Making the Jump
Andrew writes in: I’ve recently (a month ago) started reading your blog and I’ve got to say it is awesome! It’s such a great resource for information that would otherwise be hidden by the exclusivity of film sets. I also love how personal your stories are! If you’re ever in Georgia, I’d love to buy […]
How To Randomize A Crowd
Most of the time, you’re not going to deal with more than a handful of extras in any one scene. That’s because extras are people, too, and people cost a lot of money. Still, every once in a while, you’ll get a crowd scene. The problem with a crowd of extras is that, at a […]
Managing Background Actors
If you follow me on Twitter, you might have heard some of my frustrations with background actors on a small shoot I was helping out on. First of all, bear in mind that I definitely did not say any of these things on set. That would be even less professional than the extras{{1}} I was […]
How to Run a Production Meeting
Dax asks: I’ve experienced several different production meetings. Two seem to be the most common. The first AD reads through the script in scene order and then through the one liner in schedule order. if this is correct? If so, should the AD just read the slug lines for each scene and then summarize the […]
How Many Languages Do YOU Speak?
I had a coordinator once who was Vietnamese. She’s been in America for a couple of decades, so she didn’t have much of an accent, but she still occasionally got colloquialisms wrong. For instance, she would say, “Do you grab my drift?”{{1}} I understood what she was saying, obviously, but it still bumps you for […]
2nd AD Anthony Robinson
Today’s guest is a 2nd AD who got into the DGA the hard way– by earning his days as a set PA. It is not easy. Anthony Robinson tells us about everything from buying lunch to directing background actors, all while maintaining a positive attitude. Here’s a little secret that even Anthony doesn’t know– I’ve […]
Asking Too Many Questions
Tara writes in: I just graduated from college and got my first job as a Production Assistant for a talk show. I’ve done some freelance PAing and the biggest problem I seem to have is that I can’t find the balance between making sure I get everything right and asking too many questions. I understand […]
Awkward Conversation
An anonymous reader writes in: Recently, the 2nd AD kinda said something inappropriate and made me feel uncomfortable. I kinda just told him I wasn’t comfortable with what he said, and we moved on. So I thought. After that incident, I haven’t really heard anything from him as far as work was concerned. When I […]
Gun Safety
This is a story from a few years ago, back when I was a set PA on shitty indie movies. And by “indie,” I really mean “Skinemax.”{{1}} The movie was described as an “erotic action thriller.” It was about a team of women who were spies by night, and strippers by… other nights? I’m not […]
Production Listings
Nash writes in: I have been considering paying for a subscription to the Production Alert service. I just wanted to know if you thought it was worth it for someone looking to get more PA work? I’ve never found a job through listing services like Production Alert or Production Weekly. The Hollywood Reporter apparently realized […]
There’s Lazy, And Then There’s This
It’s been a while since I complained about ADs, so how’s about I do that right now? We had a [glossary]tech scout[/glossary] on yesterday. When the party bus{{1}} returned, the 1st AD called the office and asked for a PA to come down and gather the stuff that people had left behind. Now, our production […]
Sympathy for the Departments
Every morning, the office receives a [glossary]production report[/glossary] in [glossary]the football[/glossary]. And every morning, the production report is wrong. A PR, for those who don’t know, is a bizarro call sheet. Instead of telling you what you’re going to do tomorrow, it tells you what you actually did yesterday. It lists the scenes that were shot, in […]