The car was too small. It could only hold two actors and a sound guy. Three
people were already perched on the hood of the car holding the camera. There
was simply no room for script supervisor Linda Kodis.
In order to oversee the action, Kodis had to run alongside of the car while
being careful to stay out of the shot. It worked for the first take and the
second, but the actor kept blowing his lines and the scene had to be reshot
15 times.
"After the eighth or ninth take, I found a small bush and hid there until
the scene was finished," confesses Kodis. "It was 104 degrees outside and
I just couldn't run anymore." All that for a 33-second scene in a movie!
Kodis has worked as a script supervisor in California for a small part
of the time that she's been in the movie business. "I was a paralegal for
Warner Bros. for 15 years and just got burned out. I was looking for something
else to do in the industry."
Kodis found a private teacher with 40 years of experience as a script supervisor.
"I went to her house every Sunday for five weeks and learned the basics,"
she remembers.
The teacher helped Kodis find a job working on a 30-minute short film.
After that, she worked on several student films -- "where everyone is learning
and it's OK to make mistakes and nobody gets paid," she says.
As she learned, Kodis progressed to feature films, television pilots and
commercials. The first two years were the toughest because she was still learning,
but she also wasn't making a lot of money. "Sometimes you get paid," she explains.
"Other times you work on 'deferred' pay -- when the project sells, then you
get paid."
Recently, Kodis showed a new script supervisor the ropes. He later told
her the job was like flying in outer space with a cargo of monkeys and a cellar
full of tarantulas. Kodis says that isn't far off the mark.
"After the director yells, 'Cut!' I'm bombarded with questions from the
director, first art director, director of photography and the camera crew
on what just happened and what's happening next." At the same time, she has
to write detailed notes for her editor, describing how long the shot was,
if it was a close-up, medium shot, pan, or hand-held shot and what lens was
used.
"That's the hardest thing about my job -- juggling!"
"It's a very stressful job," says Slayde Barnes, a script supervisor in
Wilmington, North Carolina. Barnes became a script supervisor after working
as a production assistant under veteran script supervisor Lexie Longstreet.
When Longstreet wasn't available for a reshoot, Barnes got a chance to
step into the script supervisor's role. Since then, he's worked on some television
movies of the week and a low-budget feature movie.
"It's a very detail-oriented job," says Barnes. "Sometimes it's fun."
Kodis says it's more than fun. "Being a script supervisor puts me in the
front row, behind the camera. I'm actually making movies, not researching
rights, drafting contracts for actors, producers and directors."
The front row does have its dangers. Take, for example, the time Kodis
was script director on a project that involved blowing up or
shooting almost everything and everyone in the movie. It turned out the explosives
expert was having a bad day. His wife had given him an ultimatum: movies or
her. He chose movies and she left.
"For 23 hours of gunshots and explosives, I was working with a man who
had other things on his mind. One tiny mistake could have ended my career
right then and there -- not to mention the entire crew and half a city block,"
she marvels.
With brushes with death come brushes with fame. Longstreet has met Val
Kilmer, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jamie Lee Curtis. "She was so neat," says
Longstreet.
During the shooting of True Lies, Curtis wanted to hang from a rope ladder
beneath a helicopter. "Arnold wouldn't do it, but she did," admits Longstreet.
Longstreet has since directed her first movie, a 20-minute short about
a day in the life of a movie extra. Kodis also might like to direct one day.
"Always being at the right hand of the director, so to speak, gives me
an insight on how shots are made, how many camera angles it takes to complete
one scene, and how to get the best performance from the actor," she explains.
"If it doesn't work out, I'll still be happy being a script supervisor,"
she concludes. Just don't make her run in 104-degree heat!