Scene Stealers According to all involved, the real stars of DFS were the employees and leaders at Home Lumber of New Haven. “They are just an awesome company,” says Thomas “T.J.” Cantwell, director of regulatory and industry affairs for NLBMDA and the association’s point man for the DFS project. “Chad Korte and the rest of the guys there opened their yard to us and gave us carte blanche, gave us access to some of their employees to be involved in the shooting, and helped us get from jobsite to jobsite.”
Cantwell says that in addition to Home Lumber yard shots and on-the-road footage, DFS also will likely feature scenes involving a boom truck loading drywall into a house and truck-mounted forklifts hauling and delivering long loads of engineered lumber.
“The whole shoot was pretty cool and very similar to the shoot we did for The Forklift and You,” says Alan Neireiter, yard manager for Home Lumber of New Haven. “Once in a while it got kind of hectic, but it wasn’t too bad, and I think that people all over the country should get a benefit out of this. We make anyone that comes to our company and is even thinking about driving a forklift around our yard watch [The Forklift and You] video, and not just because we are in it. I expect that we’ll make everyone watch this one as well.”
Neireiter should not have to wait long for a screening. Koons reports that—after a one-day follow-up visit to Home Lumber for some fill-in shots—DFS will go into post-production to add voice-overs and complete additional editing for a final cut and mastering. Since filming of The Forklift and You in 1999, several cinematic trends have occurred that DFS will incorporate, namely reality TV–like camera footage in which viewers will be able to enjoy “Fear Factor”–type first-person views of a driver rolling down the highway courtesy of helmet-mounted “pencil cameras.”
Still to be decided is the final format for the video, with Koons leaning toward a DVD/VHS combo package to satisfy the needs of any dealer audience regardless of their respective viewing technology. A Spanish-language version also is a distinct possibility, but will depend largely on demand. Regardless, Koons and Cantwell expect DFS to be available through NLBMDA by early fall at the latest.
