“No,” I said. “But can we talk about what Corey just told us? About the room being wiped?”
“Was McDougall married?”
“No,” I sputtered.
“Any children?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Had he ever been in an accident? Hospitalized?”
“I don’t know.”
“Can we find out the name of his personal physician?”
“I can try.”
“Do that,” Perkins said, shooting his cuffs and adjusting his tie. “And as for the so-called news that the room had been cleaned of all fingerprints, don’t tell me that came as a surprise to you. Not after everything else we saw in there.”
I was still trying to put together an intelligent answer when he cut me off.
“When can we see yesterday’s dailies?” he asked.
I looked at my watch. It was almost seven thirty. “They should be screening them right now.”
“Then lead the way!” he said. “It isessentialthat we see them!”
CHAPTERFIVE
While we took the elevator down, I explained the routine to Perkins. Each day, the shot film was returned to the Holiday Inn and then taken by limousine to the airport. It was put on a ten-thirty plane to Los Angeles and transferred to the studio, where it sat until the lab opened at six a.m. the following morning. The lab processed theBloodrockfootage first, and whisked it over to an assistant cutter, who synced up the picture and dialogue tracks.
The studio executives ran the film before lunch so it could be returned to us by plane at four p.m. We got our dailies back at six and ran them in the banquet hall at seven, or whenever the company got in from location.
“What do your footage figures look like?” Perkins asked.
“I don’t know,” I said. “All I know is that we’re under in that category.”
When we got to the lobby, I spotted Bobby Venn, the second assistant cameraman. He would be able to answer Perkins’s questions, so I introduced him.
A movie camera has four men running it. The director of photography—a.k.a. the DP—positions it and arranges the lighting of the scene. Then, during a shot, the actual framing is done by the operator. Focus and exposure are controlled by the assistant. And the second assistant works the slate, loads the magazines, changes the lenses, and keeps all the records.
Bobby Venn did all that, so he knew what the footage counts were. His records were shipped back to the lab every day with the exposed film. They told the lab what to develop and what to print.
“We’re running around four thousand feet a day,” Venn said. “Printing about two thousand feet. The director is being very careful.”
“Probably doesn’t want his film recut,” Perkins said.
“Maybe,” Venn said. He didn’t seem happy.
“Something wrong?”
“Oh, we lost a magazine from yesterday’s shoot.”
“Lost, you say?”
“Apparently, it got lost in transit. We show we sent it, and the lab doesn’t show receiving it. We’re checking with the airlines now, having them run a trace on it.”
I could see that Perkins was still mulling that over as we went into the banquet room. A makeshift double-system projector was set up in a corner, and a small screen against the far wall. Normally, a company on location will look at dailies silent—since film and sound are initially on two tracks, it’s hard to arrange for a double system—or else they’ll look at them on a Moviola or KEM table. But we were going to be in one place for forty days, so the studio got us a double system.
