The Anonymous Production Assistant’s Blog

Unlike most people, I didn’t go to Dark Knight this weekend. I’ve already seen it on a regular screen, and all the Imax screenings were sold out.

Instead, I went to Venice beach. (In my excitement to be outside and away from the office, I called up a friend who lives in Hawaii, which is akin to him calling me from Interstate H-1 to tell me how cool it was he was driving at 65mph.)

I love all the crazy, hand-made things the street vendors sell on the Venice boardwalk. I saw this set of salt and pepper shakers that looked like two people hugging. It was really cute, until I noticed that the salt and pepper poured from their eyes, making them the creepiest salt and pepper shakers ever.

I also saw some hand painted, ceramic skulls. It took me a minute to realize that they were bongs. I wondered what other home decorations I’d seen were actually bongs. Your name on a grain of rice? A bong. The painting of your name made out of rainbows and dolphins? A bong. The hugging salt and pepper shakers? Bongs, with the smoke coming out of the eyes.

Another thing I love about Venice is the canals. I didn’t even know they existed, until a couple of years ago. When my wife and I stumbled upon them, she said, “Oh, I wondered where the canals were.” Shows how much I know about Italy.

I don’t know if they named the city “Venice,” then decided to dig the canals, or if they found the canals naturally and thought “Venice” fit.

I prefer to believe the city founder one day just declared, “I hereby name this city, “Venice!” And… Hey, you, what are you doing over there?”

Then a confused guy with a shovel looks around, and says, “Just digging some canals. Why?”

(Please don’t tell me the actual story. Mine’s better. Admit it.)

The best part of Venice, though, is the people watching. There were roller skaters dancing, hippies playing bad Bob Dylan and/or Marley covers, skate boarders Ollying, a homeless man declaring George Bush is controlled by aliens, people practicing Capoeira, another homeless guy declaring the first one is controlled by aliens, sunbathers sunbathing, surfers surfing, muscle builders building muscle, and generally a throng of people hustling and bustling up and down the beach.

Los Angeles doesn’t have a Commons, or a Central Park, or what have you. We have the beach. Whether they live on the West Side, or in the Valley, or in East L.A., rich or poor, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, or other, in the Industry or just a civilian, a P.A. or a studio executive, everyone goes to the beach. If you want to see, to experience, to be a part of a cross section of this great metropolis, just go to the beach.

I promise you’ll have a great time.

I’ve just been looking at my incoming links (I like to see what people are searching for when they find my site), and two questions sprang to mind.

Who’s been searching for “0000001000000110000001000000110000001000000100000010000001,” and, upon doing so, why did they decide The Anonymous Production Assistant Blog must be the site they’re looking for?

By the way, welcome everybody who followed the link from Nikki Finke’s comments section. I hope the racist talk from today’s earlier post didn’t put you off.

Well, I didn’t get to send anyone to the electric chair.  (Or whatever it is they do nowadays.  Hang ‘em?  Shoot ‘em?  Are we still stoning people?)  It’s been a long, boring day, so I’ll keep this post short.

I was going through some old e-mails, and I uncovered a dream I had totally forgotten about.

I dreamt I was writing for a TV show, and all the writers were sitting around, pitching episode ideas.  As I slowly awoke, I thought about a brilliant story one of the other writers had pitched.

In my sleep addled state, I was disappointed, because it was someone else’s idea, and I couldn’t use it. A moment later, I realized, “No, wait, I can use that…

“Who will know I stole it?”

My posting schedule will be a erratic for a little while, as I will be spending my days sitting in judgment of my fellow man.  In a totally socially-endorsed way, too!

If you’re in the courthouse tomorrow, I’ll be the angriest of the twelve angry men.

I’m just not sure which argument I should make in the jury room– A) Why would the police go through the trouble of arresting the guy if he’s innocent? Or B) I’ve seen enough procedural shows to know that all criminals leave indisputable forensic evidence at the scene of the crime; if it’s anything less than 100%, he must be not guilty.

I usually post from work, partially because I have nothing to do, but mostly because at home, I bootleg the interweb from my neighbor’s tube, and the connection’s a little bit spotty.  If there’s nothing new here tomorrow, why not try a friendly game of Risk, instead?

I know lots of people who can’t stand HD. I worked for an AC who would say, “I don’t care what the resolution is, it’s still video.”  Really, do you know anybody outside the business who can even tell the difference between HD and film, much less cares?

