The Anonymous Production Assistant

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Clean Up

After you’ve been in the Industry long enough, it’s hard to watch good television without thinking about how hard it must’ve been to make.

Take this week’s episode of Community. The scope of the show is usually fairly limited, with a couple of standing sets and some location shooting at Los Angeles City College.  But this week, they did a parody of every action movie you’ve ever seen.  With paintballs.

During the course of the episode, everything got covered in paint– the sets, the characters, LACC.

They could've just shot outside a frat house at UCLA.  Looks just like this.
This is why you don't let productions film at your house.

It was a very funny episode, but in the back of my mind, I kept thinking about the poor art PA who was going to have to clean everything up before next week.

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9 Responses

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  3. I too loved the episode and worried about whoever had to clean it all up. Notice how the writers didn’t include anything acknowledging how hard it must have been to clean it up? Writers (at least TV writers) I guess just maintain a total sense of entitlement and aloofness to all the grunts who strive all hours of the day and night to realize the “vision” they worked on from 10 to 4.

  4. That’s an art department nightmare. The swing gang and on-set dresser(s) would take care of it and if they needed more help then the art pa or apprentice would be asked to pitch in. Hopefully they shot it last.

  5. I assumed that they shot that episode last because of all the clean-up necessary (at least one show I’ve worked on shot an episode out of order for that reason).

    I was thinking they may even have written before knowing if they would get picked up for a second season so that they could just destroy the sets if they didn’t.

  6. It’s almost laughable once you know what goes on behind the scenes. A 2 minute scene has 20 takes and two hours of work. Not to mention the clean up after.

    Thanks for the laugh.

    Peace

  7. I always thought that the Set Dec guys/Swing Gang would take care of the clean up for that kinda thing. I haven’t been on a show yet where the art PA had to clean up sets. Does that happen on smaller shows?

  8. I know — every time I watch a show, I get caught up what I know has to happen once a location wraps! I used to work in wardrobe, so I’m constantly watching for that continuity, too.

    I’m hoping one day I’ll be able to just watch something like a civilian again!

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