Also this issue:

Chic Mystique
Echo Chic's journey from South Street sleek to uptown couture.
-A.D. Amorosi

Icepack
-A.D. Amorosi

February 27-March 5, 2003

naked city

Hack Diary: Winter of Discontent

It was the worst of times for a crew trying to shoot in the snow.

by Paul Julien Freed

³The Storm of the Century." "The Storm of the Decade." Would you settle for "The Storm of Winter 2003"? Philadelphia came to a grinding halt this President's Day weekend. The snow piled up at a rate of 2 inches an hour, turning the city into a reasonable facsimile of a ghost town. The fortitude and ability to deal with huge amounts of snow always seem to depend on where you are in the Northeast. When 2 feet of snow fall where I live in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts, the natives simply strap cross-country skis on their car tires and go about their daily business. In Philadelphia, paralysis sets in. As I looked out my apartment window that Monday, the only thing moving was a black and gold snowmobile careening down the middle of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. This was surely nature's way of saying: "Kick back and forget everything you have scheduled for the next couple of days."

When shooting a weekly one-hour dramatic television series, however, there is no day off. Every day the production goes down represents a loss of somewhere between $55,000 and $75,000, depending on certain variables such as which actors are stuck and can't get back to town. Hack was slated to shoot on Tuesday at the Waterworks behind the Art

Museum. On Monday afternoon, Mayor Street declared city streets closed to all but essential personnel and vehicles, through at least Tuesday. My wife, Nan Bernstein, who is producing Hack, had no choice but to pull the plug for the following day.

Yet Tuesday was no "day off" for Nan and the few crew people preparing for the probability of working on Wednesday. Shooting on the streets of this city four days out of every week normally presents its own set of logistical problems. A shoot two weeks ago at 30th Street Station -- following Tom Ridge's declaration of a Code Orange terrorist alert -- forced the production to deal not only with the usual problems of crowd control but the additional presence of armed and flak-jacketed police throughout the building. Although this security did make the cast and crew feel secure, there was no getting around the queasy feeling that the other shoe might drop at any moment. Not exactly a comfortable work environment.

This week it was Mother Nature throwing the curve. The original plan for Wednesday was to shoot at three exterior locations. This required arranging to dig out or tow approximately 70 cars before the sites themselves could be plowed to enable setting up equipment and cameras. The relocated cars would have to be brought to an empty lot, their owners notified of the shift. Sixty-five foot equipment trucks and campers could then be driven down narrowly plowed or, in some cases, unplowed streets to the locations where block-long curbs would have to be cleared of drifted snow to allow the vehicles to park.

The work involved in moving these massive amounts of snow equipment and people began Monday afternoon and continued right through late Tuesday night. The phones in our apartment, all three of them, rang off the hook every minute of both days. I am not a big fan of the phone to begin with. In some respects I'm stuck in another era. I actually exchange written, posted letters with people and appreciate meeting in person. I do use e-mail, but that's more a matter of convenience for others and doing business for myself. The phone, however, is a complete intrusion. Cell phones, which do not work well in the mountains of Western Massachusetts, are ubiquitous and necessary here in Philadelphia. There is not a nook or cranny I can find or crawl into where everyone who knows the number of my Nokia can't find me. Speed dial, I am convinced, will be the downfall of Western civilization, or will at least speed the onset of my senility. I don't exercise my mind to remember even the most basic, constantly used numbers. I couldn't tell you the number of my apartment phone if my well-being depended on it.

In this instance, however, cell phones saved the day. Fifteen years ago it might have taken several days to round up and coordinate all the crew and equipment needed to resolve the problem. On Monday, Nan -- a phone glued to each ear -- the production manager and first assistant director were able to inform more than 150 people and shift gears within an hour.

By Tuesday evening all had changed again. The time and effort needed to prepare the exterior locations was overwhelmed by the breakdown in transport of material essential to the next day's shoot. The props -- signage, podium and backhoe (try getting a backhoe in the middle of a major snowstorm) -- could not be picked up or delivered to the locations on time. The solution: Move to the cover set -- an interior location used when the primary, exterior location is unavailable. On this day, for everyone who could, staying inside was the best thing to do.

Paul Julien Freed had a 30-year career in film before focusing on education. He most recently conducted a series of critical thinking seminars for high school students and career professionals throughout New England.