CharlesPapert
Director of Photography
In '98 I found myself in Austin, TX working as the A camera/Steadicam operator on a little studio comedy called "Office Space". Initially a box failure, it nevertheless grew to become a cult classic on video and continues to inspire memes to this day. One of the more memorable moments is where the guys take a failing printer out to a field and destroy it with a baseball bat (and eventually bare fists).
The morning we shot that scene, I remember Mike Judge musing "I want this to look like a rap video. How do we do that?". The DP shrugged and said he hadn't shot one himself. I hesitantly raised my hand and said "I've done a couple..." The most memorable of which was a really charming piece of work called "Dirty Dawg" for New Kids on the Block's first comeback as NKOTB, where they were trying to position themselves as gangstah...or something. I spent a very cold couple of nights running through the woods with dobermans nipping at my heels, flinging the Steadicam around the z-axis in low mode as I endlessly pushed in and pulled out from Boston's favorite boy band. The misogynistic message in this video was bad enough then but it's astonishing now.
I very much had "Dirty Dawg" in mind as we shot the printer scene that day, Steadicam in low mode with the dutch rolls. One interesting note is that we didn't look down at the ground much when we first did the scene, so a few weeks later I was sent out to pick up inserts of the printer on the ground. I shot these on the side of a freeway, just after getting what was to become the initial three or four shots of the movie showing the traffic jam. My memory is that we put PA's into wardrobe from the waist down and had them pace around, wield the bat etc. You can see that the ground cover is much more sparse in these shots than in the original location.
When "Family Guy" eventually parodied the printer scene, I was honored to see the signature dutching recreated in animated form!
Shooting "Dirty Dawg"
On the set of "Office Space" (I'm on the street, the guys are up on the curb...I'm short but not THAT short)
The morning we shot that scene, I remember Mike Judge musing "I want this to look like a rap video. How do we do that?". The DP shrugged and said he hadn't shot one himself. I hesitantly raised my hand and said "I've done a couple..." The most memorable of which was a really charming piece of work called "Dirty Dawg" for New Kids on the Block's first comeback as NKOTB, where they were trying to position themselves as gangstah...or something. I spent a very cold couple of nights running through the woods with dobermans nipping at my heels, flinging the Steadicam around the z-axis in low mode as I endlessly pushed in and pulled out from Boston's favorite boy band. The misogynistic message in this video was bad enough then but it's astonishing now.
I very much had "Dirty Dawg" in mind as we shot the printer scene that day, Steadicam in low mode with the dutch rolls. One interesting note is that we didn't look down at the ground much when we first did the scene, so a few weeks later I was sent out to pick up inserts of the printer on the ground. I shot these on the side of a freeway, just after getting what was to become the initial three or four shots of the movie showing the traffic jam. My memory is that we put PA's into wardrobe from the waist down and had them pace around, wield the bat etc. You can see that the ground cover is much more sparse in these shots than in the original location.
When "Family Guy" eventually parodied the printer scene, I was honored to see the signature dutching recreated in animated form!
Shooting "Dirty Dawg"
On the set of "Office Space" (I'm on the street, the guys are up on the curb...I'm short but not THAT short)
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please share any others that come to mind.
