Tag Archives: Hollywood

Full Time Work in a Freelance Industry

Posted on April 26, 2010 by | 5 Comments

I know, I know, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.

I thought "A face that could stop a clock" was just a saying...Anyone know a good clock repair shop?

Sorry.

I do have an excuse, though.  The show I’ve been on lo these many months has “stopped production.”  A nice euphemism for “cancelled.”  We’re done.

Needless to say, I’ve been spending a lot of time looking for a new job.  Considering the luck I’ve been having, maybe people should stop asking my advice.

One option I’ve been considering is working full-time for a small production services company.  There are literally hundreds of such companies in Los Angeles.

See, while it seems obvious to say, it’s actually quite astounding to realize that every minute of every day on every channel of broadcast, cable, and satellite TV must be programmed with some form of filmed entertainment.  Sure there’s reruns, but consider infomercials, music videos, commercials, and every flavor of reality show the depraved mind of an MTV executive can cook up.

Someone has to produce that shit.

Cable and satellite networks frequently hire outside companies to do the actual production.  These companies tend to be small (fewer than twenty people), and they don’t pay well.  They’re never unionized.

On the plus side, it’s usually full time work, rather than freelance, like a real show.  Since the pay is so low, they take what they can get in terms of crew.  This means people like me can work above their usual level (camera operator, rather than assistant, for example).

Plus, since they often own their own equipment, you can borrow gear to work on your own outside projects.

But let’s be honest.  This is all lipstick on a pig.  I’ve worked for these places before.  They’re cheap, unprofessional, and always on the verge of going out of business.  When you look at the people in their 30s and 40s who work at these places, it’s impossible to think they’re here by choice.  They failed in the big leagues, and now they’re pitching for the farm team.

And I’m applying to play left field.

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Posted in Finding a Job, On the Job

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How a Set Should Be

Posted on April 2, 2010 by | 14 Comments

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 set all day, everyday (or longer; they’re the first to arrive and last to leave, other than teamsters).

Location managers are, of course, members of Teamsters’ local 399.  At least in Los Angeles.  Wikipedia says they’re DGA out east, but I’ve never heard that before.  I wouldn’t want to repeat something I don’t understand.

In direct response to Taylor’s assertion, I worked on a show that only shot on location one out of seven days.  Much of the time, the location manager was on a writer’s schedule. The set PAs still had shitty schedules, though.

Moving on to the general tone of Taylor’s comment, there is something about the variability of this industry that makes people sure every show they’re working on is doing something wrong.  Everyone has this Platonic ideal in their head of the one and only way a set should be run.  Near as I can tell, this is based on A) how their very first show was run, and B) how well their own department is treated.

And by “everyone,” I’m including myself.

There’s something we call a “football.”  It’s basically a folder with a bunch of paperwork from the set, like time cards and camera reports and so on.  The first time I was introduced to this, it was my responsibility, as the morning PA, to make and distribute copies for everyone who needed them.  This made sense to me, because it’s kind of a menial task that doesn’t require any real thought.  In other words, a PA job.

On my next show, the production coordinator handled this task.  The show after that, the APOC did.  This made me feel guilty; I would think, Why are you wasting your time on something dumb like this?  You should be doing more important stuff.

Had I worked on those shows first, I probably would’ve assumed that the paperwork was of such a sensitive and vital nature that a mere production assistant couldn’t be trusted with it.  If I then went to a show where it was my job, I’d probably think, What is the matter with this guy, making me do work that’s clearly above my pay grade?

That’s just the way people are.  Things are run differently on TV than film, big budget than low budget, commercials than music videos.  I have my preferences, just like everybody else, but I can’t honestly say which is the “right way” a show should be run.

But God help you if you work on a reality show.  Those people have no idea what they’re doing.

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Posted in On the Job, The Industry

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No Lions

Posted on March 26, 2010 by | 12 Comments

rather pathetic comments:

great example here people. if you work long enough as a PA, you will hate life. please please please take this blog with a grain of salt.

