4thWall

The beginning of November marked the beginning of my 6th month out here in LA, and it feels like the past months have flown by but at the same time it feels like it has been forever since I packed up my car and made the trip out here. It’s hard to keep track of time and disorientation comes from multiple variables; for one the lack in any seasonal change, but also the long hours, strange scheduling and not always working Monday-Friday but working through weekends. Come to think of it, I can’t remember the last time I had a full weekend off, but you could consider that a good thing because it means I am working a lot. I am currently working on my first long term gig, so I am going to go ahead and summarize everything that has happened between PA Experience Part 5 and now. So here we go:

Part 5: I worked for 8 days for the taping of an episode of the show Curiosity on the Discovery Channel. I got this job through a friend, and I thought I would only work for the day when I was called in to do runs, but ended up working the whole shoot. I have never watched Curiosity, but I supposed each episode covers a different topic, past episodes have been on the discovery of Atlantis, how the Titanic really sunk, and what would happen if Aliens attacked. This particular episode focuses on “your body on drugs.” It airs Sunday Nov. 20th on Discovery so if you are interested you should tune in and watch. This job was crazy, as crazy as you can imagine a show with a cast of 4 drug addicts would be. I am not going to say much about what went down during these 8 days, you should really just watch the show, and it might clue you in to how we went about making the show, although any sketchiness in the making of this show won’t be revealed.  Mostly I was off of set doing runs, and while on set I was doing some rather odd jobs. One job I did was heating up a metal box by placing it in boiling water and then further heating it up with a blow torch. This “hot box” was a prop for the “emergency situation” portion of the show. Another one of my jobs was to stand by the jib operator and warn him if he was going to be run over by one of the drug addicts during their driving test. Whatever I was told to do I did it, I also did things I wasn’t asked to do but did them because they needed to be done, and I busted my ass the whole time, but this shouldn’t be news to anyone. If you work hard most of the time it will pay off, it did this time around for me, but I will tell you about that later. So the lesson from this job: while it may be more interesting to watch whatever absurd thing is happening on set, you should probably be restocking the crafty table or getting a water for the director. Stay busy, work hard, and prove yourself to be an asset to the crew every day of the shoot.

Part 6:  Crack Whore Galore and this next job both actually happened while I was doing the episode of Curiosity. I had committed to two days of work on other jobs that took place during the time of the drug show. I worked Friday and Saturday for drugs, Sunday for CWG, Monday-Wednesday for drugs, Thursday for this next job, and then Friday-Sunday for drugs again. I was lucky to get hired for the drug show even thought I had to miss 2 days. Thursday I worked for Ignition, again we were doing a shoot for MTV, this time it was a launch special for the new animated series Good Vibes. Anytime I work for Ignition we are just shooting interviews, and while this is generally boring I like working for Ignition because I work as a camera PA. Being a camera PA for these shoots doesn’t involve much, just driving the cargo van to the shooting location, helping set everything up, loading tapes and batteries, and then taking everything down. However involved or uninvolved I am though, while doing freelance work it is important to take something away from every job, even if it is something as simple as the proper way to set up a C-stand (there is more to it than I ever was shown in school, but that is why on-set experience is so important). During this shoot I was literally handing tapes right to post as they came out of the camera and they were capturing the footage as we were shooting the next interview. The assistant editor was having some issues capturing the footage (it was his first day). There was a formatting issue and the DP was trying to figure out what was wrong with the hopes that it wasn’t his fault. After the DP had been in the edit room for a while I decided to poke my head in and see what was going on. The AE was trying to capture footage into an already started project that didn’t match the format we were shooting in. Now I am no expert, but I told the AE that once you start a project in Avid your options to change the format are limited, but if he started a new one he could set it to the proper format, he didn’t want to do this. In the end we figured out that we weren’t doing anything wrong so we weren’t worried because it wasn’t our problem, and the AE ended up doing what I had suggested. This particular shoot was cool because we were shooting the interviews of a bunch of the people who do voices for characters on the show. Voices for the show are done by Adam Brody, Jake Busey, Debi Mazar and Alan Tudyk. One of my duties included telling people outside the interview room to be quiet, this is a common PA task, and never really a fun one, other than that there is not much to say about this shoot. During set up I tend to spend a lot of time running out to the cargo van for things the DP wants, annoying yes, but don’t ever act annoyed about doing any task you have been given. Eager and willing is always the way to be on set.

Part 7: The women I worked for at Ignition passed my name onto some friends of hers at a company called Boxx Communications. The week following the drug show I worked as a runner for them because they had some people out of the office and needed some extra help. I only did like 1 or 2 runs each day, and on one day I went in and 2 hours later they sent me home because FedEx never showed up. I was either dropping off equipment or returning equipment, one of my drop offs was to the set of Sons of Anarchy, but they were dark so nothing was happening on set.  One night I worked as a PA/camera assistant for the red carpet premiere of What’s Your Number. I had never heard of this movie until I showed up for the job, but Anna Faris, Chris Evans, and Blythe Danner are in it, so it was cool seeing them. Besides some simple set up, my main job was to shove a big light in the faces of all these actors while they were being interviewed. Everything I did for Boxx was easy, and the advice I would give regarding this job is that if you are supposed to get paid for something, don’t be afraid to speak out and make sure you get paid. If there is paperwork and time cards to be filled out don’t be afraid to ask about it. My problem was that my last day of work for this job didn’t end at the office. I was out on a run and was told I could just go home when I called into the office asking what I needed to do next. I put if off longer than I should have, but finally called the guy who had initially hired me and asked if I was supposed to have gotten paid. It can be awkward to ask about getting paid, but, when you need the money, there is no reason to let any paycheck slide. So if you had been told that you would be paid, find an appropriate way and time to ask, it can be as simple as casually asking if you need to fill out a time card or do start paperwork. For some companies, even if you may never work for them ever again, you still have to do start paperwork to get paid.

