A Million Things At Once

I lost my card reader, or at least I can't find it, which sucks because that means I don't have a card reader. I lost it the other day and found it, but this time it might stay gone. That sucks.

Still working on the movie, it has it's ups and downs, some in betweens, there's really so much going on it's hard to dissect the little bits and point them out, but I did pay for my keep so to speak today, and possibly saved us filming a good few hours of useless footage due to a wrong costume, then again maybe something else would have happened. I don't know. Anyway, here's a picture.



It's from the set.

The making of..

I'm thinking of a few different version of "the making of" insert title o movie, the one I'm working on at the moment.. and the word working is so broad is almost deserves quotation marks..

ok not true, I do a lot of stuff, and my notes, once I make them legible will be useful, and I do all sorts of stuff around the set, some of them my job or related to my job, and though I do miss some stuff, a lot of stuff in fact, I am doing some kind of work, for many many hours. So yeah, I am working.

Now where was I? Oh yeah, making a movie is.. crazy. I don't know if this one is more vexing and amazing and ridiculous than others but it's just, all those things and more. I wish I could remember one fifth of the details of what happens, but I could do so many versions of the making of.. the musical version is one I have in my head a lot. It would be pretty bad but that would be a movie by me, and I'm not even a first time director.

If I'm rambling I blame my state of mind, which is rambly at the best of times, and lack of sleep and working on something like this, which is vexing and crazy and all sorts of things I've already said in the last 20 seconds doesn't lesson the rambliness. Yes that's a word, I decided it is.

Now I'm going to go do something else.

Til 9 o clock.. 9!

I got to stay in bed until after 9 this morning. Amazing, I know. And it was perfect.. I really needed that.

We have 2 days off now and it's on the actual weekend which is pretty awesome. Of course, I have about 80 different things I have these 21 days to deal with now but I'll worry about them when I worry about them, for now, I'm slouching around just.. just being.

The shoot has been going ok, and by ok I mean millions of mishaps fuckups and broo ha has but things seem to work out somehow, cast changes, location changes, being rushed out by police, problems with catering, that's all happened in the last 2 days, but we managed to shoot some stuff and I think it might be alright.

I don't think I'm much better at this job than I was, every  time I think I'm doing good, taking care of stuff I miss something really obvious and get all annoyed and stuff but I do plenty on set and I think I serve some purpose. Maybe not the one I officially was chosen for, but it's something. I need to stop worrying so much about not being super about a kind of difficult job that I've never done before, I'm certainly not particularly suited for and really.. don't want to do ever again. Next time I wanna be cast dammit!

I still dream of getting a role as a bum in the background, or something similar, before this shoot is up.

Need. Sleep.

It's all early starts and late finishes, pickups from fuck knows where and travels to somewhere else. Many hours on set doing stuff, not doing stuff and something in between sometimes.

It's weird. I had one day off and I was all ambitious and intending to get all my files into orderly typed up spreadsheets or whatever those things are supposed to be in.. oh and I intended to get sleep. Well none of that happened, though I did go for a drink with a friend who had the absolute nerve to have a birthday the next day, making it imperative for me to stay out after midnight, when I'd already been drinking since pretty early to have a drink on his birthday. Honestly, people. No consideration.

So my day off didn't really help me feel rested and fresh the next day. More like, fucking hungover. It wore off after about 8 hours so the next 8.. (ok I exaggerate, it was only about 6) I was no longer sick but really really tired. We finished relatively early, seeing as the last shoot we'd had ended at 2am.. it was about 9 or 10pm. In any case everyone was ready for bed by the time I got home so due to that, having no light in my room and being really really really really tired.. and, what was I going to say? Oh yeah, 7am call for this morning, and a pickup at a completely uselessly fucked up place that's inconvenient to get to. Wasn't pleased. Tried to get something sorted out yesterday but didn't get through to the driver.. well, not until this morning after I was already on the way to the original lift, which I was going to be late for due to a stupid calculation on my part, all ready to call not him but the only person I had a number for.. I get an sms.. yes I can pick you up at (insert much better spot for picking up) just as the tram was about to stop there. So I get off.. have a bit of time to spare now.. and try to go buy a coffee, but I realize I didn't have my wallet.. but they'd already poured the coffee so I got one on the house.. sin't that nice? So.. interesting morning.

