On Wednesday March 9th, I played the part of Bill Peters, head of the NASA team responsible for crash landing SkyLab in the Indian Ocean, for the TV show Mysteries at the Museum.
The other episodes can be linked to here:
and here:
The production manager reached out Tuesday afternoon to see if I was available the next day. The biggest positive was that they wouldn't need me until later afternoon which meant not waking up at 5am to catch the shuttle to set. A car was going to be sent to pick me up, almost like a real giant budget production! (Actually, the courtesy van had to go back to their downtown office midday, which was where I met the van. Technicalities!)
My Wednesday had already been filled with the museum part, if not the mystery. Family was visiting the city. After a long morning walk, we ended up going to the new Whitney Museum at the end of the Highline Park in the Meat Packing District.
The first few years I lived in New York City, I took advantage of having access to some of the best collections and museums in the world. Coming out of college, I felt that my education was deficient in many things that I had an interest in, including art. One of the many reason I moved to New York, was not only to pursue a career but be exposed to as much culture as I could consume. My schedule as an out of work actor allowed me to spend whole days wandering museums when crowds were light. I figured out which days to go which museums including the nights when admission would be a dollar or even free.
I became very familiar with not only the work in some museums but the building and the rhythms with how the art was presented. For instance, walking through the old MOMA in a certain direction was an incredible way to see the progression of modern art. The galleries were set up to see the conversations contemporary artists were having, the influences they had on each other and how the work was left for the next generation to interpret. Then, the old building was torn and replaced by a new construction.
The brand new MOMA, large and impersonal, dispensed with the flow of the conversation between the galleries. In fact, the building intrudes in the experience. Gaining a sense of context of the work, which can allow for a deeper appreciation if not a higher opinion, let alone a judgement, was dismissed. The ultimate goal of the museum was no longer education or enlightenment, but commodification. Bring as many people into the museum, shuffle them through the galleries making sure that the highlights were hit, such as Van Gogh's Starry Night, so that people can say they saw the work, and then move them into the gift shop. The private connection to the work has been replaced by the spectacle.
I rarely go to the MOMA anymore. I still love their permanent collection. However, I've lost the enjoyment of wandering their galleries. Plus, the special exhibitions feels less about the art or artist and more about competing against Broadway, Madame Tussauds, or Ripley's for the tourist dollar. In New York City, there are better places to spend an inordinate amount of money.
The old Whitney Museum in the Upper East Side designed by Marcel Breuer had been one of my favorite museums and collections. I had spent many afternoons as well as several of my own birthdays walking through the Whitney's permanent collections and special exhibits. Appropriately, I went to the Whitney's last major show in the old building on my birthday in September of 2014, a Jeff Koons retrospective. Although the new building opened almost a year ago, I just haven't found the time to visit, or maybe the gumption to fight off the crowds inspecting a new city bauble. Plus, I was worried about what the museum might become.
The new Whitney museum is imposing and massive. We approached the building from the North and the West, probably not the perspective that's intended. From that angle, the building appears massive and cold, slightly out of place with the area, let alone some of the newer buildings. Inside, the building is massive, yet the entrance wasn't an overwhelming chest thumping statement that overrides the buildings purpose.
At the old Whitney, the trick was to start at the top of the building and then work down through the galleries and floors. The same idea applies to the new building. On the top floor was a special exhibit on torture by the filmmaker Laura Poitras. Connected to the top floor was an outdoor deck with a loose scaffolding like structure that has stairs going to the lower floor. I have read in reviews that the deck and metal stairs gives the building a ship like feel with a balcony overlooking lower Manhattan. The weather was fantastic on the day I was there, and although having nothing to do with art inside, the view and the addition was nice without being ostentatious.
On the next couple of floor was the permanent collection. The galleries were spacious and airy with room to see and think. I enjoyed seeing the familiar works displayed in a new way. A large tour group passed through without overwhelming, yet I never felt rushed or crowded. The second floor gallery of the permanent collection was closed. Then next floor was a special exhibition of sounds, so the entire floor of 20,000 sq ft was open from end to end, a rarity in New York, and highly impressive. The rest of the museum was divided into administration, preservation, scholarship and meeting rooms.
I'll go back to the Whitney at some point. Overall, I liked the building. My impressions might be skewed positively due to being there with family, that we went early and on an odd day. By the time we left, the museum did seem busier. The building was massive and yet, flowed very well. The galleries were laid out well, and the work seemed buoyed by the fresh look. Although, the Whitney isn't immune to the commodification of culture, the intent of a cultural institution doesn't seem lost.
By my call time to report to work, I had already had a full day of art and culture.
I met the van about mid afternoon and we headed into the traffic outside of the Holland Tunnel on our way to Patterson, NJ. The set was at The Art Factory, a giant repurposed mill, only twelve miles from Manhattan. Of course the traffic made what should have been a short trip well over an hour.
Before I even started shooting the shooting day felt better than the previous two days I had spent with Mysteries at the Museum. Not only was the weather much better, the facilities were far more comfortable. The crew could shoot at one of the factory while production was in a different room, costuming in another and holding in yet another part of the sprawling location.
A link to The Art Factory is here:
Sitting down, I had sometime to get acclimated. However, I didn't sit for too long. As I've mentioned before, one of the things I enjoy about working for Mysteries at the Museum is that since it's such a bare bones production, the team uses everyone available.
The first segment I shot was about the Army's use of dirigibles, blimps, to patrol the coasts of the United States during World War 2. In a freakish accident one of the blimps crashed into an Oregon town without any of the crew aboard. I played the captain of the airship.
The crew had built a makeshift set in an old part of the factory that still had the original dirt wall. Only parts of the gondola were built to give the idea of a full structure, with light screens projecting videos of the ocean acting as the images of the window.
On set was the director Justin Stanley, whom I'd worked with previously on each of the days I'd shot with Mysteries at the Museum. Justin is a fantastic director that can get the most out of the low budget sets, out of mixture camera angles, smoke machines, and yelling to the get the right reactions from actors as if on a silent film movie set.
We set up, did a couple of shots, changed the angle of the camera and the set, a couple of more shots and that was the segment. I wandered back off to costuming to get ready for the next segment.
The next segment and the last of the day, was about SkyLab. Wikipedia states:
Skylab was a space station launched and operated by NASA and was the United States' first space station. Skylab orbited Earth from 1973 to 1979, and included a workshop, a solar observatory, and other systems. It was launched unmanned by a modified Saturn Vrocket, with a weight of 150,300 pounds (68,175 kg).[1] Three manned missions to the station, conducted between 1973 and 1974 using the Apollo Command/Service Module (CSM) atop the smaller Saturn IB, each delivered a three-astronaut crew. On the last two manned missions, an additional Apollo / Saturn IB stood by ready to rescue the crew in orbit if it was needed.
The station was damaged during launch when the micrometeoroid shield separated from the workshop and tore away, taking one of two main solar panel arrays with it and jamming the other one so that it could not deploy. This deprived Skylab of most of its electrical power, and also removed protection from intense solar heating, threatening to make it unusable. The first crew was able to save it in the first in-space major repair, by deploying a replacement heat shade and freeing the jammed solar panels.
Skylab's demise was an international media event, with merchandising of T-shirts and hats with bullseyes,[22] wagering on the time and place of re-entry, and nightly news reports. The San Francisco Examiner offered a $10,000 prize for the first piece of Skylab delivered to its offices; the competing Chronicle offered $200,000 if a subscriber suffered personal or property damage.[23] NASA calculated that the odds of station re-entry debris hitting any human were 1 to 152 and when multiplied by 4 billion becomes 1 in 600 billion for a specific human,[24] although the odds of debris hitting a city of 100,000 or more were 1 to 7 and special teams were readied to head to any country hit by debris and requesting help.[23]
We assume that Skylab is on the planet Earth, somewhere.
Charles S. Harlan, Skylab mission controller[22]
In the hours before re-entry, ground controllers adjusted Skylab's orientation to try to minimize the risk of re-entry on a populated area.[23] They aimed the station at a spot 810 miles (1,300 km) south southeast of Cape Town, South Africa, and re-entry began at approximately 16:37 UTC, July 11, 1979.[3]:371 The Air Force provided data from a secret tracking system able to monitor the reentry.[25] The station did not burn up as fast as NASA expected, however. Due to a 4% calculation error, debris landed southeast of Perth, Western Australia,[3]:371 and was found between Esperance and Rawlinna, from 31° to 34°S and 122° to 126°E, about 130–150 km radius around Balladonia. Residents and an airline pilot saw dozens of colorful fireworks-like flares as large pieces broke up in the atmosphere.[22] The Shire of Esperance facetiously fined NASA A$400 for littering, a fine which remained unpaid for 30 years.[26] The fine was paid in April 2009, when radio show host Scott Barley of Highway Radio raised the funds from his morning show listeners and paid the fine on behalf of NASA.[27][28]
I played the role of Bill Peters, the head of NASA team responsible for bringing SkyLab back to Earth without landing in a populated area. The location was shot in the basement part the factory, with old props littering desks, blueprints, old notebooks and chalk boards giving the impression of a NASA work station. I was dressed in an old oversized suit while the other actors dressed like IBM men from the seventies.
We shot a couple of scenes and angles of the team discussing plans and pretending to watch the decent of the station on monitors (that didn't exist). I even had the big scene of relaying to the team what our options were. Placed on the spot, I improvised a segment about changing the satellites rotation to change the trajectory of reentry, or something scientific sounding that I tried to recall from endless hours of watching Star Trek. Hopefully, people who know more about the science, won't be reading my lips to see if I explained the logistics correctly. Otherwise, the sensation could be that of a deaf person trying to watch the sign language translator for Obama in South Africa a few years ago.
We wrapped by 8pm, jumped into the courtesy van and we headed off to return to Southern Manhattan, a much easier journey than the landing of SkyLab in the Indian Ocean.
A statue in holding
Actors relaxing in holding
A glance behind my shoulder
Obligatory shot of kraft services
The cafe at the Art Factory.
Heading out of costuming
Costuming
Heading in the set for the dirigible segment
Down one of the corridors
The gondola being built
The ocean is so blue from this height
The cockpit
Holding it together with smoke and mirrors.
My co-pilot
The video assist monitor
Heading back to holding
Always fun to be on set
The suit for Bill Peters, or David Byrne for Stop Making Sense
On the way to the office
An old audio mixer, don't think to hard about it
We're going to watch the SkyLab reenter Earth's atmosphere. There's Justin, the director, telling us how it's going to get done.
No comments:
Post a Comment