Tag Archives: production assistant

You Can’t Beat Stupid

Posted on May 24, 2013 by | 2 Comments

Some days, I’ll read a script that’s inspiringly good. “This is how I want to write,” I think to myself. “This well-crafted story, these original characters, these hilarious jokes.”

Other days, the writers will turn in a real stinker, and it’ll inspire me in another way: “Shit, I can write better than this.”

And then there are days when the director does something so mind bogglingly stupid, I’ll think, “I will never be creative enough to come up with something like that. Never in a million years would I be able to think that stupid.”

I’m going to tell you about one of the third kind.

I should say first that the camera person who told me this story did not grow up speaking English. It’s not even her second language; it’s her third. Now, I don’t mean to criticize, since I can barely speak one language, but there is sometimes a bit of a translation issue when speaking to a trilingual person. Add in the fact that she’s a camera girl, and expects precise, technical language, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster when dealing with a director who started out as a child actor.

So, when I first heard this story, I wasn’t one hundred percent convinced she hadn’t been confused about what the prepping director asked for. But later, the conversation was confirmed by a third party, and I’m quite (sadly) convinced  this actually happened.

It was the last day of prep, and the director went down to the camera truck to ask for another monitor. My camera friend assured him that they had a monitor for each camera.

“Oh, I know,” he said. “I want one for the actors.”

“The monitors are really big,” she said. “Everyone behind you will be able to see clearly.”

“No, no, I mean the actors on set.”

“You… want them to see themselves? While they’re performing?” Seriously, can you imagine how distracting this would be? I mean, sure, I make fun of actors for being sensitive cry babies every time a grip walks through their eyeline with a C-stand, but staring at themselves while they’re trying to spit out a dramatic monologue? It would take superhuman concentration to be able to ignore that.

Sure enough, as a former actor, the director was well aware of this. “Oh, actually, I should have been more clear. I need another camera and monitor. I want the camera at video village, and the monitor by the camera, so the actors can see me.”

. . .

What? Wow. What? You see what I mean? If I was writing a behind-the-scenes comedy like 30 Rock, and I wanted to come up with something that the director character could ask for that even the layest of laymen would recognize as ridiculous, I would never in a million years come up with “a monitor on set so the actors can see the director.” That’s just… wow.

At this point, the camera girl started speaking Korean and acting confused, because she was as convinced as I was that there is no way he could really be asking for what she thought he was asking for.1

She told the 1st AC what the director said. The 1st laughed his ass off, then said, “Wait, are you serious?”

The AC stopped by the office to have me call our camera and find out if they had a cheap, consumer HD camera we could rent for the episode. “But don’t order it. I’m going to talk with [1st AD] first.”

He never told me to order the camera.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Also, once she starts speaking Korean really fast, everyone who doesn’t know her backs away slowly until she stops.↩

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It’s Out Of Your Hands

Posted on May 16, 2013 by | 1 Comment

The gods of TV have spoken, smiting the wicked who hath not wrought high ratings, returning from the grave those who might yet do so, and bringing forth a new schedule that shall surely disappoint come September.

That new schedule means some of you who landed pilots have a good twelve episodes to look forward to.1 It also means some of you who were on shows are now out of a gig.

I used to panic when this happened to me. And it used to happen a lot. I was a kind of show killer. Nearly every series I was on got cancelled. Even shows that had been hits tanked when I started. One year, I worked on three pilots, and none of them got picked up. I was getting shows cancelled before they even aired!

Then, one season, I landed on a show a few months into its first season. A good show, probably one you’ve heard of. The day I started, they got picked up for the back nine. We got picked up for a second and third season, and still counting.

The lesson is, most shows get cancelled. If you’re fresh out of film school and landed your first show, congratulations! But know that it’s twice as likely to fail as to succeed. It’s not your fault; you’re not a bad luck charm (and neither am I).

It’s part of freelancing in television. If you don’t like it… well, you’re a normal human being. But if you can’t take it, you’re in the wrong business.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Although even a twelve episode “guarantee” isn’t really a guarantee. I was on a show that stopped production while we were shooting episode 9, because the ratings for episode 4 were so terrible.↩

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The Right Title

Posted on May 10, 2013 by | Leave a comment

Alex writes:

I got my first big PA job! A friend in the camera dept. put a good name in for me. I’m a 3D Camera PA for [REDACTED]. I was just curious how I should put that on my resume. Do I specify what kind of PA I am or just put Set PA again like the other ones? Right now it reads:

3D Camera PA Movie Title Movie Prods, LLC

First of all, as I tweeted recently, you should list the studio, not the movie’s LLC. You want the name of the biggest company involved, which means somebody whose logo will be at the beginning of the company. If this were a TV show, you’d most likely use the name of the network.

