Dave Bullock / eecue : Programmer | Photographer | Admin | Human

You can find a few more of my Hollywood Hills fire photos here.  

My photography is now featured on Artshow.com, they have added my work to nearly all their subject categories.  

You can see a few more of the photos from my shoot today here. The photos were taken through a Canon TS-E 24mm f/3.5 L mounted on a Canon EOS 5D. A set of 3 bracketed photos were combined using Photomatix. 

After shooting some HDR photos in Vernon, I was heading in to work when I saw an overturned truck. I stopped to take some photos of the truck being turned back over. Note the tow-truck's wheels on the last shot. 

I am looking to get in touch with the other Dave Bullock. He is a well known comic book artist. I am interested in a collaborative art project with him. If you know Dave Bullock, the comic book artist, please send him my way and have him email me. Thanks! 

The notification on the DLANC mailing list said the CAB protest was expecting 200 protesters and 200,000 spectators. I laughed when I read that and responded that I figured it would be more like 200 of each. I walked down to Broadway to check it out and as it turns out, 200 was probably a bit of a high estimate. There were roughly 100 protesters, surrounded by close to 200 police officers. The spectators maybe numbered 100 people, who were shouting and laughing and the very serious and likely racist group of mostly minutemen, with a few CAB folks thrown in for good measure.

Ted Hayes started the CAB, which stands for Crispus Attucks Brigade and according to their website their mission is to:

move American Blacks peoples to take their rightful and dutiful role to stop illegal immigration into the United States of America

Despite the racist placards the protesters were carrying:

The Minute Man Project is not racist, even as American Blacks citizens and the Crispus Attucks Brigade is not racist against the Brown/Bronze Indio Indigenous peoples of Mexico and Central America.

There is currently a large helicopter flying almost directly above my loft. It has been circling for nearly 2 hours. The helicopter is part of a film crew that is filming a block north of my loft. The crew is parked both in the parking lot next to my loft, and the lot across the street where I park.

We were not notified. My wife has to wake up at 4:30 AM tomorrow for nursing school. It is almost midnight. I do not know where to turn in this situation.

I started out by calling 311, they forwarded me to the non-emergency LAPD dispatch who forwarded me to the LAPD's Air Support Watch Commander. The Sergeant on watch was a nice fellow, and I could tell he felt bad that he couldn't do anything about the disturbance. The deal is that if there is a permit, they have every right to be in the air, no matter who they are. He said that if I had a complaint I would need to jot down the tail letters and call the company in charge of the bird.

My issue isn't with the helicopter pilot or the film crew. They are both doing their jobs. My problem is with FilmLA. FilmLA granted them the permits to film aerial shots late on a Sunday night. FilmLA continues to treat Downtown Los Angeles like their own private sound stage.

I actually have a friend at FilmLA who told me a few nights ago that everyone films in Downtown LA because it is cheaper than filming elsewhere in the city. Why is it so cheap to film in Downtown as opposed to other places where people live? I can tell you first hand that it isn't cheap to live down here.

FilmLA and the production companies that film in Downtown have been getting a free ride for too long and that is all going to change soon. Nobody wants to see the motion picture industry disappear from Los Angeles. People live in Downtown and those people need to be treated fairly and with respect. In a few months, FilmLA's contract with the City of Los Angeles expires. If things don't change, and soon, renewing that contract renewal process will be an uphill battle.

UPDATE I currently don't see or hear the helicopter, so hopefully the crew has wrapped for the night. Either way my wife is wearing ear protection and seems to be fast asleep.

UPDATE Part 2 Oh joy the helicopter is back. So far I've been contacted by 4 other Downtown residents. Eric Richardson blogged about it. The adhoc DLACN Film Issues meeting tomorrow today should be quite interesting. I won't be able to make it, but my wife will be there to voice our opinions.

UPDATE Part 3It is now 5am, my wife is getting up for nursing school, normally I would be asleep, but the crew is banging poles on the ground as they disassemble the circus tents in the parking lot across the street from my loft. Time for me to don the ear protection. Nice. 

Filming and the Entertainment Industry in general are both huge sources of revenue for both Angelenos and the City of Los Angeles. I thoroughly enjoy watching movies and I think it is cool that they are commonly filmed in my neighborhood. In no way do I want to see the industry move out of Los Angeles, or even Downtown, not that it would even if it could. Those points aside, there are some serious problems with they way shoots are planned and executed, especially in Downtown.

A bit over a month ago I wrote an emotionally charged piece about my run-in with an especially rude film crew member. The response that I received from fellow downtown dwellers was amazing. Last week, one of the people who first contacted me about the post, Bert Green, started a thread on a Downtown mailing list and posted the responses.

Over the weekend the DLANC powers that be added an addendum to the meeting that was to take place the following Monday, and were able to get a representative from FilmLA to come down and talk to the community and the council. I missed most of the meeting, but I came in time to hear the FilmLA guy talk about how there would be "too much information" if they were to post all the notifications on their website. He also said that trying to send "those union people" to courtesy training would be impossible.

One thing I found especially funny was that he said there were good Location Managers and bad ones, and the bad ones spoil it for everyone, he then went on to name the Location Manager for the recent Tranformers shoot as one of the good ones. The Transformers shoot where they blew up a truck at 7am on a Saturday after only giving notification to residents on the same block. The explosion could be heard for miles.

As I see it there are some issues with FilmLA, which I am sure we will be addressed in the near future, mostly because their contract is up in June:

• FilmLA's funding comes from the permit fees the collect, that right there is a huge conflict of interest.
• FilmLA has failed and continues to fail to properly notify residents of pending shoots.
• FilmLA has little or no government or citizen oversight of the approval process
• Production companies that continually break the rules are still issued permits and there are no consequences for their actions

The meeting was attended by nearly ever Downtown LA blogger, including: Ed (who wrote about the meeting), Jim, Celia, Don, Ben, and Ginny. If you are interested in being a part of the solution, DLANC has created a task force to deal with the problems and the first meeting is this coming Monday in the P.E. Lofts. More details along with Ginny-Marie's notes from the meeting after the jump. 

3 exposures 0,+/-2 EV from a Canon EOS 5D and EF 24-70mm f/2.8 L combined with Photomatix. More Desert HDR photos can be found here. 

3 exposures 0,+/-2 EV from a Canon EOS 5D and TS-E 24mm combined with Photomatix.