Tuesday, June 15, 2010

Nothing good about Constant !

Nothing good about Constant!




    Beautiful vines blue sky’s with chance of rain, (Which did the first shoot day.). Rolling hills filled with grapes asking to be turned to wine. Calistoga with its world renound for both its wine and its relaxing charm. If you can’t be peaceful here and get some joy from the surroundings, more than likely you’re a very depressed and unhappy person. Which all of us found out that the owners of Constant Diamond Mountain Winery are. It’s been two weeks since I shot there and my mind has purposely forgotten the horrific couple ‘s names that own Constant but their action and their attitudes will forever go down in my book as the worst nightmare location shoot because of owners.

           

            We flew into SFO (3,000 miles) and drove another 2 hours to get to this beautiful location.    And for me going back to my root’s the Bay Area. All 12 of us on the crew loved the relaxing and beautiful place to do a job. With such a great crew who have traveled all over the world and worked together for many years we were never excepting miss grump and passive pill popper that owned this beautiful winery called Constant. Out of a collaboration of all my 18 years in the industry and some on set 23 plus. None of us have ever and hope never will experience such rude vulgar unhappy and miserable people like these two. It started with them saying we couldn’t shoot were we distinctly flew 3,000 miles to do like their dock or there main house. Then it just kept escalating to not being able to walk on their Grass. No joke have you ever seen a winery? Were we had to walk they made us put cardboard down. Which was genius, as we all know that will kill the grass.  Then telling us that we can’t be any were near the wine barrels which she said, “ Would taint their wine.” Although they were stored in an old barn with no insulation and an electrical plug in heater with broken windows. She said, “ that it’s millions of dollars of wine. That our shoot is not worth.” Making it seem like their bottles were Opus One at their $45.00 a bottle. Please! We should of known how the rest of the days were going to be, when she said she used to be an actress in the 70’s that we were in for it.  For a long story short by the end of the last day these “Opus One” winery owners were yelling literally for $100.00 cash for their boat on their disgusting pond.  Calling us liars to the editors face and her spineless husband telling her to come speak to us because he was afraid.  I give praise to our wonderful editor who took them and some how with her experience and charm calmed them down enough so that we could escape pack up and leave back to SF.

            My question is how two married (no children, Thank God) owners of this beautiful location and winery. That live in one of God’s most relaxing places on earth be so horrible and rude and disgusting. Just goes to show the old tail all the money in the world doesn’t mean you have style or class, even if you do own a winery! But what did I expect with a winery called Constant.

Sunday, March 28, 2010

Season ahead


It’s been a while since my last blog. But with the feeling of spring here and shooting Summer June and August issues like usual we our a few seasons ahead. I find it so ironic but by the time everyone is enjoying the new season approaching were shooting bikinis and shorts for a few months now. It reminded me of one of my experiences doing hair this time of year.


It was still cold in NYC but finding myself in Zanzibar Africa late February it was 110 F and no clouds in the sky. Water warm and white sand so hot it was hard to walk on. We were shooting 2 fashion stories and 1 beauty story. We were on our last beauty story; it was the 8th day we had been there. My sunburn had turned into a tan finally and I was just getting darker and getting pretty good at local words of Swahili.  This model gets flown in from Amsterdam (which is also very cold that time of year); she gets to the awesome resort and has a disgusted face on her pale skin body in the lobby. We should have known. The next day shooting, nothing but complaints I started at 5 am call time in my room to do her hair. The day before while shooting, everyone except the photographer and me got deathly ill coming out both ways if you know what I mean. And her she is complaining all day long saying why we couldn’t just shoot this in Bahamas or Florida. To say the least between the bathroom rushes and her awful attitude it made a not so fun last 2 days. Just goes to show some people no matter how beautiful the weather change of the seasons no matter if you fly to another season or it’s right here at your home town will never stop and enjoy the things around you. 

Monday, January 11, 2010

All For Fashion !!!

Since 2009 my friends and my Love have told me to do a blog of all the funny and not so funny things that happen to me at my job. I am a straight freelance hairdresser that is based out of Manhattan NYC for the last 12 years. I have been doing hair for editorial, commercial, video, runway for fashion for 17 years. And what is everyday to me I guess is something very unordinary for others. I won’t use names of accounts or of models etc. just the story. So here is my first blog starting January 2010.

With all this cold weather we are having on the east coast this winter it reminds me of a shoot about 5 years ago. Do you remember that year that on president’s day all of NY got shut down with 3 feet of snow in one night? Well it was that winter, not an easy one and defiantly cold. Well this particular American fashion magazine had to do a re- shoot of one of their fashion story’s for the April issues in dead of February with no budget and they needed it fast to make it to print.
I guess the previous shoot the model had a drug issue that day and every shot looked like a heroine bohemian east village girl and it was supposed to be a decadent Upper East Side woman that was vacationing in the Hampton’s. So we got this rather big at the time well still is now she’s acting model to reshoot it. But this particular model came from a country were it doesn’t get lower than 50 F degrees and that is freezing to her. Well the closest beach was in the Long Island and it was about 23F but with the off shore wind felt like -2F. It crossed my mind why take the chance of having to reshoot in this weather again and not fly us to Miami just to make sure. But knowing they hadn’t planned in the budget to do so I left it as a thought and that’s all.
So besides having a very warm RV right on the beach the production had 2 gas heaters that look like a little jet engine’s pointed with the wind towards her on set on the beach. And to make things worse it was April issue we had a prototype from his runway a Robert Cavali dress (that means it hadn’t been produced yet so more than likely there was just that one or maybe one more of this particular dress). It was made out of chiffon with Cavali's signature rock and roll print. The cut of the paper thin dress had pieces of fabric that were blowing in the wind like a kit that day.
To say the least the model was not happy and not one of us blamed her. She has a lighter complexion not olive tone. And she was turning a nice light shade of purple. “No problem” the photographer said,” we can photo shop her skin town right!” Her nipples were some how pushing through like a knife, “No problem “once again the photographer said,” We can photo shop those out also”. I felt so bad for her, we all did. She kept asking production and assistant’s to put the heaters closer as to get more warmth from the flames. I turned my head towards the wind to light my cigarette and heard the stylist (Clothing Stylist) scream like some one had died. The blowing kit like pieces of fabric had gotten to close to the flame of one of the jet heaters. And had quickly set the paper thin one of a kind dress on fire. Like any normal reaction two assistant’s grabbed her and rolled the model in the sand patting her down as fast as possible. No one was hurt not even one burn on the model, thank God. Only the dress was now looking more like the Heroin Bohemian East village look that we were trying to stay away from. Like most great crews we dealt with what we had. I re-did her sandy hair; make up re-did her sandy face. Got a new dress and pulled it all together. All for fashion! LOL