But as to your actual question, you should make two versions of your resume. If you’re applying to a job in the camera department, use “3D Camera PA;” that’s a pretty cool title. If, however, you’re applying to production, change it to “Set PA.”

This goes for basically any low-level job. If you worked in casting, but you’re applying for a job in the office, put “Office PA.” I mean, they’re in an office, right?

This doesn’t work for the serious, skilled crew positions. Don’t claim you were a grip when you were an electric. But PA skills are highly transferable. The main difference is who’s yelling at you for letting their coffee get cold.

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Working in Another State

Posted on May 8, 2013 by | 1 Comment

Reader Amy writes in:

Do you know anything about working on a show in a different state while maintaining permanent residence in Los Angeles? I see posts about people wanting to hire locals but does that mean I have to have a license/ID from that state or do I just have to physically live there?

It may be both.

The first and most important thing is that they don’t want to pay for your hotel and per diem. That’s for above-the-liners, and possibly department heads. On TV shows, probably not even them.

But there might also be tax credit stuff going on. The way most tax incentives work, a certain percentage of the crew must be from that state. If you’re not a resident, hiring you doesn’t really adding towards that quota. Of course, who knows how the state defines “resident” for the purposes of the tax credit.

That being said, you should still apply if you have a place to stay on location (if they’re shooting in your home town, for instance, and you don’t mind sleeping in your old bedroom again).

image

My mom left it the way it was when I left for college.

And then there’s this guy, from a recent UTA Joblist–

Seeking intelligent, articulate full-time assistant for Tony-winning playwright with projects in Film and Television. A car and valid driver’s license are required, as employer does not drive. The writer travels often to New York — candidates would need to provide own lodgings there for approximately two out of every six weeks (plane fare paid).

Wow. Seriously? Does this guy really think his assistant will be able to afford to have a place on each coast? That’s ridiculous. This job is literally only for people who grew up in New York or Los Angeles, and still talk to their parents. (Good luck finding someone who’s both of those.)

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Should I Call When They Ask Me To Call?

Posted on April 30, 2013 by | 5 Comments

A reader whose name I will withhold for obvious reasons writes–

I’m a recent film graduate, and will be moving to LA soon. Not too long ago, a casting producer of [Big Time Reality Show] came to my school to give a presentation on reality TV. After the presentation, I introduced myself and told her what I see myself doing. Long story short, we exchanged contact info and she told me to contact her once I’m in LA. Is this standard Hollywood talk or did she really mean for me to contact her once I’m in LA?

Someone speaking at a school should know better than to give her number out to students, unless she really does want you to call.

People do often say, “Call me” without really meaning it. But I figure that’s there fault for being a fake Hollywood person.

That being said, don’t go searching for someone’s phone number in a union directory or something and call them out of the blue. You’ll come across as a creepy stalker, at best.

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Posted in Finding a Job

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Think About It

Posted on April 24, 2013 by | 3 Comments

Just about every time I post a new joblist, someone emails or tweets me, “Hey, TAPA, are all of these jobs for LA?” or something to that effect.

Also on almost every joblist there is a section with the header, “NON-LA POSITIONS (All Locations/All Positions)”. In big, bold font, just like that.

Now, I realize not a lot of people don’t know how to use the phrase “the exception proves the rule” properly,1 but surely people understand the underlying concept. If there’s a section for Non-LA positions, that heavily implies the rest of the jobs are LA-based. Otherwise, why would those four or five jobs be set apart from the main list?

Now, if I was less wordy, I could probably have squeezed this admonition into a tweet. But there’s a larger point to be made here, and the point is this–

THERE REALLY ARE STUPID QUESTIONS.

I don’t care what your kindergarten teacher said. There are some questions you should not ask. “How old is the lead actress?” “Why are the pages late again?” “What’s your real name?”

Those are impolite. Just don’t.

You also probably shouldn’t ask basic questions, like “How do I make sides?” They hired you on the assumption that you actually know how to do the things a PA is supposed to do2

But there’s a third category of questions you shouldn’t ask, which applies to the question at the top of this post. That’s questions with answers that you can figure out for yourself.

If the coordinator sends you on a run to Location Sound, don’t ask her where that is. Just fucking Google it. The UPM wants you to get Nathan from accounting on the line? Don’t ask for his number; look it up in your own crew list.

Hell, sometimes he’ll ask for Nathan, without specifying whether he means Nathan in accounting or Nathan in locations. You should be paying close enough attention to what’s going on that you know which department the UPM needs right at this moment.

