INT: BAR- EVENING. The misadventures and call sheet mistakes of a Griffin, a 1st AD and Valentina, a 2nd AD. Everything you didn't know about being on a film set and had no idea to ask.
Update on 2nd AD
Turns out he’s a high school student. The Producer claims “He totally misrepresented himself!”
I thought, “When his mom dropped him off, I’m not sure what work experience you were hoping for.”
Trying to talk to people about what I do.
For the love of all that is holy, never lock in a location that you do not obtain full control of. This is rule number one to location scouting. When you have dialog, multiple actors, background, picture vehicles, and other large elements at play, having civilians also stepping through the set and…
Very helpful to understanding shooting in a live business.
Dead. Just dead. Nothing to see. All dead here.
Oh… very sad. Most of my childhood, my fathers childhood, and even my grandfather’s life was watching this man’s work. God bless.
When I tell the grips that it’s a closed set…
The soundtrack to The Great Gatsby, Baz Luhrmann’s latest high-end refurbishing of a lived-in classic, doesn’t try to re-imagine Jazz Age tunes in a modern context. Instead, it attempts to transplant the sensibility of the 1920s to the hip-hop era, with genre-busting collaborations overseen by Jay-Z.
Yeeeees! This is currently fueling my… 6 script breakdowns I’ve got to get done.
Film Production, boiled down to dogs.
Yesterday I posed a simple question to those who like The Black and Blue’s Facebook page: “When on a film set, what’s the one rule nobody should ever break?” Within the hour, dozens of responses poured in. The answers ranged from the profound to the practical to the peculiar. Many recommended turning cell phones off&
Number 8 and number 10 are two of my favorites.
Why you should never ask me what I think.
It’s always the 2nd question of every producer/ director, after the first being : Do you want to read this script?
What do you think of the script?
Don’t ask me. Don’t ask me about the script. It’s not my job to comment on the quality of the writing or what I think of the topic. Because then I will have to tell you. I’m not the sugar coating type. I’m a film maker myself. Best case scenario, I’ll just turn down the project, and I’ve done that before. Sometimes you know in your heart there’s just jobs that you can do nothing for. Worst case scenario, I’ll tell you what I think.
Writing is hard, I get that, and it’s why I don’t harp so much on structure, despite the lack of which makes my job 5 times harder. I just tack extra days of prep on top. But sometimes the subject matter, the plot just make me think that what you can never do is write in a vacuum. Peer review is important and you should never forgo having someone who’s job doesn’t hang in the balance, review your work and give a professional opinion on what you’re creating.
It’s my job to tell you 1: Can we do it. 2: Can we do it for the budget we have? 3: Can we do it safely?
Right now I’m faced with a few good scripts that are beyond the productions means to get them done. So now I’m put in the unfortunate role of getting the crew through it safely. What a director needs to know is when an AD is in that situation, you run the risk of not getting the shots you were looking for, because you’ve made too many sacrifices to get to this point. The only thing left to give up is your vision, because you’ve made an entire crew of people give up their normal rate, heat, sleep, and gas before we’ve even rolled on anything.
List to your ADs gang. They can save you a world of hurt.
-Griffin
