The Anonymous Production Assistant

The Bus Story

Photo by Ant Rozetsky on Unsplash

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. There’s this PA, right?  He just fell off the turnip truck, doesn’t know anything about the Industry, but he seems to be a nice enough guy and a hard worker, so the coordinator hires him.  On his first day, his boss sends him out on a run, […]

Emailing Strangers

Danielle asks: I recently graduated college, during which I had internships on the corporate side of three different television stations (all headquartered in NYC). Since graduating, I’m looking to move into the production side but don’t have the contact base required, since the stations outsourced to external production houses. Through some serious stalking, I uncovered […]

Let It Never Be Said That I Can’t Change My Mind

A couple of sound points came out of yesterday’s comments section.  From Galen: Don’t forget that actors often have to go through hair and make up after the blocking during the lighting set-up. This takes a fair bit of time and it saves production money to have a [glossary]stand in[/glossary]. I’m all for efficiency on […]

Harsh

Stephen Gallagher took issue with my post yesterday: “For those of you who don’t know, a stand-in is quite possibly the most perfect manifestation of how lazy actors are.” Seems kinda harsh both on the actors, who usually seem to use the chunk of time between blocking and shooting to get their lines, and stand-ins, […]

Not Scheduled

Elyse writes: I was told by the UPM to go ahead with getting a job as a PA on the tv show set I’ve been standing-in on, and she told me to speak with one of the ADs. I spoke with one and he was going to set me up with the person to hire […]