I’m not just trying to prevent you from looking dumb (although, yes, that’s part of it); your job is to lighten the burden on those above you. Not just the physical burden of answering the phones, making coffee, doing runs all over town, and stuff like that.

You should be relieving their mental burden. Let them know that when they ask for something, you can take care of it. Think things through, so they don’t have to.

Questions like the one above frustrate me, because it shows the reader is not thinking thoroughly about her problem before coming to me. People also often ask me questions that I’ve answered long ago. I realize this blog has been around awhile, but there is a search function. Most of the time, I respond to these emails by searching my own site and giving them links to old articles, just to prove they could’ve found the answers themselves.

And that’s all I’m telling you to do. Find your own answers. Figure it out. Think about it.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Every time you use it to simply mean “there is an exception to this rule,” Cicero cries.↩
  2. It’s perfectly okay to ask me basic questions. I write an advice blog, after all.↩

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Posted in On the Job

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Where Do I Go?

Posted on April 23, 2013 by | Leave a comment

[Name Redacted]1 asks:

A question I’m always asking myself when I step on a set as a day player is where do I go? It can be confusing with so many people and so many trailers. And no one wants to be late for call time. So where do you go?

First of all, don’t get there at call time. Get there before call time. You might be tempted to go to the catering for some breakfast. Resist that urge. If you walk into the trailer with a cup of coffee in one hand and a breakfast burrito in the other, the 2nd is going to think you only showed up for the free food.2

If you’re a set PA (we don’t get many day players in the office), go straight for the AD trailer, unless you were instructed otherwise ahead of time.3 There, the 2nd AD or the 2nd 2nd will tell you what to do.

If you are an office PA (maybe someone is sick, or it’s your first day, or whatever), again, you should report to your immediate supervisor before anything else. This probably means the APOC, but sometimes it’s the coordinator, depending on how the shifts work out.

Basically, the most important thing to do is tell your boss that you’re there and ready to work. If you’re there early enough, they’ll probably tell you to go and grab some breakfast first. See? It all comes full circle.

Just remember to bring them a burrito, too.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Don’t want to embarrass him/her.↩
  2. Which you totally did, but nevermind that.↩
  3. In which case, why did you send me this email?↩

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Clocking Out

Posted on April 12, 2013 by | 4 Comments

Some readers emailed me about my use of the term “clocking out” in yesterday’s post. No, there is no actual clock to punch on my show, or any show I’ve ever been on.

This is all I know about how punch clocks work.

It would be kind of cool, though.

No, nothing cool like that. We actually fill out time cards here in Hollywood. “That just seems really archaic, filling out a time sheet by hand,” you might say.

To which I would respond, “How dare you suggest that Hollywood does something irrationally inefficient!”

Most departments, especially the ones on set, have one person who fills out every department. In grip and electric, this responsibility goes to the best boys, whose experience (and commensurate pay) means they can be trusted with this important task. In the camera department, the fob it off on the most junior loader or camera PA, because the camera department is full of dicks.

In the production office, you’ll fill out your own time card. As noted previously, you have a twelve hour guarantee, and you don’t often go over that, so your time card is mostly a formality. I know PAs who copy their time cards and just write in the new date every week.

I’ve gotten conflicting instructions from payroll accountants on different shows. Some tell you to write out your exact hours, for legal reasons. (If they let you go home an hour early, and you get in a car accident on your way home, you could claim workman’s comp, since the time card reflects you were on the clock at that time.)

Others have told me to fill out the card as if I worked twelve hours, no matter what. The reason is, we don’t have a union, and the network could suddenly decide to not honor the gentleman’s agreement we all have on the twelve hour thing. Personally, I suggest following the latter instructions, even if your accountant tells you to do the former, just in case.

Another thing to keep in mind in the office is lunch. We don’t really get a lunch break. Yes, we get food. (And we get the food, too.) But we’re still expected to sit at our desk, answering calls and stuff. If a run comes up, or some other task needs handling, we office PAs are expected to let their lunch go cold while we take care of it.

So, no lunch break, but California law still requires that the time card says we got lunch. Usually, you just put down a half hour break six hours after call, even if you got lunch fifteen minutes after you walked in the door.

Luckily, most1 coordinators recognize this, and let you go twelve hours after your call, rather than the twelve and a half you’d get if you had a break.

I knew one PA who resented not getting his half hour, and actually added a half hour to the end of every twelve hour day. Again, as I mentioned yesterday, this is just begging for trouble.

