Bright lights and late nights
Posted by Office-Bob on 07 Jun 2015 at 07:27 pm | Tagged as: The Church of Pyro, FX
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it’s a safe bet that anyone who talks about “the glamour of the movie industry” has never actually worked in it.
I recently worked two nights on an upcoming TV show which, because of an NDA that I had to sign, I won’t go into detail about because I’m not sure if my own personal blog falls within their definition of “social media.” Here’s how each day went:
DAY 1 - call time 3:00 pm, wrap at 4:48 am the next morning.
DAY 2 - call time 3:30 pm, wrap at 6:00 am the next morning.
Considering that the money one makes on a union production is pretty damned good, especially when you factor in regular rate, overtime, double OT and meal penalties*, all things considered I’d still rather work on fireworks displays or do live theatre. Why, you ask? Well, because:
There’s something to be said for getting for getting your “mother*%&*ing movie cheque” (as Jay and Silent Bob put it) and seeing how much you’ve netted after deductions, because it’s a hell of a lot more money than you’ll get shooting fireworks…and for roughly the same number of hours (don’t think that just because you go home after watching a fireworks display the fun is over; we’re still there for a few hours afterward cleaning up and tearing down and loading the truck back up). Still, if you take money out of the equation I’d rather be shooting fireworks because it’s not repetitive - every show is different even though the principles of setting up a display are the same - plus as soon as the show is over I get to hear the cheers of the crowd and know that I’ve done my part to entertain them, instead of having to wait until a particular scene appears on TV or in a theatre.
There’s also the fact that being on a barge when fireworks are going off is pretty damned cool.
*A “meal penalty” is incurred by the production when they don’t break for meals at the proper time; this will usually happen because the director wants to finish getting the shot before stopping. When this happens, you’re paid a extra amount based on how long the delay is.
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