The Truth about being a Production Assistant: A Day in the Life (Part 1)
Film Terminology Used in This Post basecamp = where all movie trailers are located: actors, makeup & hair, wardrobe, assistant director department, etc. call sheet = outline of which scenes will be filmed with what cast; also has a crew list with each crew member’s call time call time = time when you’re due on set transpo = transportation crew; the shuttles that move crew to set are 15 passenger vans sides = miniature script, reflecting the pages that will be shot that day skins = list of names of all background extras and the roles they’re playing A Day in the Life of a Set Production Assistant on a Feature Film 4:20a. Rise and shine in the black of night. Think about who else is awake at this godforsaken hour. Shower, get dressed in layers. 5:00a. Leave home, teeth chattering, in the brisk morning air, thinking It’s too early and too cold to be awake. 5:45a. Arrive at basecamp. 5:46a. Stagger into the AD trailer, bleary-eyed, where the 2nd 2nd AD is already sitting and working feverishly on their laptop. Wonder if you ever really want that job. Grab walkie talkie and fresh bricks; fumble the simple task of putting on the walkie talkie headset/earpiece. 5:50a. Run over to catering, order a delicious, customized breakfast burrito with avocado. Mmm. Get much needed coffee, choose from 10 different kinds of coffee creamers. Think this breakfast alone is worth getting up in the morning. 5:55a. After scarfing down burrito, run back to AD trailer. Grab a few callsheets, sides, and “skins”. 5:56a. Make small talk with transpo driver while riding to set. Enjoy the heat spilling out of the vents and this brief moment of comfort. Get a little too hot just in time to- 6:00a. -clumsily climb out of transpo van into the bitter cold, and drop half the sides in a puddle. Try to wipe off mud from the back of the sides, smearing it more. It’s 6am, call time, the time you’re due at extras’ holding. There’s already a few extras waiting outside the door. Quickly run inside the door at extras’ holding, which is an abandoned building that used to be a strip club. Look at the pole in the middle of the floor and think once again it’s too early for this. 6:15a-7a. The majority of the extras start to arrive. Muster up a cheerful smile to welcome them. Say Hello to a few of the regulars by name. The newbies are giddy with nervous excitement. Explain to them how to fill out their paperwork. Explain the Exhibit A & B sections on the paperwork two dozen times, because that...
London, 2006: The Trip That Started It All
You don’t just wake up one morning and decide you’re going to travel the world on your own; something or somewhere has to ignite the spark. It was the summer of 2006. I had been living in Nashville and attending Belmont University for just over a year, and was finally starting to gain confidence as an independent adult away from the nest. A friend of mine, Marion, decided to study abroad in London for the fall semester. If it was OK, I said, I’d like to come visit. She enthusiastically agreed, and I’m not sure if either one of us believed I would actually follow through. But thanks to incredibly affordable airfare and a little movie called loveactually, I booked a roundtrip ticket from Nashville to London for a quick 5-day jaunt in October that coincided with my university’s fall break. It would be the trip that would start it all. For some reason, my flight to London–even at the bargain bin price of $450– had about 5 people on it. (I’ve yet to go on another transcontinental flight that is anything less than stuffed to the brim!). One of the other four people on the plane was a guy in graduate school sitting in the row behind me. I think he correctly pegged me as the frightened, inexperienced child that I was, and took me under his wing. Frazzled by the magnitude of everything and bleary-eyed by lack of sleep, I had no idea how to get to the Central Station from Gatwick. A veteran of travel, he led me to the ticket machine, helped me buy the ticket, and we took the tube together. The train rolled through the outer rim of London, past countryside and neighborhoods. As I stole my first glances of the United Kingdom, he told me about his travels, and showed me the well-decorated pages of his thick American passport. He pointed at a particularly ornate stamp. “This is my favorite,” he told me, “this is Egypt’s stamp.” I was in awe. He asked me where else I’d traveled, and I found myself embarrassed to admit, “just the US.” Desperate to contribute something worldly to the conversation, I told him of my desire to go to Greece. “Here’s something interesting,” he said, “there are pieces of the Parthenon, the Parthenon Marbles, that at the British Museum that they took from Greece a few centuries ago. So, if you go to both the Acropolis and the British Museum, you will have seen the Parthenon in it’s entirety.” I’m not sure if it’s because I live in Nashville that has its own full-sized Parthenon replica, but that fascinated me. In...
