Miramar USMC Base
San Diego, California - Sept. 2006
Hallie and I flew in to LA a few days early. Partially to buy film, settle in before our shoot, ect. Mostly to relax and approach a shoot at a normal, sane speed. Something lacking on most of my shoots thus far. Kevin was to join us the day before the shoot, flying in to LAX, then we all drive down the coast to San Diego.
We finally got in to San Diego about 1am, fried from enjoying the peace that is the California Highway System. The nice desert hotel that I found was probably a joy to stay at if we weren’t insane from fatigue. We took solace in the fact that, while we were tired then, we would be just that much more tired the next day, having to arrive at Miramar Air Station around 7am or so.
It takes skill to have trouble finding the large Marine Base that’s bigger than 90% of continental US cities. I finally found the main entrance, at least the one that visitors were suppose to use.
The kid with the high powered assault weapon guarding the base gate let us in without examining any of our ID’s. Hallie, Kevin, myself and a van of unexamined equipment were now driving around the Marine Base responsible for protecting the western coast of the US.
I then received a harried call from our liaison officer. Something like this…
Me: “Hello”
Officer: “Are you at the base gate?”
Me: “Hi. We were, but they waved us through.”
Pause
Officer: “Uh..What? Where are you, again?”
Me: “Well, we’re sort of driving around looking for the planes….”
Officer: “Stop where you are. Tell me the cross streets. We’ll be right there.”
After our Liaison’s Officer’s slight heart attack, she escorted us to the F/A-18 flightline. This is, in fact, the exact air base they filmed Top Gun, back when the Navy owned it. Not bad.
We meet Cpt. Ben Hinz, who couldn’t be nicer. He shows us to a small conference room we are to use as a staging area to hold our gear. This conference room has a sign on the door declaring it a “legacy room,” displaying photos from the USMC fighter squadrons throughout time. What we can’t take out eyes off of, though is the biggest bottle of Jack Daniels humans have ever made. I swear this thing was as big as an adult golden retriever.
While Cpt. Hinz did his preflight meetings, we ran around and got some B-roll shots of the base for about an hour. Cpt. Hinz then got us, told us the base commander would like us to vacate the bar..I mean Legacy Room, and begin setting up to shoot on the flightline. Kevin rigged some ingenious headgear to protect his ears from jet fighter engines, but monitor our audio.
Hallie filmed Cpt. Hinz putting all of his flight suit on, while Kevin and I went out to the flightline to film the ground crew. There was an amazing amount of folks walking to and fro. 
A very serious looking Master Sergeant was assigned to us, with the sole purpose of first, keeping us from breaking the aircraft and second, not die. Cpt. Hinz later told me that there were twice as many folks out there on the ramp then there usually are. Everyone should get the chance to walk in slow motion in a jet fighter movie. I made sure I could accommodate them. Most of the film was being shot in HD. For this shoot, though, I pulled out the film camera. I mean, if you're gonna shoot in slow motion, you might as well mean it....
All in all, a very good experience. A tip of my hat to the folks at the Miramar USMC base. They didn’t have to give us the time of day, but opened almost every door for us. We even went to lunch there, at the Marine Base Starbucks.
