So if the day I worked on the independent horror film was fun, last monday was AMAZING.
I know the second second assistant director on Californication (who has now moved on to work on Grey's Anatomy) whose name is AK, so I emailed her to see if she knew of any work out there. She said she didn't have any paying jobs (Californication actually stopped shooting its season today), but told me I would be welcome to follow her around on set one day. So I did - two days ago!
It was possibly the most fun day of my life. I got to watch David Duchovney work on set alongside Natascha McElhorne and Madeline Watkins (who also goes by Maddie). Funny enough there are actually two Maddies in the cast.
Anyway, rather than just shadowing the AK they put me straight to work. I got to work on my first real television set! Still unpaid, but invaluable experience. I got to work right alongside the other PAs, facilitating the shoots and working the trenches. The first half of the day was on location in Venice (which is beautiful with its little canals and bridges everywhere). I got to be on radio so I was always in the loop. My call was 9 AM and we were in the first location until about 2 PM. At the first location, I was positioned near a construction site. When the first assistant director announced that sound was rolling over headset, I would yell out "ROLLING" at which point the construction workers would hold what they were doing so they wouldn't make any noise. The production manager arranges this ahead of time, and the construction crew is paid to offset the time they lose in their day. When they were finished filiming, the first AD would annouce "We're cut" over radio, and I would shout that so construction would resume. The order of radio commands goes:
"LOCK IT DOWN" - everyone gets into their 1st position
"SOUND IS ROLLING" - which means sound department is up and running
"BACKGROUND" - something I would also yell out loud to cue any extras we are paying to start their action, for the first shoot I was in charge of cueing a dog and dog walker to begin making their way down the sidewalk.
"ACTION" - scene commences
"CUT" - scene ends
"BACK TO ONE" - reset so we can shoot again
After shooting at the Venice Canals, we moved to a second location on Venice beach. In the TV show, this is where David Duchovney's character lives. It was the scene in which his character is getting arrested (I am not sure for what). It was a very public area, so most of my job was keeping bogies (people who shouldn't be around) off the set and out of the scene. However, we couldn't keep the paparazzi away, so the shoot hit several gossip blogs:
http://bauergriffinonline.com/2009/07/duchovny-cuffed-for-californic.phpAnyway, for this shoot, I got to cue a speeding cop car and 15 background (extras). It was AWESOME.
All in all, the outside shoots spanned from 9 AM - 8 PM, and -my mom will be unhappy to hear- I got really sunburnt. No one on the production team hesitated to point it out. The second half of the day was on stage, so we got to go back to the studios to work. It is remarkable how quickly the departments can pack up their gear, we were out of the on site locations in less than 20 minutes. David and Natascha were done for the day after the outdoor shooting, so the evening work was all with Evan Obrient. When we got to the stage, we were really overstaffed in terms of PAs, but I hung around until they were done so I could get everything out of the experience possible. All I really did there was eat dinner, call out "ROLLING" and "CUT", and make sure the AC was off when they were shooting. We finished filiming around 1 AM.
The last thing PAs do is get the sign out times from every department. The way they do time on their timecards is a little bizarre. If you stay after midnight of the day you were called, instead of doing standard military time that would go back to 0 (midnight) after hour 23, you go into hour 24 and hour 25. And istead of minutes or fractions, you use decimals to the tenth of a unit, each representing 6 minutes, rounded up. SO, if you were called at 9 AM and your day ends at 1:15 AM, your sign out time is 25.3. I thought it was both hilarious and stupid. But whatever floats their boat. I will do sign out times on an abacus if that means I get paid someday.
Craft services - the name for the food service used on set - is possibly the best perk of working in the tv/film industries. AK says that when she is working she MAYBE goes grocery shopping once a month. You are provided 3 meals a day, and there are always snacks and drinks. It was pretty nice. Lunch was lobster and filet mignon (so were not talking pizza and soda here).
Anyway, I'm glad that I liked it, because it means I'm not chasing after something I will hate. It's hard to stay standing for 16 hours, but the people you get to work with make it worth it. All in all a great experience.
New TTRs:
Last looks: last minute hair & make-up touchups right before we are rolling
Bogey: stray person on site or set or frame
I have more - I wrote them in an eNote on my phone, so I'll catch up with them later. Take care everyone!
