Sound Portrait

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Kyle: When it comes to super heroes, Batman is probably one of the greatest super heroes of all time. Russ Hammaker was always a fan of Batman during his childhood. And one day, he got to live every fan’s dream.

Russ: When I first moved out to Los Angeles, I was working a job and met a gentleman by the name of Andy, who became really good friends with me. And he was working various movie jobs throughout the time that we were friends. He ended up working on the Batman and Robin set, and while I was employed at Best Buy at the time, he called me up and said they needed someone to fill in for a day at their job. So, he called me and I accepted and worked for a day there, and everybody thought I did a great job and stuff. And so the next week, they decided that instead of the person that they had hired for that position, that they were going to go ahead and let them go and they asked me if I would like the position, which I gladly accepted, seeing as how it was working on a Batman and Robin movie, and I've been a big fan of Batman since childhood.
My official job title was VFX Runner, which is for Visual Effects Runner. It’s basically like a go-for. A typical day would start about six o’clock in the morning. Get up and run over to ColorVision to pick up what they call our dailies, which were the previous day’s film shots. And then I would go back to the office, load them up on a flat bed editor, to view the film, set that up for all the directors and supervisors on the set for the day.
Around seven o’clock that would all be done, and then I would pick up my first set of purchase orders to go out and pick up various lenses from Panivison, or drop off light meters, pick up various items that we needed for different shots, hardware, hardware materials, just various things that were needed on the set to make sure that we were able to get the shots that we needed.
Around noon or so, I would come back, have lunch and then the afternoon was another set of runs, to pick up whatever we needed that afternoon for any shots or anything like that, drop off lenses again, pick up the light meters that I had dropped off earlier that morning, and such.
Usually around five o’clock, we would wrap up, I would take the newly shot film back over to ColorVision and drop that off and go home. Or, there were some evenings where we went as late as two o’clock in the morning, because we were trying to get a visual effect shot of blowing up a building like on the airport tarmac. So, when those things happened, a lot of times I would also be in charge of going, picking up hamburgers for the crew and things like that. But that was basically, my typical day, just running back and forth, dropping things off, picking things up, and doing whatever was needed to make sure that we got the shots.

Kyle: Although working in the visual effects unit, kept Russ away from most of the famous celebrities, he was still able to meet some of them, and meet some other, very cool, people.

Russ: The director of the movie was Joel Schumacher, although I didn't actually work directly with him, I ended up working under other directors and supervisors on the movie set. And that was a very cool experience, working with them on special effects, miniatures, and things like that, so.
As far as while I was working on the movie, I didn't really get to meet any celebrities, but afterwards, they have a thing called a wrap party, which is where you're wrapping up the movie and everybody comes together and they say, you know, "Thanks for all your hard work and everything." And while I was at the wrap party, I met Chris O'Donnell and Alicia Silverstone. I did get to end up meeting Joel Shoemocker at that party, and although I never got to see, face to face, or say hi personally; across the room, I did see Uma Thurman.

Kyle: Russ was also able to experience some very cool and sometimes very strange things that most people will never get to experience.

Russ: The coolest thing that I did while I was working on the movie was I had a daily pass to go on and off of the Warner Bothers movie lot. And, I was over there dropping off some of the paperwork that we needed at the home office on the lot, and one of the guys that worked in the office was good friends with me and he took me out to where they were actually doing the live shot of where the Bat-Mobile comes around the corner of the street and everything, and it’s all real set and out on a street and everything. So I was actually on the street where they were filming the Bat-Mobile coming around and Batman jumping out of the car and stuff. So that was pretty cool.
The strangest request that I ever had was, the main manager over me, it was his anniversary that coming weekend, and he actually asked me to forget everything else I was doing that morning, and he gave me five hundred dollars to go out and find the best bread maker that was ever made on the face of the earth, so he could give it to his wife for their anniversary. So that was probably the strangest request that I had while I was working on the set.

Kyle: Although it was strange at some times and it required some late nights and early mornings, Russ was glad that he got the opportunity to take this job and live his dream.