"Danika" Day 8

It was hot today - by noon we all had that 'not so fresh' feeling; sticky, grubby, sweaty.

When they initially called me to work on the show, the best boy said "The pay's not that great, but we have a really small lighting package, so we can't get too crazy".

There are advantages and disadvantages to having a small lighting package. The advantage is that you don't have to run a lot of cable, and you can't get crazy and start 'flamethrowing', but the disadvantage is that you don't have that many lights. Every time we 'turned around' (had a shot looking in the opposite direction from the previous one), we had to march the big heads from one side of the house to the other. Since all the scenes today were day scenes, as it got later in the evening we had to aim more lights into the windows as we slowly lost the light.

We had an extra guy yesterday, but we really, really needed him today.

Doing way too much work when you're shorthanded is known as 'getting peeled'.

The Gaffer came outside at one point, surveyed the lighting set up and the exhausted, sweat-soaked crew and said "I'm really sorry, guys. I had no idea this was going to get this big". I still think he's a great guy, and I'm still happy that he's not a screamer.

Cupcake's replacement is a a guy who's nice enough, but who's nickname is 'panic attack' (courtesy of the guys on the Paramount lot). He gets overwhelmed in the middle of a set up and starts to get wound up and freaked out. This is a bad thing. One of the things you never, ever want to do is make production think that you're not in control. It makes you look like you don't know what you're doing.

Production are freaking out about the damage to the house (it's not that bad, actually. I think they thought they weren't going to have to make any repairs. As it is now, all they'll have to do is shampoo the carpets, repaint and fix a couple of scratches on the wood floor).

We had to have a meeting about it first thing in the morning. Since set lighting didn't cause any of the damage (we've been really careful), after the meeting the Gaffer jokingly said "So, guys - there was a lot of damage to the house yesterday. Keep up the good work, everyone!"