Thursday, October 26, 2006

Geez, Thank for Your Support....

There's nothing quite like working your tail off on set for 2+ weeks, then finally turning on the laptop only to have a newbie blogger flame you.

I was thinking about putting the Angry Anthropologist on a short-term hiatus when work got busy, but orignally thought against it.

I think it's time to reconsider.

One of the nice things about being a regular on a full-run, or near full-run television series is the constant work and the peculiarity of seeing the same people on set day after day.

That was last week, when we shot a full episode in five days - five days with plenty of OT that kind of burned me out on writing at night. Obviously, this hindered my writing since the vainglorious day of professional background actor last week went something like this:

2 hrs morning LA traffic commute to 20th Century Fox studio
12.5 hrs ave. workday
1 hr lunch
1 hr evening LA traffic commute home
=========================
16.5 hrs total

That leaves a whopping 7.5 hours in the day to wash clothes for matching shot the next day, eat something, and actually try to sleep, and in the battle between blogging and sleep/food, the latter wins out.

On top of that, on Saturday I got to sleep at 12:30 AM, only to get up early, and promising myself a hike trekked up Mnt. Pacifico on the backrange of the San Gabriel Mountains (only 12 miles), rushed down to a wine tasting with friends from high school, then watched the World Series on the couch with one eye proped open to ward of sleep, which I did for much of Sunday.

On Monday? Back to the lot for the start of the next episode. And so it goes. Even as I write this I'm off to a location shot downtown, and expect to be back on the regular gig tomorrow.

Last Friday was also noteworthy in that we worked with a chimp, who I suspect was paid more than the SAG background. For those of us in that scene, we had to negotiate these two conflicting cultural frames:

Trainer: "Don't look the chimp in the eyes - it's a threat."

1st AD: "Be sure to react off the chimp - make sure your eyeline is on the chimp at all times."

Great.

Next time, a story about meeting a fellow backgrounder who I photo-doubled for.

1 comment:

Formosus said...

OK, so I'm not really an angry lout, and I do appreciate there are readers out there. It's just that some weeks the work pours in and it's a choice between sleep and writing: and as I mentioned, sleeping usually wins.

Lack of sleep also makes one (i.e., me) cranky. Probably the reason I'm not the Kumbaya Anthropologist.

I will try to update the AA more readily and give some pointers out to the good non-union BG readers like JCW. Remember, everyone begins as non-union!