譯/李京倫
For a couple of weeks last year, Rebecca Schear and Sandra Bullock worked nights together. They never met, but they played different parts in the making of the just-released movie "Ocean's 8" — Bullock's as the mastermind of a caper that required elaborate planning, Schear's as a different kind of mastermind.
For those couple of weeks, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was a museum by day, as usual, and a movie studio by night. When the galleries closed, the film crew arrived, hauled in the gear, set it up, filmed a few scenes and finally, around dawn, knocked it all down and left by the museum's 10 a.m. opening — only to go through the same routine the next night. Schear, the Met's senior production manager, was responsible for keeping the movie machinery safely away from the art. Much as her bosses wanted the Met to be in the movie, they did not want to hear about statues that were knocked over or canvases that had holes poked in them by errant equipment.
去年，麗貝卡．席爾和珊卓．布拉克通宵共事了幾個星期。她們不曾打照面，卻在剛剛上映的電影「瞞天過海：八面玲瓏」的製作過程中扮演了不同的角色：布拉克是一場需要精心設計的欺詐行動的策劃人，席爾則是另一種不同的策劃人。
那幾個星期，紐約大都會藝術博物館白天照常是博物館，晚上則變成電影攝影棚。畫廊一關門，劇組就進駐，把拍片設備運進來，設置妥當，拍攝幾個場景，最後天亮時將設備全部拆卸，在博物館早上10點開門前離去，到了晚上同樣的程序又走一遍。大都會博物館的資深產製經理席爾負責不讓拍片機械碰到藝術品。她的上司雖然很樂見大都會博物館在電影中亮相，卻不想聽到有雕像被撞倒，或油畫被設備不慎戳出洞來。
So, as a parade of movie people filed in — camera loaders and electricians and lighting technicians — Schear, 33, became a sharp-eyed minder, worrying, she recalled, about potential problems like "the swing radius of a Technocrane."
"A Technocrane is a like a fancy jib," she explained. "You fly a camera on it for these beautiful sweeping shots. We want to make sure it swung in ways we were comfortable with. It never really got close to the ceiling and not to any of the artwork. We were like, 'Here is the exact spot where you can put this piece of the equipment and here's where it can swing' — and we were standing there to make sure."
因此，當膠片安裝員、電工、燈光師等劇組人員魚貫而入時，33歲的席爾就變為目光銳利的守護者，她回憶說，她擔心著可能發生的問題，如「伸縮大搖臂的轉動半徑」。
席爾解釋說：「伸縮大搖臂就像奇特的起重機懸臂，你可以把攝影機裝上去，讓攝影機飛起來，拍下漂亮又寬廣的畫面。我們想確保大搖臂以我們放心的方式轉動。它從來沒有真的接近天花板，也沒逼近任何藝術品。我們說的話就像『這個點就是你能擺放這一部分設備的精確位置，那裡是它可以轉動的範圍』而且我們也站在現場盯著，不容有差錯。」
And when it started its ascent, her pulse started to race. "That's unavoidable," she said.
The Met has labored to put some past financial turbulence behind it while adjusting to new admission fees for museumgoers who do not live in New York state — the Met's long-standing "pay what you wish" policy ended in March, and the de Blasio administration has laid the groundwork to reduce the city's contribution to the Met by up to $3 million a year, depending on how much the out-of-staters bring in.
So, for the Met, movies and television shows are an appealing source of additional revenue, though a small one for an institution with a budget of more than $300 million. Met officials say cameras have been allowed in for other movies, including "When Harry Met Sally" and "Maid in Manhattan," and for small-screen series like "Gossip Girl."
當大搖臂開始上升時，席爾的脈搏開始加速，她說，「那是免不了的」。
大都會博物館在適應非紐約州居民入場費新制的過程中，已奮力將一些過往的財務動盪拋到腦後。館方長期以來的「隨意付」門票政策於3月結束，而且紐約市長白思豪政府準備削減市府對館方的補助，削減額度端視外州遊客帶來的門票收入而定，每年最多可達300萬美元。
因此，將場地租給電影和電視節目劇組的額外收入，對這個預算超過3億美元的機構雖然只是一小部分，仍有吸引力。館方說，曾經核准租用館內場地拍攝的電影包括「當哈利遇見莎莉」、「女佣變鳳凰」，以及「花邊教主」等影集。
※說文解字看新聞
好萊塢2006年的電影Night at the Museum描述紐約市美國自然歷史博物館某個夜裡發生的奇事，台灣譯為「博物館驚魂夜」。本文巧借片名當標題，地點換成紐約大都會藝術博物館。到了夜間，博物館變成攝影棚（movie studio）。Double有「一物二用」、「分飾兩角」之意。館方破紀錄出借場地達10個晚上（nights），仍不免對館藏的安全提心吊膽、脈搏加速（pulse started to race）。
作者說電影主角和負責盯場的博物館主管扮演不同的mastermind，字面意義是聰明才智者，某一複雜行動的（of/behind）統籌，特別是犯罪，可說是「主謀」（a criminal mastermind）。Caper在俚語意指不法勾當，尤其是竊盜，或是情節不算嚴重的犯罪電影（瞞天過海：八面玲瓏）。
據說片商回饋了100萬美元，對於Met的開源（additional revenue）不無小補。除了欣賞奧斯卡影后同台飆戲，眼尖的觀眾還能趁機一覽館藏的塞尚、薩金特與勞策的名作。
