Jeff Okabayashi
Every kid dreams of chasing pirates on the high seas or being on the pad as rocket ships launch off into space, and that’s usually where the exploits end. Not so for assistant director Jeff Okabayashi, a one-time engineering student whose career has quite literally spanned the globe in a feast of action adventure and make-believe.
“I just woke up one day and realized I didn’t want to be sitting behind a desk for 20 years,” Okabayashi relates from location in Australia where he is working as 1st AD on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, directed by Michael Apted,the third feature in The Chronicles of Narnia series. “I switched my major to film, and joined the DGA Assistant Director Training Program after graduating. For a kid who came from very modest means and never got to travel, I’ve been fortunate the way things have turned out.”
The projects Okabayashi has worked on definitely get the adrenaline pumping. “I was working as a 2nd AD on Michael Bay’s Armageddon,” he recounts, “and one scene called for us to shoot directly underneath the NASA space shuttle while engineers were installing the protective tiles to prevent it from burning up after re-entry. There are times with this job when I’ve literally pinched myself knowing no one else gets to see this.”
Another of those times was a scene he helped set up for Sam Mendes’ Road to Perdition, which included more than 100 period cars and 500 background extras taking over downtown Chicago. “The sheer scale of it all was amazing,” Okabayashi marvels. “Every single background [person] needs to know what they are supposed to be doing, and why they are doing it to help fill out the entire picture behind what the foreground artists are doing. To make sure everything and everyone is in place and ready to go on the call of action points to the art of being a 2nd AD.”
The Voyage of the Dawn Treader marks the first time Okabayashi has worked as a 1st AD from prep to wrap. “I think the biggest change from 2nd AD to 1st is that as the 2nd I was the executor of the plan; as the 1st I create the plan. I still wake up early, but maybe not that early.”
Dawn Treader is yet another challenging show set on the high seas (he worked as a 2nd AD on Pearl Harbor and two Pirates of the Caribbean films) where the elements can overwhelm the best of intentions.
“Last Friday was the big storm sequence on the ship,” Okabayashi explains with a boyish glee. “We’re talking rain, mist, violent winds, and dump tanks and water cannons for waves, which all have to be created at an exterior location without real storms or weather taking us out. The actors, kids, stunts and background are all on the ship, which is 20 feet above ground on a gimbal that rocks the boat so hard the performers have to be harnessed so they don’t fall off. You just have to sit back and think, ‘Wow! That was really cool.’”
Tori Rissolo
I went to see The Tonight Show when I was 14 years old,” recalls Victoria (Tori) Rissolo, “and instead of watching the performers onstage, I spent the whole time watching what everybody else was doing on the set. The energy of live television looked like so much fun that I left wanting to work on The Tonight Show some day.”
Talk about a dream come true. Decades later, Rissolo became a stage manager for the same show she fantasized working for as a teenager. “My first job out of college was in finance at NBC,” she continues. “When I heard Johnny Carson was retiring, I sent over a resumé and got a job assisting the executive producer. Six years later, I got into the DGA as a stage manager, so I’ve been with Jay Leno 17 years, and with NBC my entire career.” Working outside the live studio set, Rissolo juggles up to five comedy sketches a day shot on a different stage on the Burbank lot, as well as location shoots.
“Someone else secures the location, and I’m the contact once we’re there,” Rissolo explains. “I make sure the props, sets, and actors are all ready to go before we shoot the bit.”
Because the new primetime Jay Leno Show is so topical, and the writers are changing skits almost up until broadcast, every day is different. For a recent location segment, Mikey Day’s faux paparazzi “JMZ Reports” went to the The Twilight Saga: New Moon premiere and accosted the stars.
Before Jay went primetime, Rissolo got out of Burbank more. One such occasion involved traveling to Atlanta, Ga., to do a segment featuring guest correspondent Alexandra Wentworth driving a $7 clunker across the country. “We were at the car dealership and our executive producer thought the car looked too clean,” Rissolo recalls. “She asked us to mess it up to look more in character, so we did, but then she thought it was too messy so we had to clean it up again. Moments before Alexandra arrived, it started pouring rain and none of it mattered.”
And how has Leno’s much talked about move to primetime changed her life? “There’s just a lot more for me to do,” Rissolo says, “because we have double the amount of comedy and half as many studio guests.” She describes the show as a tight-knit group, which has a certain comfort factor. “Being in uncharted territory has been a little scary,” she admits. “But it’s also been a whole lot of fun.”
Scottie Gissel
Anyone who’s met Scottie Gissel would do well to heed that old advice: “Don’t Mess with Texas.” After all, the 1st AD grew up hunting with her family on a ranch west of her home in Houston. She relocated to L.A. in 1994 for the DGA Assistant Director Training Program, and says her female class was known as the “Amazons.” “At 5-foot-11, I learned to wear my clogs,” she laughs, “as I was only the fourth-tallest woman in the group.”
Gissel says respect for the creative process as well as an ability to see the big picture have been her biggest assets in episodic television. Her resumé includes all five seasons of Alan Ball’s Six Feet Under and the first two seasons of his popular follow-up series, True Blood. “I’ve become the go-to AD for any show about death, dying, or the undead,” Gissel cracks. In a more serious vein, she says the challenging nature of Ball’s shows—nudity, shooting nights, special effects, prosthetics—have honed her “mother bear” skills to the nth degree.
So protective are her feelings toward cast and crew that Gissel was gifted an honorary party hat from True Blood cast member Ryan Kwanten. “Party hats are what male actors wear to cover their privates during a nude scene,” she says without a trace of red in her cheeks.
Not all of Gissel’s challenges at work are so amusing. She tells of a scene for Six Feet Under where a man is jogging in a canyon and gets killed by a cougar, the only species of the cat family that cannot be trained. “Our first choice for a cougar was unavailable as it had mauled its trainer, so we arranged a second choice to work with,” says Gissel. “Then, while conferencing with the new trainer during prep, I heard him say over the speakerphone: ‘Y’all have any girls on your crew? He likes to go for ’em.’ And I’m like: ‘Lucky us!’” In fact, the day before shooting the cougar had attacked his female trainer, so the crew stood 25 feet downhill from him—behind Gissel. “But,” she grins, “I knew I could outrun at least one other gal on the set.”
But seriously, Gissel couldn’t be more grateful for her career. For the last six years, she has served as a trustee for the same training program that brought her into the industry and has recently become chair of its board. “I owe my career to the DGA and am thrilled to help in any way I can.”