Buying Train Tickets in Ukraine – Is There a Name for That?
“Laryssa” is a very odd name for someone growing up in a small southern town in the mountains of Virginia. I remember being in kindergarten and having my sweet teacher, in her thick southern drawl, asking me to explain my name — which is a complicated question for a little kid. My mom fielded these questions with the blanket statement, “It’s Ukrainian. Her grandfather is from Ukraine.” My last name is even worse, but there’s no cool explanation behind it. It might be German, it might be Italian. Let’s just say it starts with an E and is pronounced like Amy. Adventures at the Train Station Taking a train is the most efficient way to get from Kyiv to Lviv. At only 197 UAH ($25 USD), it’s also cheap. The catch? Surviving the train-ticket-purchasing process. I’d been warned that buying train tickets in Ukraine is… an experience. It’s guaranteed to be a nightmare, regardless of how much you try to prepare yourself. I’d heard story after story of the ticketing agents being rude to foreigners, and that no one speaks English. I tried to be clever and get around the process by buying the ticket online, but of course when it came time to process payment, the website kept crashing (ah Ukraine, at least you’re trying). I mustered up some courage, wrote out what I wanted in Russian with my ideal departure time and the date, and marched to the Central Station in Kyiv. There’s no main ticket counter at the Kyiv train station. There’s about 30 ticket windows, all selling specific tickets, each labeled in Russian — and thanks to last year’s EuroCup, the windows are also labeled in very vague English. After trying to puzzle together the weird English into something that could possibly mean “Local Trains”, I finally gave up and picked a random window. It was the wrong one, naturally. But they did direct me to windows 8 and 9. It would happen that windows 8 and 9 were labeled as “international trains”, which made even less sense to me as Lviv is definitely in Ukraine, but whatever. The woman at window 8 looked to be mid-40s, but had a very stern and distracted look. She didn’t want to be bothered. Even still, I went up to the window, and in my best Russian, squeaked, “Proshu, Kyiv Lviv?” and handed over my little piece of paper with my details. “When? What class?” the lady barked at me in English, stone-faced. Irritated English is better than no English at all! “Tomorrow. Night train. Second class.” She typed in some numbers on her antiquated computer. “Full. No...
Should I Move to Find Work In the Film Industry?
Today’s question comes from a reader who isn’t sure how to get started– and I suspect her location has a lot to do with it! I live in upstate New York (really upstate) about 1 hour north of the capital Albany. I’m looking to see if I can get into this field. How would I go about getting initial jobs, and would the best way to start be a Production Assistant? I wrote a few tips not too long ago about how to get a job as a production assistant. But what do you do when there simply is NO semblance of a film community anywhere near you? (If the biggest production in your town is a local car dealership ad, you fall into this category.) As in this reader’s case, finding a film set an hour north of Albany may be impossible. Ask yourself: If I’m serious about this career, should I move to where the film work is? If you haven’t spent a lot of time in the bizarre world of set life, it can be a huge decision to move to a new city when you’re not even sure if you’ll like the work. First tip: Call the local state film commission, ask if there are any upcoming projects coming to upstate NY. Find out the name of the production company, offer to work for free. This can get your feet wet without taking the plunge, or maybe you can relocate for a few months. Unless the next hit AMC drama begins filming an hour north of Albany, you will need to move — at first at least, to get the experience, build a reputation, and establish a career. Since you’re from New York, NYC seems like the closest and logical choice, but it is one of the most expensive places to live in the country. Where Should I Move For Film Work? Let’s Begin with the Obvious: Los Angeles. While not as many movies are filmed there as in years past, it’s still slammed for scripted and reality television work, on both the production and post production ends. You’ll ascend the ladder faster than in a mid-market town. A major downside: Kiss your family and social life goodbye; work is the only thing that matters in Los Angeles. Also, the taxes are criminal. Atlanta. Nicknamed the “Hollywood of the South”, Atlanta should be a top choice for anyone considering getting into the business. Georgia has provided enormous tax incentives for out of town production companies, and the film community has blown up. Several movies have been filmed in the greater Atlanta area, plus several television...
Dealings with a Second Hand Clothing Pimp in Kiev
My grandfather, for the sweet man that he was, had an extremely thrifty side: he loved to haggle. It was a part of his upbringing in Ukraine. Get something at cost or lower, if at all possible. So, when I was invited to visit one of Kiev’s largest second-hand flea markets to find a jacket, I was overjoyed to give my bartering chops a go and make my grandfather proud. What gems would we unearth in the second hand wonders of Kiev? I envisioned myself strutting around Nashville in a large fur coat and ushanka that I’d score for $5. We stepped off the subway and into second-hand heaven: an endless sea of countless shirts, jeans, jackets, belts, shoes, bathing suits, and even wet suits spilling out. The options were unlimited. We finally picked our store, in search of a jacket that had both personality and practicality to suit Alex’s needs for his upcoming trip to Finland. (It took us longer than it should’ve to talk ourselves out of going through the long rows of 90’s-style leather jackets.) We finally found the winner that possessed functionality and a little bit of color. As Alex put it on, a pretty young girl sporting a fanny pack approached us. I’d seen similar young girls manning the other stores and found it to be strange. They were essentially attractive shepherds, watching over the used merchandise. “Can’t I just hold onto this and look around?” Alex muttered. The girl was now hovering right next to us. It was time to haggle. We asked how much in broken Russian. She whipped out her cell phone, opened the calculator app, and handed the phone to me. She wanted us to give the starting price. “10 hryvnia?” I suggested. My cheapness knows no bounds, even when dealing with a currency that is worth about 1/8th of my own. “I don’t want to insult her,” said Alex sensibly. We settled at 50 griven. I handed the phone back to the girl. The girl laughed and shook her head. “Ni, ni!” She typed in 100. Now this is real bartering, even if done through a sad cell phone calculator, I thought to myself. We were about to counter-offer at 70 when a slick looking man with dark features and well-fitted jeans approached us. He gave us the once-over and muttered some things to the girl in Russian while giving us disapproving glances. The girl answered with submission and skirted away. He was the Boss, I realized; the Clothing Pimp in charge of all these young girls. When you start asking too many questions and disrupt the process and...
Do I Need a Film Degree to Get a Job in the Film Industry?
I occasionally get emails seeking advice about the film industry. I’m by no means an expert — there is SO MUCH to learn in this industry and I’m still (somewhat) of a young’un myself! I will do my best to answer these questions, and if I’m not sure, I will seek for input from my more experienced cohorts and mentors and learn something too. So, for the maiden voyage — here’s the first question: I am a recent college graduate with a bachelors degree in speech therapy. I’ve always wanted to work in this field of work, but when i began the program I chickened out because I thought I would be unable to find a job, thus the reason i changed my major! But now I regret it so much and now I know this is what I want to do! Is it possible to obtain a job as a PA and be able to move up the ladder without a tv/film degree?? Congratulations on your graduation! As a gal with a business degree, I can answer this in a heartbeat: You absolutely do NOT need a film degree to make it in this business. People in tv/film come from all walks of life. Sure, you’ve got the die-hard movie buffs that lived, ate, and breathed film since they were kids — but there are equally as many people that got into the business without the “proper” degree. If you’ve read this blog for awhile, you know I enjoy teasing egotistical film school graduates, but there are advantages to film school. You learn a lot about theory, proper filming techniques; you have access to gear, access to cameras, and you get to stretch your creative muscles. You also get a jumpstart on networking, as there will probably be a few people you meet in film school that will cross your path for the rest of your career. But, I’m a firm believer that being on a real, non-film school set is the best way to learn — and it’s a heck of a lot cheaper. There’s practical aspects of a film set that are missed in film school. A degree in speech therapy is NOT a waste! The timing of this question couldn’t be better. I’m currently working on a project with a therapist-turned-producer and she’s had an extremely successful television career. In the stressful moments when the crew or cast gets a little disgruntled, having an empathetic producer holding the reigns is a godsend. She’s a great motivator AND she gets the job gets done. Speech therapy is a little different, but I’m sure you could put your skills and...
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I'm Laryssa, and when I'm not working in film or television, I'm attempting to travel -- or I'm here, providing resources for working in film or travel. Read more Elsewhere on the internets
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