Shooting Sandhogs

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Wed, 11/19/2008 - 19:00 -- Nick Dager

New Documentary Chronicles the Largest Public Works project in the Western Hemisphere Manhattan-based filmmaker Eddie Rosenstein a founder of Eyepop Productions is the creator director and co-director of photography of The Greatest Tunnel Ever Built profiling New York City’s legendary urban tunnel workers known as Sandhogs. Currently the Sandhogs are building the city’s third water tunnel scheduled to go online in 2013 to help alleviate New York City’s serious long-term water problem. Initiated 40 years ago Water Tunnel #3 represents the largest public works project in the Western Hemisphere and will ultimately pump 1.2 billion gallons of water a day into Manhattan Queens Brooklyn and the Bronx.
 The project was shot with Panasonic’s solid-state AG-HVX200 P2 HD camcorders The Greatest Tunnel Ever Built premiered on the History channel last month and inspired the History television series Sandhogs. While the documentary special was shot in early 2008 followed by a four-month-long round-the-clock series shoot History has already broadcast several hour-long episodes of Sandhogs.
 
In the time-honored ever-engrossing journalistic tradition of living the life of your subjects Rosenstein a self-described white-collar filmmaker became a working Sandhog to the extent of becoming a member of the Laborers’ International Union and earning an explosives license.
  “I became fascinated with the Sandhogs soon after I arrived in New York City in the 1980s ” Rosenstein says. “For more than 150 years they have worked in obscurity building water and sewage tunnels subway systems and bridge footings all of which are the most crucial and underappreciated elements of the city’s infrastructure; underappreciated because tunnels are by definition out of sight.” 
  
 “I knew it was a giant story but how to tell it?” Rosenstein says. “Beyond the logistical hurdles the Sandhogs are fiercely loyal to and protective of one another. It’s a closed community. So even if I could navigate the city bureaucracy and get permission to shoot underground I still needed the confidence of the guys.”
 
 To earn that trust Rosenstein donned a hard hat and went to work. That was in 2006. He labored for months in Water Tunnel #3 at the Croton Filtration Plant and in Water Tunnel #3’s 600-foot shafts. He eventually became a full time crewmember working for boss Morgan Curran a legend among the Sandhogs and ultimately one of the main subjects of the special and series.
  “Traditionally the Sandhogs are Irish and West Indian and many have assumed the work of their fathers and grandfathers ” Rosenstein says. “I was one of the only Jewish sandhogs ever and the guys called me the ‘Hebrew hog.’ Finally after months of work as the men prepped a big blast hundreds of feet under Lincoln Center Morgan said to me ‘You want to bring a camera with you tomorrow?’”
  “I put a DVX100A mini-DV camera into my lunch bag and shot the demo tape that sold the special to History ” he says. “I used micro crews to shoot the special just DP John Hazard or myself on camera plus associate producer/soundman Peter Ginsburg. I didn’t want to take more people because it’s just so dangerous.”
 
“We were working miles in to a 24-mile tunnel and 800 feet underground as far down as the Chrysler Building is tall ” Rosenstein remembers. “The DVX100A was the right size camera to start with but we needed to shoot the film in high-definition. Conditions were ridiculously wet dusty and perilous and we planned to shoot explosions so the solid-state HVX200 was an ideal choice: indeed the special and series would have been impossible without the P2 HD handhelds.”
 
 Rosenstein says that his gang of Sandhogs quickly became enthusiastic about “making a movie.” “When we got permission from the city to shoot a dynamite blast we had to work together to set up the shot ” he says. “We put the HVX200 on a tripod about 140 feet from the face and surrounded it with a bunker fashioned out of rocks. The Sandhogs illuminated the shot with worklights. We filmed at 60-fps and the video was mind-blowing. The guys had never really seen a blast before even though they’d been setting them off their entire careers. And until this chip camera there was no way to shoot an explosion this intense without the camera seizing up at the moment of the concussion.”
 
 Excited about the special History commissioned the 11-part Sandhogs series and Los Angeles-based Pilgrim Films (producers of Discovery’s American Chopper and Dirty Jobs) signed on as co-producers. Production was increased to meet the demand with two full crews each equipped with two HVX200s working 12-hour shifts. The cameras were rented from Video Equipment Rentals of New York.
 
“The Sandhogs’ subterranean workscape is absolutely beautiful with its earthen color palette and great geometry ” Rosenstein says. “Lighting essentially consisted of the different temperatures of sandhog worklights yet the images we achieved are incredibly powerful with great depth of field.”
 
 Both The Greatest Tunnel Ever Built and the Sandhogs series were shot at 720/24pN with extensive off-speed and time-lapse shooting. At the time of the special shoot last winter Rosenstein worked with 8GB and 16GB P2 cards and would offload material underground using an AJ-PCS060G P2 Store. By the time of the series shoot the crews were each equipped with multiple 32GB cards and footage would be offloaded at the end of a day’s shoot. 
 
 Eyepop Productions edited the special in Final Cut Pro; the color correct was done in Final Cut Studio 2’s Color program by colorist Ben Flaherty at Edgeworx in New York. Pilgrim Films handled the series edit which was done on an Avid Unity system. The special and series were delivered to History on D5 HD.
 
“I love shooting with the HVX200 ” says Rosenstein who plans to maintain his membership in Local 147. “It confers instant creative freedom: I can take it where I need to go and deliver images that I can be proud of.” Eyepop Productions www.eyepoproductions.com