Have you ever watched a special feature on a DVD and see the cast (and sometimes crew) patting each other on the back and kissing each other's ass? Have you ever wondered, "do they ever fight on set?"
The answer is a simple and resounding yes. Look no further than Christian Bale and his mishap with the Director of Photography. What a whopper of a fight that was!
Now everyone and their dog has an opinion on what happened and I do to, however I'd like to think that my background affords me to have an educated guess to what was happening prior to and after that tape was recorded.
First of all, movies are not easy to make and there's always a certain high level of stress on the set at any given time. It's how people deal with this stress that makes all the difference. Channeled properly, I find it to be an excellent motivator and it can help with the creative juices. Some people however cannot handle stress and crack under pressure. These are the people that drag a set down and slow it to a grinding halt and make it awkward for everyone else on set.
Stress on a movie set is different than any other type of job. Depending on what department you're in and how high up you are in that department there could several different people asking you for something and you need to have the answers or make up convincing answers on the fly. Sometimes there's thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars riding on a single choice. That's a lot of responsibility on a person's shoulders.
Stress on an actor can sometimes be even greater than the filmmakers and the crews. Serious actors take lots of time to research and understand their character. For a lot of actors it takes considerable effort to become someone you are not (unless you are Sir Anthony Hopkins).
I've witnessed actors do all sorts of things to get into the proper "zone" to do a scene. A good example was an actress who was trying to do a very emotional scene. She was lying in a bed remembering her dead husband and talking to him through a picture. Before going on the set she listened to something on her ipod to help get her in the mood and she also had a personal picture which she was using to get in the right space. This took a solid half hour to get there, it was pretty much ruined because the crew was being noisy in between takes and it pissed off the actress to the point of saying something.
On top of all of that, you're hardly ever working with the same people so it's hard to know who you'll be able to work with and who you will have to tolerate and who is just a plain dipshit. I've worked with all three.
So, if, for example, your Director of Photography is a complete fool and is consistently ruining shots by wondering into the frame to check and see how his lights look, we'll maybe he's got a bitch fest coming to him.
And that's where I sit, over there in the corner.
Travis