The day was full of drama and tensions, egos, pontificating and the usual.. well more than usual, but interestingly enough a lot got done, so, overall good. Oh and we had a meeting. Something about a family and football coaches and locker rooms. I'm wondering if it helped.

Now I'm here again, not getting my homework done, not getting to bed early and not.. I'm sure there's something else I should be doing that I'm not doing.

More on the same.

So I'm working on the set of this film and it's full of everything. Up and downs and in betweens, late nights and later nights the next night. It's been good overall. I'll never be great at this, at least, not on this shoot, but I'm not terrible. I'm probably not super suited to this work, but I don't think I'm particularly wrong for it either, I'm just someone who hasn't done this before who is learning as they go along, with a fair few people in a similar position regarding their work on t he same set, which makes for an interesting, if frequently exasperating experience.

And there are perks, getting your boyfriend to play a small role at the last minute is kind of fun, we get catering which is close to if not the best thing about this whole job and.. well I will learn something, if not necessarily how to do the job I've been assigned terribly well, but I will learn a lot of things, even if that thing is to never in a million years attempt to direct a movie myself. It's kinda hard. It's the sort of thing I'd love to have done, and really really really well and get all the praise and recognition, possibly fame and money for, but to do.. I'd have no hair left after about one day's shoot, I reckon, and I think I should try to keep that as long as I have.

Anyway, I have a day off which is why I'm able to even do this right now.

And I thought it was going so well..

There were about 5 minutes yesterday, when I thought this was all going great. Well..maybe about 4 or 5 hours where I thought it was at least good.. maybe a few more hours where it wasn't really bad and I thought things were going in the right direction.

Yesterday, change of location after 3 days at the same, non problematic actors.. the kids, rather strangely, a lovely day, relatively smooth rolling. I was quite enjoying it on many levels.. oh I scribbled a lot of indecipherable stuff, and missed some things, but then I got.. or thought I got the hang of stuff a little bit, and felt like I was getting better at this.. like, I was doing my job actually.

Then it started getting late. Still setting up. More set up, it was quite late by this point. It kept going on, rehearsals, start of shooting.. kept getting later, people are tired, I'm not really pleased to be there and then on top of that.. well.. something happened that made it all come crashing down on me.. and I feel again that here on my now 5th day, by which time I should have learned something, and gotten the hang of it enough to be useful.. I feel like I'm doing nothing.

So in I go again today, to do the same. Whatever it is.

At this point, I don't know.

What I'm doing, for one thing. That's not entirely true. I know in a very broad sense what my job is, I just haven't been doing it to any standard that isn't pointless, and I know more about the details of what minute to minute work is needed, not entirely but little bits of information keep coming to me, and well to say I am doing that well would be inaccurate. To say I'm doing it poorly, would be correct.

Ok so I pretty much suck at this. So far, I might get better at it, but I'd like that to happen more quickly. I don't think I improved much today over yesterday, but it's still early.

I thnk I like it overall, I mean, it's very early starts, long days, it's been terribly hot, there's a lot of waiting and confusion and noise and people and... stuff, but I think when I look back on this I will think I liked it. Quite possibly I do. At least a little bit.

We're on.

So I'm doing it. What "it" is is still somewhat unclear. That's not true, I know what I'm doing I'm just not exactly polished on it yet. Well I still need to iron out some of the details and well, the job is the details so.. a lot o ironing to be done.

First day's shooting done. Today was, lucky for us a very hot day. And by lucky I mean, kind of fucked. I am sunburnt, and very tired from both the early start, well not early start early pick up but I did wake up early, and being out in the very hot sun.

It was good though. Not necessarily anything I did, not sure how use I was but my objective is to be somewhat of use in this production by some point in time that point being some time before shooting is done. The more and earlier the better, obvs.

And now I think I'll rest. Early start again tomorrow.