No one ever called him out on it, though. He just got an extra two and a half hours of overtime every week for eating lunch at his desk.

…Maybe he was onto something.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Sadly, not all.↩

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Reporting Overtime

Posted on April 11, 2013 by | 3 Comments

Reader Joe called my attention to this article on Deadspin, about a leaked memo to the crew of the X-Games in Brazil. In it, Severn Sandt, senior TV operations person for the X-Games Remote,1 tells the crew to dress appropriately, don’t make fun of the locals (who he all but calls “lazy”), and remember that the budget is tight. Pretty standard stuff.

What makes this memo news worthy is the following passage:

Hourly folks – don’t push the OT. If it’s 9:10, take the 9:00 out – don’t push for 9:30. Heck, maybe you’d like to actually contribute an hour or two of your OT to the cause and take a 7:00 out. Trust me – no one’s going to the bank on this one. If this idea appeals to anyone, we can start an honorary wall of contributors in the office.

Yeahhhhhh… no.

First of all, no one clocks out at 9:10. You clock out at 9:06 or 9:12. Your time card is always in six minute intervals, so it’s easier for the payroll accountant to do the math.2

Setting aside that minor quibble, I actually think the first part of this is a good policy for you, the PA, to adopt. I get out an hour, or even two hours, early, but as an office PA, I’m still paid my guaranteed twelve hours. So, if I go over twelve hours by a few minutes, I don’t begrudge the production; it all evens out in the end.

(Actually, if I go over twelve, it’s usually because I’ve been fucking around on Facebook and Twitter all day, only to realize, fifteen minutes before I’m supposed to go home, that there’s something I have to get done today or else. At that point, it’s really my fault that I’m going into overtime.)

Also keep in mind, every bit of overtime has to be approved by your supervisor (the coordinator or APOC) and the UPM. If your name keeps popping up in the weekly payroll meetings with the accountants, you’re going to look like a dick over, what, three dollars? Not worth it.

That being said, it is rather gauche of Sandt to tell his crew that they have to do this.

Now, I’ve been talking about going ten or fifteen minutes over your usual twelve hours. If you go a half hour, much less the two hours Sandt mentioned, into over time, for God’s sake, report it. As the Deadpsin columnist pointed out, ESPN is worth $40,000,000,000. They don’t need your charity.

Or maybe this is why they’re worth forty billion.

- – -

CORRECTION: This article is not 100% correct. Please read Monday’s post for more information.

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. Not a title I’ve ever heard before, but non-scripted stuff is weird.↩
  2. Because we use a base-10 number system. This is one of the many problems a base-12 system would solve.↩

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Be A Morning Person

Posted on March 29, 2013 by | 1 Comment

The production office is one of the few departments that works in shifts. Because we’re one of the few departments that can, and because we kinda have to. On days when the production is shooting late, you still need to open the doors at around 8:00am. Business needs to be taken care of during business hours.

But the office needs to stay open as long as the crew is shooting. Rather than make the whole office work 29 hours straight, the PA pool is split into early, middle, and late shifts– one PA comes in an hour before call or 8:00am (whichever is earlier); another comes in at call, but usually no later than lunch; and the third comes in an hour or two after call.

Why would someone come in after call time? Well, doing the wrap report, making sides and callsheets, possibly running more scripts takes time. A normal shooting day is twelve hours, plus an hour for lunch. If the wrap PA came in at call, she’d be in overtime before the day wrapped. Producers don’t want to pay overtime.

And that’s precisely why you want to work on the early shift.

Your odds of getting overtime are neigh on zero, but your odds of getting out during daylight hours are better than everyone else. (Especially the middle shift guy1.) And even as the late shift PA, does overtime really matter all that much to you?

I know, I know, no one likes to get up early. Which is an even better reason to volunteer to be the early PA.

Most shows switch the PAs’ start times on a weekly or bi-weekly basis, so nobody gets stuck in one shift too much. By volunteering to be the early PA, you look like a go-getter to the coordinator (always a plus), and you relieve your fellow PAs of the burden of 6:00am calls. 99% of the time, they’ll be happy to never have the first shift ever again.

This is a bit of advice that you can generalize, too. Anything you can do to make yourself stand out (in a positive way) is something you should do. Coordinators tend to remember PAs who never once complain about an early call, who take care of business before they even show up, who work work with everyone to find the best way the office can be run.

Be that PA. Be a morning person.

Yeah, okay, so the Lazurus story isn't Easter, but close enough.

Happy Easter!

Footnotes    (↩ returns to text)
  1. I don’t know how many people click on my links to old posts, but you really should read this one. It’s pretty important.↩

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