Callsheets
Callsheets are weird, aren’t they? They’re legal-size sheets of paper, covered from top to bottom, on both sides, with ten-point font. It’s just packed with information. For most people the crew call on the front, and their department’s call on the back, is all they’ll ever look at. Hair and make-up need to know when […]
Locations and Set PAs
In case you don’t read the comments, I thought it best to reprint Nathan’s comment on my previous post: Location Managers (and ALM’s) never hire the Set P.A.s. Anywhere. (I’m an East Coast Location Manager — trust me on this one.) Locations will hire Locations P.A.s, but their job is different from Set P.A.’s Example: Locations P.A.s don’t do […]
Addressing Multiple People
Chris writes: From what I’ve gathered while reading archives, an office PA job is something you work your way up to, after starting in the trenches as a set PA. Not really. I tease the set PAs, but we’re really in a parallel position. They’re not trying to work their way up into my job, […]
What TV Does Best
Last night, I watched an episode of How I Met Your Mother called, “The Wedding Bride.” If you don’t watch the show, that title is probably meaningless to you. It may be meaningless even if you do watch the show. See, “The Wedding Bride” was a throw-away joke from an episode last year, “As Fast […]
Authorship II
Based on emails and comments, a few people missed the joke at the end Thursday’s post. The three movies my friend listed were all written by the same screenwriter, Charlie Kaufman; each film had a different director. Clearly, the writer leaves a consistent mark. Several people concurred with Do You Come With the Car: Titanic […]
Someone Thinks I Have More Influence Than I Do
I received a strange email the other day: How do you think your readers would respond to the Universal Studios Hollywood short film competition, perhaps they would be interested in participating? Here is a link to the “King Kong’s Path to Universal Studios Hollywood” competition – http://zooppa.com/contests/king-kong I don’t really know how they would respond. The […]
Authorship
I was talking with a friend the other day. Well, actually I was talking at him. Railing, really, against the injustice of auteur theory. A large part of my argument is that normal people don’t really care about what a director does. People care about characters (which is at least 50% the writer’s doing) and […]
All That You Can See
You can have beautifully-lit actors reading great dialogue, but without the art department, you’re remaking Our Town.
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 […]
In Defense of Film School
A Fan commented on yesterday’s post about PA Bootcamp [sic]: I’ve heard this applied to film school in general. You can either pay to learn how to make movies, or get paid to learn how to make movies. It just depends on what you’re more comfortable with. A not uncommon view of film school, but […]
How to Drive in Los Angeles, Part 3: In 2D
Have you ever sat in the left turn lane, waiting for traffic to clear, wondering why sometimes you get a green turn arrow, and sometimes you don’t? Well, get ready to have your mind blown. The secret is to not look up at the light, but rather down at the street. Ever noticed those little […]
Someone Actually Likes PA Bootcamp
Regular readers know I have a spotty history with PA Bootcamp [sic]. It was fun baiting them for a while, but it got to be repetitive and dull. I still get emails asking about the service pretty regularly, and I just refer them to my comments section. Just today, though, I got an incoming link from […]