A few years ago, the Internet went down in my dorm.  Everyone got super annoyed.  What’s going on?  Who are the morons running this place? Etc. etc.

Then my roommate said, “You know, a thousand years ago, we’d be living in caves and hiding from lions.”

Now, he obviously wasn’t a history major, but his point was clear.  It’s amazing that we are so comfortable with the idea of a world wide network of information that its absence is distressing.  None of us were starving or homeless or being chased by lions.  We should be fucking ecstatic.  Like, all the time.

From then on, any time anyone complained about a malfunctioning modern convenience, my friend would look over his shoulder and go, “No lions.”

I really wish he was around my shows, sometimes.  People freak out a lot (too much, really), over small things.

And, as Pathetic points out, I can be one of those people.

Of course, I frequently exaggerate for the sake of a joke, and my humor may be so dry and sardonic as to be mistaken for not existing at all.  I am not, in fact, in danger of being eaten by a lion, nor do I want you to get the impression from this blog that I might be.

I don’t hate life, nor do I hate my job.  As I’ve said before, “La la la, my job is a bowl of cherries, covered in non-fat sugar and simultaneous orgasms” isn’t funny.  By all means, take this blog with a grain of salt.

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Posted in About Me, On the Job, The Industry

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Useless

Posted on October 21, 2009 by | 7 Comments

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again– nothing we do in Hollywood matters. We’re not doctors or soldiers or police or fire fighters. No one’s going to die if we make a bad TV show.

There are a few individual exceptions. People can get hurt if a grip or an electric or a stuntwoman doesn’t do her job right.  Interestingly, these are the same people who will survive the inevitable zombie apocalypse.

This is how crop circles are really made.

The face of inevitability.

Everyone else on the crew will be only so much fresh meat. Above the line? Dead. Camera department? Dead. Hair and make up? Dead and dead.  Almost nothing they do bears any resemblance to actual, necessary life skills.

The same goes for me. I don’t know how to fight or shoot a gun. I don’t even know first aid.

I went to film school for four years. What am I gonna do, dazzle them with a trenchant analysis of Michael Bay’s oeuvre? All that knowledge is just gonna make my brains tastier.

One might argue that writers will be necessary in the post-apocalypse. Someone must bear witness to the end of history, right?

Sure, but that’s a secondary skill. It’s what Michael Taylor will do while taking a break from building his zombie trebuchet.

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Posted in The Industry

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No Pay

Posted on May 13, 2009 by | 1 Comment

If he's broke, how does he afford that haircut?

Above: The American economy

I received two different, but related, emails in the last few days.

Matt writes:

I’ve been combing Craigs List and Mandy.com for a while and I tend to notice that like, every single ad or call for a PA is indefinitely nonpaying. Is it as if there is some secret club you’re let into after you’ve done a few non paying gigs where you start to find paying gigs? Also, I’ve been roving the internet like crazy trying to find any other jobs that have anything to do with productions. It almost seems as if I made a huge mistake in getting my degree. The reason I say that is that every single entry level position for film or television production I can find is either A.) non paying or B.) an internship. So even if they were paying, they’re looking for college students. Whats a 5 years of experience television station production assistant with a bachelors degree to do?

And Chris asks:

PAing, as you’ve said, is a full-time job, and often the only way to get started is to get on a low/no-budget production before you move on to a paid position.  So how does someone in that position pay the bills (such as student loans that have suddenly come due) when they’re working full-time in an unpaid position?

The answer, in both cases, is suck it up.  This is that time in your (and my) life called, “Paying your dues.”

People survive in a number of ways.  They borrow off credit cards; they live off mommy and daddy (also unfair, I know); they get part time jobs on nights and weekends, filling the rest in with savings; they get married and sponge off their spouse, who has a real job.  (Hi, honey!)

Basically, you do whatever you can, until you actually do get paid.  There’s really just no way around it.  (Mostly.)

