Day Off

Absenteeism is almost unknown in the film industry; we never know when the next job is coming and we don't get paid sick or personal days so we tend not to take any time off, unless we are at death's door.

In this light, I apologize for not posting anything new in months and assure you all that I will be posting a verrrrrrrrrrrry long story early next week to make up for it. But if it makes you feel any better, it's because I have been working so much!

Plain Speaking

-I'm 10-1.

-I didn't think keys could leave the floor.

-One of the grips can cover for me. Maybe the best boy. He's laying track.

-I thought he was pushing the dolly today.

-He was going to, but we got a daily.

-Make sure he gets a deal memo

-He's in again tomorrow so give him a call sheet at wrap.

-The DP just said 5-minute warning. Better grab a shuttle to honeyland.

-Don't worry. The focus puller is still getting marks.

-Well, he 1st AD just asked the TAD to bring BG from holding.

-Watch your back. There's a C-Stand and a 4 by floppy coming through.

-And here comes stills.

-Look, subs are up now. Everyone will take 5.

-Well, we'd better look busy. I was told that the PM's travelling from post today.

-Who told you?

-I was told.

-Who told you?

-I was told.

-Who told you? God?

-Just a second...going to 2...copy that...Script would like an apple box.

-Why me? I'm never at video village.

-Well then, if you go past sound would you get a set of cans for the operator?

-Ask the trainee.

-Fine I'll get the boom op to do it.

-By the way, where's craft?

-Near the genny. Just follow the seaway.

-Looks like second team is released...and I see the pretties going to set.

-"FINALS--PICTURE'S UP!"

-"Flying in!"

-I still gotta go 10-1...

Glamour and Finals

When I watch the award shows, the temporary stars and occasional celebrities prancing in their designer togs, I understand how people have come to associate filmmaking with never-ending glamour. The reality is strikingly opposite, and those who try to inject their personal ideal of glamour into a busy film set are usually the cause of stress, anxiety and temper tantrums, none of which are at all glamourous.

When an actor arrives at work, they are asked to be "in the chair" some time earlier than they're needed on set...could be an hour before everyone else, could be five depending on the complexity of their need for what is affectionately known as "process". After the lights and camera are set and the crew is ready, the actor, now costumed and coiffured, returns to do their last rehearsal before the camera rolls. And immediately before that happens, the actor gets one last look from the hair, make-up and wardrobe departments, what is called "final touches". Ever wonder why everyone on Desperate Housewives looks perfect (and exactly the same) episode after episode? The secret is Final Touches. Imagine if we all had Final Touches right before we entered work, met that blind date or strutted into Winners?

Final Touches are only supposed to take a minute or two. The Touchers - that is, the hairstylists and make-up artists - have had hours to take the actor from hungover to hunk and the Final Touch is just a quick look to correct windblown hair or smudged lipstick. Still, some of the film world's less confident thespians have demanded up to half an hour of maintenance before stepping in front of the camera, a camera that has already been waiting for them to finish their torrid phone call and come out of their trailer to do the job for which they're over-paid. The less talent, the more upkeep required.

The rain, the snow, the wind and the very very long day all take their toll on the Touchees and, consequentially, the Touchers. I raise a glass to those who have to be on set hours before the rest of us, who have to physically touch the bodies, not to mention the egos, of the insecure starlet or boyish heartthrob on the wane. Because although the vast majority of performers are polite, affable and hard working, it is the one sociopathic cult member, yelling about a misplaced curl, who can ruin the Touchers' day. An actress who destroyed a hairdresser's workstation because she was late, another who refused to take care of her headlice, a former model who insisted on taking an hour to apply her own lipstick - these are the memories the crew takes with them. And it didn't matter how glamourous they looked.

Surrealism

Pounding the pavement for a short-lived job in a temporary and imaginary world becomes an addiction; for so many of us the first one was free. It's living both in the freedom of the circus and at the caprices of advertisers. It's an artifice, unlike any place on earth. The film industry is perhaps the only reason to show up in a vacant lot in the dark and get into a van with a bunch of strangers. And the film set is a surreal space and time, like no other workplace.

This otherworldliness comes from the very core of filmmaking; you are creating something that doesn't exist. Whether it's a horror movie, a comedy, a magical children's show or a gritty realist drama, the very act of filmmaking is to construct and present an environment that is fully invented. This means that under the Gardiner Expressway at 2AM, while I can be transported to an apocalyptic near-future, I need only turn my head to see a truck full of food, a bunch of lights, a rolling rack of robot suits. I am sure it's not the only job wherein the object is to give the world something that's unreal - those working in politics surely work towards the same goal - but at least film technicians are aware of the plasticity of the outcome.

Still, reality encroaches frequently into the magic-ness of our insular world. Bad traffic. Power failures. Illness and incompetence. And of course the moment you step outside the studio into the snow-covered parking lot and realize you are NOT in Tuscany the magic dissolves. If you are on location - that is, not in a film-specific studio but somewhere "authentic" such as a house, office tower or street corner - the real real world can quickly invade the filmmaking vision. You have to stop your car chase to let an ambulance pass. A delivery truck has parked exactly where the director wanted to shoot. The street lights went on. Everyday life continues oblivious of this very important film project.

Then there are the "civilians" who stumble across a film shoot in progress. The obese slacker who tried to sell me his "Flashpoint" script, drivers-by who for some reason feel compelled to honk their horns when passing a film set, the kid who climbed into the director's chair and asked for a coffee. Hilarious. And irritating. But maybe it's not that all these interruptions compromise the artistry of what we do. Maybe we don't like to be reminded that we are, after all, just at work.

The Search

This always happens to me. Yet again, I find myself searching for the thick electric cable known as seaway, I listen for the hum of voices or the squacky chatter of walkie-talkies. I strain to hear someone saying "copy that" or the more mysterious "I'm 10-100". I wander on, hoping that nothing is yet "up" - a rehearsal or blocking or, worst of all, "picture" - any of which would mean I am late. In the case of "picture's up" very late.

Through one or more of its indexical signs, I am trying to locate the film set, caught between good timing and bad. But even before I get a toe on set, I experience something like this:

A long corridor, a hallway of closed doors seem to swim past me as quizzical eyes peer at me. I am obviously not supposed to be there. The Job Interview is in a recently rented temporary office space. There are no signs leading me there, and naturally nobody who works behind the mysterious hallway doors has ever heard of them. "Angry Dishpan Productions? What?" Glaring at you as if it's your fault they don't know how to get rid of you.

The interview itself is as strange an anomaly as I've ever come across in this business. I've been offered a year-long well-paying television series over the phone and then had to present myself to two separate producers of a low-budget feature film. Another time the director and producer started having a technical conversation in the middle of my interview. I have been asked to wait while the producer I needed to impress reamed someone over the phone. Once I endure a two-hour inquisition by a Hack Director for three weeks work on a low-paying B-movie. Which I didn't get. When the producer called to let me know this, I told her I was relieved; I thought there was something wrong with the Hack Director. She said Thank You. Later I remembered the hastily-assembled office she worked in had no walls, only 5 foot high dividers; I am sure her own superiors were listening in.

Like many of my brethren, I move from show to show. There are no Big Studios and few film technicians, the people who physically make the movies and TV shows, have any job security beyond their last paycheque. The very temporariness of the film industry is part of its attractiveness. It is a world of non-commitants and quiet rebels and not for the faint of heart.

Thought

Film of all the arts, most has the capacity to male us feel as if we have actually lived a different life; it presents an experience which masquerades as our own. So dependent are we on vision to form our emotional contexts that even black and white and silent films have this power to impact.

I therefore believe, even with the advent of ever more realistic gaming platforms, so-called 'reality' programming and 3-D everything, that feature films and television dramas have not any chance of dying. Everyone loves a good story.

Introduction

I begin this writing as an exercise. But a fun exercise; what I hope will be an amusing and honest anecdote of fifteen years spent working as an on-set technician, a script supervisor (also called "continuity") in the film industry. I have always worked in Toronto, Canada, a city sometimes referred to as "Hollywood North" but just as often called "Hogtown". Throughout my years working in the film and television business, I have found both to be equally applicable.

This will not be any kind of "tell-all" work. I bear no grudge against any of the directors who have given me filthy looks every time an actor got their lines wrong, blamed me for a boom shadow or asked me to "stop taking so many notes and just do continuity". I have no axe to grind when it comes to the myriad producers who barge onto set with little, if any knowledge of filmmaking process. I am not going to complain about having to reset props, run lines with washed-up stars, re-time scenes that have already been shot, listen to editors scream at me to "get control of my actors", explain to producers that the academy frame lines on the monitor are NOT going to be in the movie or try to figure out exactly when the sound recordist changed tapes. Especially now that I have it all off my chest...