Write? I’m lucky I can stay awake

To say that it’s been a tough few weeks would be an understatement.

I’m in my last week of the dimmer board gig, and my brain still hurts when I come home at night – the three camera shows are a lot busier for board ops than are the single cameras.

The entire formula for a multi camera sitcom is entirely different from regular single cameras.

They only shoot two days a week – one ‘block and shoot’ day and one audience day.

The block and shoot days are usually swing sets and anything that’s got an effect that might go horribly wrong in front of an audience. On the block and shoot days, the crew standing around will laugh at the scripted jokes while the cameras (and sound) are rolling, which I swear I will never, ever manage to get used to.

The audience days are the really stressful days for me. We come in late morning, rehearse, do some more blocking and more lighting, and then they load in the audience and we run the show in sequence – meaning we start with scene A and go until the end. The stuff that was shot on the previous day is played on monitors while the lights in the sets are dimmed down. By me. In real time.

Usually with the video playback people yelling ‘playback’ in one ear and the gaffer yelling ‘playback’ in the other.

Lucky for me everyone has been remarkably patient with me, even when I melted down and threatened to fill a co-workers underpants with that bowl of mayonnaise that had been sitting, un-refrigerated, on the crafty table all day.

The other three days of the week are rigging – a brand new rig every week, with brand new cues and brand new opportunities to let it all get away from me.

At least I can say I really know this board now. Not well enough for theater, mind you, but well enough for what I’m going to need to use it for.

On the home front, the cat is unwell.

Her kidneys are starting to fail, so I’ve been having to give her fluids under the skin.

The vet made this look so very easy, but honestly I really need a third hand to manage it. One hand to hold the cat, one hand to manage the disturbingly large needle and one hand to fend off the claws.

It was only moderately difficult when she wasn’t feeling well, but now that she’s got some spunk back, it’s like trying to hang on to, well, a cat. A squirmy cat. With teeth. And claws. And a grudge.

She’s also decided that she will only eat liverwurst and canned salmon – not the cheap canned salmon, either. The Alaskan wild-caught $5 per can stuff.

And since I know she hasn’t got much time left, I can’t say no.

So I pay it and grumble about it and then I sit and praise her while she eats, as she’s down to 5.5 lbs (2.5 kilos) from 8.5 (3.8 kilos), so every bite counts.

Since a kitty picture is going to make me too sad, here’s a shot of an outdoor Zumba class from CicLAvia:

Filed under: Los Angeles, Non-Work, Photos, studio lots, Work, cameras, cats, CicLAvia, entertainment, fluids, ION, kidneys, kitty, sitcom, television

Friday Photo

One of the city’s many courtroom sets.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Friday Photo

When working up high, it’s very, very important to stay safe and be certain that nothing falls. Even something seemingly harmless like a roll of tape or a pen can cause problems if it plummets 40 feet.
So, everything is either kept in a container (a box, a milk crate, etc…) or tied off to the rails.

Like this:

Normally, one wouldn’t bother to tie off a can of iced tea, but this happened to be in a high traffic area (near the ladder) and clearly someone felt the need to stay safe. And keep their tea out of the cardboard box of water and soda we’d brought up with us.  Anything in the main drink/snack stash is community property and subject to drinking by anyone at any time. But a can, tied off to a railing is clearly private property.

Filed under: Photos, studio lots, Work, can, drink, perms, stage, tea, Work

Offensensitivity

Wherever bored dudes congregate, eventually all sorts of graffiti will appear. Mostly names and dates, but also the occasional drawing of a penis, boobs, or political endorsement.

But a few years ago a female co-worker and I found the granddaddy of all obscene scrawls. Naked women in the dirty magazine pose (on the knees with naughty bits facing the audience) with graphically detailed genitals.

If you’re female in this business you have to be able to ignore quite a bit that would, in any other industry, result in a successful lawsuit, but this was a bit much, even though we both admired the artistic talent and attention to detail.

This was a man who could definitely have found the clitoris.

My co-worker decided she didn’t want to spend the next few months looking at these, and used her own considerable artistic talent to make them not so….female.  And very well endowed.

We’re down for a week on the sitcom (actress is “sick”), so I took a day rigging at the very stage where the naughty drawings had been. Of course, the first thing I did upon going into the perms was have a look.

Someone had blacked out the altered naughty bits and added a bit of choice narrative alongside about “art”.

I’m not sure which one I found better – the fact that someone had taken the time to black out dick drawings, which are on just about every surface in the perms (I usually don’t photograph them, but they’re there, trust me), or the dogged effort to compose a few paragraphs about artistic freedom in the medium of marker and wooden beam.

Kudos to you, anonymous freedom guy.

And yes, I feel safe in assuming it was a guy.

In other non-genital related news, it’s finally cooling off here in Los Angeles. Today felt not at all like the surface of the sun, which was nice.

After our down week, I go back to sitcom world for another week or two and then I’m back to hustling any best boy I can find for work.

I will, however, have gotten my required 400 hours to keep my benefits through the end of 2014, for which I am extremely grateful.

Also, I have no idea what’s going on with those super annoying text link ads that you’re seeing. I’m trying to figure out how to turn them off.

Filed under: studio lots, Work, altered, arts, boobs, drawings, graffiti, naked, perms, stage, women