Unfortunately, we are paying our dues in a recession.  Everyone is taking pay cuts, from A-list actors to lowly PAs.  People who were getting paid millions are now settling for hundreds of thousands.  Departments heads are seeing their salaries and their budgets slashed.  Those of us who used to get paid next to nothing are now getting paid literally nothing.

It’s completely unfair, but if you decide to pack it up and move back to Michigan (or wherever), take comfort in the fact that no one will notice.  There’s always another PA, ready to take your place.

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Posted in Finding a Job, On the Job, The Industry

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Do Me a Favor

Posted on April 23, 2009 by | 9 Comments

Hollywood is built on favors, but some people don’t seem to realize that.

I’m making a short film. Just about the only way to make a decent short, without going broke, is to borrow equipment and get your friends to work for free.  In exchange, you offer them free food, their name in the credits, a copy of the movie, and the expectation that you will return the favor some day.

In quick succession, two of my friends violated this very simple barter system, much to my chagrin.

Tuesday, we needed a camera for about six hours at the beach.  A DP friend of mine owned the right kind of camera, but refused to let us borrow it; he insisted on charging us $150.  For six hours.

He said it was because he was afraid we’d get sand in it (we shot at the beach).  Now, first of all, I used to be an AC.  I ACed for this guy.  He knows I take care of cameras.  Plus, paying him money upfront doesn’t protect his camera.  Insurance (which our production has) does.

Worse than that, though, is the fact that I ACed for him as a favor.  He simply refused to do me a favor back.

Now, here’s the nutty part.  The producer found the same camera for $120.  So, we went back to my friend, and he still wouldn’t bring his price down.  The producer (who was also friends with this DP) called the next day, to ask if he rented is camera to anyone else.  He hadn’t.

Can you imagine that I would ever work with this DP again?

Two weeks earlier, the production was shorthanded.  I called around, and a buddy said he would grip for us, if I paid him a $50 kit fee.

Grips don’t have kits, by and large.  They have gloves and a diddy bag, maybe.  We were renting our gear from Castex.  So, basically, the guy wanted to get paid when no one else on the crew was.

What he didn’t seem to realize was, once I give him money, he’s no longer a friend doing me a favor; he’s an employee doing a job.  He knew we desperately needed people, and he exploited that fact.

Both of these guys used the excuse that they’re out of work, and they needed money.  The thing is, everyone is out of work.  Everyone needs money.  But if you can’t get money, you should at least get a favor in return.

These two have totally burned bridges.  They’ll need help in the future, and they won’t get it, from anyone involved in this production.  How do they not know this?

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Posted in On the Job

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Titles

Posted on April 14, 2009 by | 11 Comments

There’s a curious inconsistency I’ve noticed in the way film industry address each other.

No one is ever called “Mr. Spielberg,” or “Ms. Ephron.”  It’s “Steve” and “Nora.”  Even if you’ve just met the person, you’re instantly on a first-name basis.  This is particularly hard to get used to for a polite boy from the midwest who was always taught to address his elders and superiors as “Mister.”

However, on set, everyone calls each other “sir,” especially among the G&E, production, and camera crews.  And I don’t mean just the peons calling the department heads “sir.”  The 2nd AC hands the first a filter, the first will say, “Thank you, sir.”

I’ve actually had a director call me “sir,” when I brought him his coffee.  His coffee!

The Mr/Mrs thing I kinda get.  It makes you feel old, and no collection of people is more vain than Hollywood.  But what’s with this “sir” being thrown about?  It’s confusing.

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Posted in On the Job

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Sympathy

Posted on March 2, 2009 by | 4 Comments

I’ve found a distinct lack of sympathy for my current joblessness.

In the business, you’re in and out of work all the time.  You get used to it pretty quickly.  But when you’re friends and family hear that your show just got cancelled, you get barraged with, “Oh, I’m so sorry!  Do you have another job lined up?  It must be so hard to be looking for work all the time.”

Not so anymore.  Now, my friends with regular careers are finding themselves out on their asses, too.  I say I’m out of work, and all I get is, “Yeah, well, at least you’re used to it.”

