Wednesday, June 29, 2005

Welcome to Low Budget Land!

I went out to another low budget movie this morning. As low budgets go, I lucked out - two of us had to reinstall some lighting fixtures in a school where they shot yesterday. We were done in two hours, and got paid for 12.

This movie's contract is even worse than yesterday's.. it's $15 per hour under union scale.

This sucks ass, but work is work, and it pays into my health insurance (I have to work 600 hours per year to keep my health benefits).

The other fun part of the day is that my co-worker was a very interesting fellow. When he was younger, he was a lawyer (somewhere in the midwest), and decided that the justice system was too corrupt and quit.

Now he's a juicer, and a scuba diving instructor. There's something amazing to me about someone who walks away from a life, and starts another midlife.. like it was buying a car or something. That takes guts, and it's not something I'm sure I could do.

Later in the day, the best boy on this show ("Danika") called me up and offered me a slot on the show. I took it.

Why would I take a job at an incredibly shitty rate?

Contacts.

The guys on this little show normally work on stuff that's well over $100 million (they're doing it as a favor to the DP), so I'm hoping if I get in good with them, they'll call me when they've got a good budget.

Of course there's the off chance that I'll get relegated to the list of people they only call when they have a chump budget, but we'll see.

I've got an 11 am call tomorrow. In the Valley. Yuck.

No comments: