Going Hollywood
A great many people are sucked in by the glamour of Hollywood. Your first day, you find yourself surrounded by beautiful actor, talented artists, and an endless supply of craft services.
TAPA On Set
An Office PA’s place is in the office. (Any loyal readers want to embroider that on a pillow for me?) So when an Office PA ventures on set, it creates a classic fish-out-of-water scenario. On my last show, I had to accompany the supervisor’s seventeen-year-old neighbor to set. She sat there, starry-eyed, watching take after […]
Key is the key
Oscar writes: Hi there, I read most of your site and enjoyed it a lot… But what I’ve failed to find info on online is what exactly it is that a Key set PA does. I’ve been hired into this position in a film and I want to educate myself on the position. I mean, I’m […]
How a Set Should Be
Taylor commented on an old post, yesterday: You are stupid sir. Locations arrives first and leaves last. Don’t repeat things you don’t understand He (she?) may or may not have realized that s/he was commenting on an auto-comment that’s generated every time one WordPress post links to another. That post read, Set PAs stay on […]
Learning the Hard Way
Well, maybe not the hardest way, but still, I learned. I got myself a fancy new phone last week, and the first thing I did was figure out how to turn my phone on vibrate. This is a very important feature on any phone, when you work on a film set. In fact, if you’re […]
Not Impressed
People often ask why I don’t invite my wife to visit the set. She’s a civilian (what we call someone who doesn’t work in the industry), so everyone assumes that she’ll be impressed by all the lights and cameras and semi-famous people. The thing is, she will never, ever be impressed, especially not with the […]
Something I Will Never Understand
Why is it that the three departments most concerned with an actor’s look (wardrobe, make-up, and hair) always look the worst? I’m a straight white guy, so I have no fashion sense. I really don’t care what my clothes look like; I have shirts that don’t match themselves. But some of the things I see […]
Boredom
A lot of time on set is spent sitting around, waiting for other people to do their jobs. You gotta wait for the actors to block the scene, then wait for grips and electrics to light it, then camera has to set focus marks, then hair, make-up, and costume have to fix up the actors, […]
Killing the Joke
Here’s a classic joke, told on film sets around the world, that I absolutely love. A producer, a director, and a DP are scouting locations. As they’re wandering around, one of them spots a lamp. Naturally, they decide to rub it, and, just as naturally, a genie pops out. The genie says, “Since there are […]
Awkward…
Some people are shy. Actors, generally, are not. A certain actor, let’s call him “Mick Molte,” would regularly show up on set wearing nothing but a T-shirt and a pair of pajama pants with the crotch worn through. And when I write, “nothing but,” I’m including underwear. (I must admit that I didn’t witness this […]