. All the while, our colleague's flight back to London was preparing itself for departure...
Well, in the end, everything was fine - but not before another mad scramble, and another mad drive, this time around San Francisco Airport looking for the right terminal because that was a little complexity the SatNav didn't run to. Our colleague boarded his plane well after the normal time but at least it was still on the ground. And I must say he remained completely calm and relaxed throughout - not something I can claim myself.
Anyway, here's a picture of Doug on his successful return from the helicopter flight, and Lorenzo, Alex, Doug, and me with John the pilot!
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Another little moment of angst for me came when we were filming at Universal Film Studios in Hollywood. Universal were terrifically hospitable and helpful, and we had a very full day dashing around interviewing various spokesmen and shooting various aspects of the Universal back lot. Throughout the day Doug had been asking the Universal representative who was with us about the various rides because Doug, it turns out, is fanatical about theme park rides! As a final kindness, when we had finally finished filming, the Universal man offered to arrange a ride for us. Doug was very keen on The Mummy ride. I think he'd heard about it and wanted to experience it for himself. Lorenzo and Alex agreed to go with him, and Doug then said that I had to come too, so as to complete the team experience. Well I didn't want to be a wet blanket but I absolutely hate any kind of ride other than the most gentle. Doug explained The Mummy was indeed a very gentle ride and even grans and grandads went on it so I could certainly cope.
It started gently enough. We were trundling along quietly in our car and I was just beginning to think everything was hunky-dory when suddenly the car shot forward like a fighter jet taking off, and the next thing we were being hurtled and projected at break-neck speed through the air. Up and down, and round and round - my stomach was left far behind, my heart was pounding, my brain was frozen with terror. I think I prayed. I can't remember any more. Finally, with a deep sigh of relief from me, the car came to a sudden, abrupt, screeching halt. Thank Goodness, I thought. But then I noticed we were still high up in mid-air. Is it really over, I wondered? No, of course not. Suddenly the car started to accelerate at phenomenal speed all over again - backwards! Backwards! We then had to re-live the whole terrifying experience all over again in reverse. I can't imagine who in their right mind could have thought up such a hideous idea.
Well I lived to tell the tale, but I'm still looking for a suitable opportunity to get my own back on Mr. Bolton, our cameraman...
I wouldn't want you to think everything on a shoot is blood, sweat, and tears. So here's some other pix of our shoot which you might find of interest!
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| Lorenzo and me having dinner in San Francisco |
Alex and me arriving at our hotel after a long day |
Lorenzo, Doug, and Alex at the San Diego Wild Animal Park |
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| Alex posing as Katharine Hepburn |
Doug after filming surfers |
Lorenzo and me riding past on a San Francisco trolley bus |
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