It’s getting to the point where jobs like this are starting to look good:

$400 EASY FEMALE JOB (Santa Clarita)

Looking for a gorgeous female to walk around my house naked and/or in lingerie. 3 hours every evening Monday to Friday. Pay is $400 a week. We might go to dinner sometimes, sometimes watch movies, sometimes exchange business ideas and sometimes just hangout. Hours are 7 pm to 10 pm This is job is very real and will go fast so provide me with the following:

- a few pictures (2 minimum)
- body measurements such as height weight chest size waist size and hip size
- contact information such as cell number

If anything from the above list is missing or if you just ask questions without sending pics, you will NOT receive a reply

That’s actually worse pay than a PA gets.

By the way, what’s the motivation behind asking for measurements?  If she’s pretty, what difference does it make if she’s 36D or 36DD?

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Posted in Finding a Job, The Industry

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My Last Political Post, I Swear!

Posted on October 23, 2008 by | 6 Comments

This week, anyway.

John Rogers has posted a clarification about the whole “self-pitying self-indulgent narcissist” thing.  He didn’t mean for it to apply to all conservatives who feel bullied around town.  Fair enough.

I think he was referring to me to me when he wrote, “There was one commenter who noted that in some jobs, as a low-level dude, you need to keep your mouth shut, or you’d be fired…  I sympathize.”

On a side note: it’s too bad he didn’t link to me; I could use the traffic, even if it is from his leftist, commie, pinko, hippie, pot-smoking, latte-sipping, Prius-driving, liberal readers.

How do you like them stereotypes, Scott? ;)

(To drift even farther afield of the point, Elana Frink thanked me for linking to her: “You mentioned me on your blog! I FEEL SO FAMOUS.”  What amazes me more than the fact that a couple hundred people read my thoughts daily is the idea that one of those people would be impressed that I linked to her.  The intertubes are weird.)

Anyway.  Back to the Kung Fu Monkey blog:

I once saw somebody fire a five year old. I’ve seen people fired because they didn’t go get their boss’s blow fast enough. Welcome to Hollywood. It’s awful. Politics will be the least of your worries in your hopefully long career.

I’m confused when people dismiss complaints with invocations of “That’s life!“  Is this supposed to make me feel better, or worse, or what?

So bad things happen.  The fact that I’m not the first (nor last) to suffer from them means I shouldn’t say anything about it?  What happened to the liberal credo, Speak Truth to Power?

It’s silly and irrelevant to tell me I’m young, and I haven’t seen the worst of it.  When I get fired for not getting the producer’s blow fast enough, I’ll complain about that, too.  That’s why I started this site.

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Posted in Off-Topic, The Industry

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Hollywood Conservatism

Posted on October 22, 2008 by | 7 Comments

I should amend yesterday’s post.  I made Hollywood’s liberalism seem monolithic, when that’s not completely true.

I worked at a video production company where all the top people were conservative.  They went to church.  They had four or five kids each.  They were married to the same person for decades.

It was bizarre.

The staff was still mostly liberal, though.  When the bosses knocked off at 5:00, once again, everybody felt safe to assume everyone else was liberal.  (The company employed a lot of kids straight out of college, so it was a reasonable assumption.)

I do know that many of them felt compelled to shut up about their politics when the boss was around.  Empathizing with their position, I resisted the urge to say, “Oh, well, I guess you could get a job anywhere else in Hollywood.”
:)

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On a side note, I found a mirror version of me, in Elana Frink’s blog, Girl on Girl Action. (She claims to be “kind of amazed to discover that many people Google this phrase looking for pornography.”  Come on, my blog gets porn searches!  How did you not see this coming, Frink?)

Anyway, it’s pretty funny, and well written.  For instance, here’s a post that involves the phrase, “I’m a PIRATE-THEMED HOOKER.” (Go ahead, try not to click that link.  I dare you.)

I like her idea about starting a new political party, “Libersocialism.” I think I’ll call mine “Conservatism.”  That’s “conservative” + “fascism.”

Look, you try it.

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Posted in Off-Topic, The Industry

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