Part 8: During the week I was working for Boxx I also worked another day for Ignition. It was a quick shoot, we were shooting a promo for MTV with the cast of the show Awkward, and then we had to do another Good Vibes interview that didn’t happen the first shoot. Nothing major, and I can’t recall any standout moment or major lesson that happened during this shoot. I guess I could say though, if you start working every once in a while with the same crew, DP, sound guy, whatever. Try to learn how they like things done, this not only makes them happy and makes their jobs easier, but it also can speed things up and make you a more efficient crew, something that everyone will benefit from.

Part 9: The weekend after the Boxx week I worked for The Voice again for a little over a week. This I think was by far the most boring job I have done so far. Although on the first day or work there was an Irish dance competition going on at the convention center of the hotel that we were at, and we poked our heads in from time to time. I was working with casting again during the call backs for the top 200. It was essentially a week of sitting around and making sure the contestants made it to all of their various appointments and then making sure the contestants were staying out of trouble when they didn’t have an appointment to be at. From this job I would say always be careful about how comfortable you get at a job. While it is good to be comfortable with your coworkers, be careful not to cross the line and act as if you have been working with these people for years. Comfort in the workplace can be touchy when working with friends, especially if they are working above you. It is not safe to assume that because so and so is in this position and they are your friend that you don’t have to worry about getting in trouble for doing wrong or inappropriate things. It is important to develop a friendly relationship with your superiors if it appropriate, but just because you’ve gotten friendly with someone in charge, doesn’t give you the privilege to do whatever you want. So just use your common sense and don’t push your boundaries.

Part 10: A day or so after I finished up with The Voice a classmate in NYC needed an LA PA and our friend that she initially asked passed the job on to me. It was a day of work in this unfortunate place 2 hours outside of LA for a show I will not mention because I am going to criticize it.This episode of the show was focusing on teen pregnancy and we were going to be spending the day following around a pregnant 19 year old. Call time was 6:30am so I was up pretty early to make it to this unfortunate place. I met the crew at their hotel and then we headed to the pregnant girls house. I was immediately sent to get a salty snack for the host of the show and while I was out I was also asked to pick up cigarettes, light bulbs, and socks. The problem was, this unfortunate place is not the most convenient place to be in when you are trying to complete your runs in a timely fashion. There wasn’t a grocery store near by; I was lucky enough to find a hardware store where I purchased the assortment of bulbs needed, and was even luckier when this small hardware store sold socks. I was gone for way longer than I would have wanted to be and by the time I got back they didn’t even need the lightbulbs anymore. After our pregnant girl was interviewed at her home we were to meet her at her doctors office for her last ultra sound before the baby was due, and then we were going to her church group with her that supports young mothers. My tasks for the rest of the day included helping with equipment, helping with lens, battery, and memory card swaps, and slating. With this shoot I witnessed how a lack of organization, preparation, and the lack of a sense of urgency can really mess things up. Things started out bad when the address the production manager or whoever was in charge had was wrong, so we were late to our first location. I don’t know what really went down at the girls house because I was on runs for most of the interview with her, but when I got back they were still interviewing her and then had to get some B-roll. After the interview we rushed to have lunch and were to then meet the girl at her doctors appointment. Well, the address to the doctors office was also wrong and a bit out of our way. To make matters worse all the traffic lights in the section of town were out and traffic was reasonably bad for a place this crap town. So this poor pregnant girl just waited for us to arrive at the actual doctors office so we can shoot her appointment. We finally get there and slowly prep for the shoot. By the time we finish at the doctors office we are now late for the girls church meeting. Luckily everyone at the church group is patient with us and we finally start shooting the church group. After the group we shoot some individual interviews, but the other girls at the meeting need to go home, and the custodian wants to lock up, yet we continue to move at a glacial pace. So from this experience I will say, if you are interested in production managing/coordinating, double check the addresses of your locations, and when you get behind schedule it is pretty standard that something, anything, is done to make up for lost time. Our lack of punctuality didn’t lose us any money like it would in most productions, but we did make a lot of people wait around for us. And OK, sure, productions get behind schedule, but if things are off schedule due to very preventable things, like location addresses, I would say that is pretty unforgivable.

Part 11: This was a cool day of work. It was for the same production company I work for now, and the same one that did the drug show, so that is how I essentially got this day of work when one of the production managers from the drug show contacted me. It was for the show Sport Science and for this segment they were covering archery and golf. Overall it was an interesting day; the archer was on the olympic team and we had him shoot an apple off a dummies head and shoot an arrow through the hole of a spinning CD. This show shoots a lot of stuff with a high speed camera so thats cool because they play back just about every take done on the high speed so if you poke around video village you can see some of the high speed stuff. The golfer could hit a gold ball through a piece of plywood so we shot him doing that, and he also hit one through a cantaloupe, that was mainly for show because the cantaloupe exploded everywhere. It was a pretty typical day of PA work, loading and unloading the cargo van, going on runs, picking up talent. The worst part of the day was that my shoes and socks got wet in the beginning of the day when we were on location for the archery shoot and then they were wet all day. Always dress appropriately, especially if shooting on location,  and if you know there is a chance of an article of clothing getting wet, have an extra pair of whatever it may be.

So there you have it, a somewhat brief summary of the work I did from the beginning of September to the beginning of October. I tried to add what I learned or put in a little advice to go along with each job, but I am a little delirious at the moment and couldn’t exactly remember everything from every job. Also, if you have made it this far into the post, thank you, I hope I didn’t bore you too much.