More pertinently, I had professors proclaim there is a discipline to working with film. You can’t just roll and roll and roll. Film costs too much.  Tapes (and now, memory cards) are cheap.  I’ve worked for some directors who never call, “Cut!” They’ll just say, “Do it again,” without giving anyone a break. It’s exhausting, for the actors, for the camera operators, for everyone.  I’ve heard of boom operators fainting under those conditions.

There’s bound to be irresponsible people misusing technology, but I figured this “film discipline” thing was just blather from Luddites fearing new-fangled gadgets.

Then, a few weeks ago, I caught myself doing it.

In school, I was given 1200 feet of film to shoot a short movie. The final product barely fit on a 400 foot reel. That’s a 3:1 shooting ratio. Not bad.

A few weeks ago, a shot three spec commercials on HD. At the end of the shoot, I asked my editor how much footage we had. He told me it was 80 minutes.

For a total screen time of 90 seconds.

For those of you too lazy to do the math, the shooting ratio was 53:1. That’s, um, pretty bad. Maybe my professor was right.

These are the kinds of lessons I want to remember when I become a real director. So many people forget what it was like when they were just starting out. This website is about not letting myself forget.

Or, if you’ve already forgotten, maybe it will remind you.

Hey, Alex Epstein gave me a link! That’s some quality endorsement.  Besides being full of amazing advice, Alex has a tendency to link to other great writers, as well.

While on the subject of links, Amanda the Aspiring writer posted a link to a TV writer’s group.  It sounds like fun, and I definitely plan on signing up, just as soon as I get past Yahoo’s captchas. Seriously, am I an inactive Cylon?  Humans aren’t supposed to fail the Turing test.

Don’t worry, I’ll put up a real post later today.

John August has another one of his Scene Challenges up.

The goal is to write a scene where one character explains to another what investment derivatives are.  It was a difficult writing problem, since I have no idea what investment derivatives are.

I’m #48.

First, a quick update on the tree-killing. Yesterday, we ran 115 copies of the script. By the end of the day, we used 9,869 pages. Or, 1.18 trees.

If it was a cherry tree, I’d feel like George Washington.

Moving on.

I was perusing the LA Metblog, and came across this article, which in turn linked to a poll from Travel & Leisure. Go ahead and take a look at those rankings.

I can accept a lot of them. Our public transit sucks. The cost of living is high. Our skyline is a joke (though with some extenuating circumstances).

Some of the other categories are a mystery. We’re the largest enclave of celebrities, yet we’re number nine in people-watching? We’re number six in attractiveness? I’m sorry, but every pretty girl in Charleston has already moved to LA to become an actress. And we’re the least friendly city?

Bullshit.

No one is less friendly than New Yorkers. No one. I’m not just playing to the stereotype, either.

A couple years ago, I called a luxury restaurant to make reservations for my boss. The concierge simply said, “No,” in this angry tone that implied she couldn’t believe I had the nerve to call for reservations. At a restaurant.

She went on, after a pause long enough to make me wonder if she was going to explain why I couldn’t make reservations: “FIRST of all, we don’t take reservations, and even if we did, we aren’t OPEN on Sunday mornings.” She left the “DUuuuUUH” understood. (Sorry for all the formatting, but it’s hard to express typographically the many degrees of disgust and condescension in her voice.)

I got lost in New York, once, when I was a teenager. I saw a cop standing on the corner, so I asked if he could tell me how to get toDO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING TOUR GUIDE TO YOU?

Somewhere in between those two, some friends and I visited New York. We arrived in Brooklyn around three in the morning. The streets were empty, with about six lanes in either direction. We were going slow, looking for the address, when this guy comes out of nowhere, drives up our butts, and honks. At 3:00am. In a residential neighborhood.

My friend says, “He can’t be honking at me. He must be honking at his own stupid driving.”

We stayed at a friend-of-a-friend’s place. He offered to be our “tour guide,” though he didn’t get up until noon. He showed us the Statue of Liberty… from the Staten Island Ferry.

At one point, while we were in the subway, I idly asked this six-year New Yorker how often they make new subway tunnels. (You know, since the redline has been under construction here for, like, decades.) Very indignantly, he said, “What?! They don’t make new tunnels!”

I stared at him a moment, then asked, “Are you saying they just found them like this?”

New Yorkers move out here and they bitch and moan about how you can’t get good pizza or good bagels, or the water doesn’t taste good outside of New York, and on and on.

If you hate it so much, why don’t you move back to New York? Because we have hot chicks and the beach and movies stars and sunshine nine months out of the year.

More importantly, we have fewer goddamn New Yorkers.