Ages ago, while working on a hamburger spot as an on-set carpenter in the art department, I was asked by the art director to help the second unit on stage two. I had no idea there was a stage two, let alone a second unit. (Art dogs are notorious for being disoriented.) I walked away from a live-action set that was full of life-with a charismatic director, actors, and agency people chatting volubly with visitors at the craft service table-to a place that was as dark and hushed as a church.
At center stage was a gleaming cluster of Century stands, high-rollers and mambo-combos holding up fingers, dots, flags, and pin-point lights. There was a tangle of stingers and a camera sitting high on a locked-off dolly. I felt as if I had stumbled into an orthodontist’s office. People wearing smocks were working very intently around a small white board that was held horizontal in front of the camera lens with grip-clips. On that board was a tiny Krystal hamburger (the Southern version of a White Castle patty), and leaning over it was a man with a face mask looking very much like a surgeon. He was carefully placing tiny onion wedges on the flat square of meat with a pair of tweezers. There were other minute instruments-some of them I recognized as dental tools-on a nearby stand.
A few feet away were more agency people. Unlike the chatty ones on the live-action stage, this agency gang was very seriously studying a monitor, and actually taking notes. Every so often they would call out suggestions to a man who was standing near the camera, whom I had mistaken for the second assistant cameraman. He was in fact the director, a tabletopper, whose name now escapes me.
Boy, was that an eye-opener! Until that moment, I had thought commercial work was just an easy way to make a freelance living, working side by side with many people who had no particular skill-sets, just like myself. I had no idea that the job could be so serious and exacting, and so awfully professional.
"Tabletop is a whole different world," says production/effects designer Ross Silverman (repped by bicoastal New York Office), who has worked on many tabletop jobs over the years. "It’s like working with motion control. You go at a different pace. It’s slower, because you’re dealing with the sesame seed on the bun, and how is the cheese going to pull, and that shadow on the label. You’re framing something small as something big."
Tabletoppers tend to come from the ranks of still photographers, who place a premium on the image. The finished product is invariably crisp, clean and mouthwatering. However, in terms of creativity, the tabletop insert has at times been found wanting. Taking a lead, pioneering role in changing that was the late, great director Elbert Budin. And in recent years, tabletopper Irv Blitz (with Morton Jankel Zander, L.A.) has spiced up the discipline; an example that comes to mind was when he threw popcorn instead of crackers into a bowl of split pea soup. Tabletopping is becoming more daring and sexy, a welcome development. The directors we have chosen for this special report continue in the experimental vein. Their work has a flair and a splash that raises it above the usual fare. But at the same time, it still goes for the gut reaction. Indeed, SHOOT staffers suffered intense hunger pangs after viewing their reels. We had an early lunch that day.
-Richard Linnett, Senior Editor/ Special Reports
