Thursday, May 11, 2006

Oscar. Winning. Rap. Group.

Think about that for just a moment.

Oscar.
Winning.
Rap.
Group.

Kinda rattles the brain, doesn't it?

The dreaded video finally materialized, but it ended up being just wrapping it out (my occasional working life these days - just enough money to fuck up my unemployment).

The job was uneventful - they were just shooting the rappers against the cyc so there weren't a whole lot of lights; just a few skypans hung on the pipe grid, and a few lights on stands.

The Oscar Winning Rap Group were polite and fairly well-behaved, as rap groups go - but we got there late in the day, so I have no idea what happened earlier.

Sometimes production decide to 'help' us by giving us a sleep-deprived production assistant. Normally they just kind of wander around in a daze, and we tell them to go pick up C-47s just to get them out of the way.

This particular sleep-deprived PA decided he really had to help us and proceeded to start throwing all the equipment in a big, messy pile in one corner while insisting that the stage guys had told him to 'keep everything tight'.

When one stages equipment, it must be done in an orderly fashion so the guys who come to count it can do the count as quickly as possible. 'Keep it tight' means keep it as close together as possible while still keeping enough order that the guys can work.

That means like goes with like, everything is lined up in an orderly fashion, and cable is laid out so that it can be quickly counted and loaded. Dumping everything into a sloppy pile doesn't help anyone, and it makes the rental house guys who come to count the equipment crazy.

Despite our pleas for him to stop helping, he insisted. My boss eventually had to go to production and get him sent home before he started making extra work for us. We probably did him a favor - I think the poor guy'd been awake for over 24 hours.

We got everything laid out to count, and then went home around 3 am, as the rental house guys wouldn't be coming in until 7 am.

Oh, what the hell. One more time:

Oscar. Winning. Rap. Group.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I thought I saw you there. I'm in another Dept and I think that same PA misplaced some of our straps. a fact we found out two days later when we started getting calls from production wanting to know where they were.

I would have said hello but you looked busy.