One of the first jobs that I happened to land in film and television was
when I was still wet behind the ears and only in my second year of film school.
What I had learned, up until then, was clearly not enough for what I had in
store for me those first couple of weeks on set and I definitely learned
everything the hard way, eventually. The job, incidentally, came my way when a
co-worker at my part-time job was double booked as a production assistant for
two different prime time television shows. Woe to her. It just so
happened, that while I was mopping up the floors behind her that night she
got the call for the second booking and spotted me like a hunter in the
woods. In a bind, she asked if I would be interested in taking her place,
afraid she would loose the contact if she denied it flat out. My face said it
all, and she gave the offer to the production coordinator on the phone. He
accepted my enlistment, desperate for the last minute recruit, and I nearly
tossed my mop to the side, wiped my sweaty brow and high-tailed it out of that
store to buy my mansion in the Hollywood hills. Little did I know then the ways
of show business.
In the film world, there is a certain lingo that production people go by when
referencing a shot or its style, where a person is located on set and even what
a certain trailer holds when you work away from a studio lot. The list goes on
but these are all very simple things to remember, however, they first must be
taught, and those were things that I had yet to learn. Therefore, a film set
was a complete jungle for me on that first job. There was one particular
day, early in the season of the show, when I had to work on my first overnight
shoot, which was set up for a night scene. It was around midnight when we were
about to start filming and the production coordinator came over to me and
explained what he needed me to do, "So Marcy, on the day, when you hear me
cue you on the head set, let John know that he has to start walking into the
shot from frame right. Okay?"
"Sure, you
got it." I said with a reassuring smile.
But, as I started
to walk away, I became very confused by something I was sure he had said,
"on the day." What the heck? It was the middle of the night! What
did he mean by, "on the day?" Were we supposed to wait until the sun
rose before we started filming? I thought this was a night shot? Apparently,
what I didn't know then was that "on the day" means: when the camera
starts rolling. So what he actually wanted me to do, was when the camera
started rolling and I was given the cue from him on the headset, I was
supposed to let John know to walk into the shot. Simple right? Not then. I was
completely lost on this gibberish film talk and I stood at the corner next to
John looking up at the sky wondering how long it was going to take before the
sun started to rise. When the director called "action!" and cameras
started rolling, I got the cue for John on the headset but instead of relaying
the cue to him I just stood there looking up at the sky like an idiot. Next
thing I know, I hear "cut!" A minute later the coordinator comes
running up to me asking if the battery on my walkie died because I didn't seem
to hear a thing he told me.
"No, it's
working, but you said "on the day" and it's still dark
out."
I never heard the
end of it for the rest of the season.
About a week ago, I got a call to work on a reality-based talent show out in
Rhode Island for this coming week. With little time to prepare after a shift in
New York, I rushed home to pack a week's worth of clothes, grabbed my
disapproving cat, then jet-propelled it through the night for a 9 am call time
the next day. Somehow, I still managed to get seven hours of sleep, whoop! It's a good thing too, because if
I got anything less, I know that twelve hours later I'd have wished I never met
that girl, so many years ago, and took her up on that offer to fill in for her.
Because this was day one of our
weeklong production, it was mostly a whole lot of hurry up and wait today. The
thing about many union productions is that they usually don't want any
non-union crewmembers doing anything the union could be accountable for. So,
lucky for me, and about eleven more of us, we got to watch all the union
members unload thirteen trucks of stage equipment in the pouring rain, while we
drank our coffees by the loading dock feeling sorry for these poor chaps, but
secretly smiling that it wasn't us this time. However, we spent four hours
later being human paper shredders when their shredding machines broke down and
they needed some sensitive material to make like they never existed. Karma's a
bitch. Can't wait to find out what they have in store for us for the rest of
the week. Whoever said that show business was glamorous, should have been shot.
If I had known the truth about it when I was seven years-old, I could have
saved myself the cost of a college tuition that I'll be paying for until I'm in
my fifties. And forget the mansion in the Hollywood hills, they don't call us
starving artists for nothing. Let's just hope I can be the exception some day.
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