Example 1 - At Work- I worked on that movie 'The Babysitters' that I mentioned in the last blog entry, but only as an additional PA (which means I only worked about 3 days a week when they needed the extra manpower). One of the reasons was that my work on the 'Survivor Finale' wasn't finished before the beginning of the movie, but the main reason was that I recognized the kind of grueling schedule I would be on if I took it. You see, this was yet another movie with a suburban setting filming in New York. While I appreciate the fact that they're shooting more films in New York, which means more work all around for everyone, what the suburban movie filming in New York City means is that every day the equipment and people have to come from the city to either upstate New York, Jersey, Long Island, Staten Island, etc. So that means add a couple of hours to the 12 hour minimum work day for traveling to and from set. So now your working a 14-hour day minimum. But then you have to add on another hour or two if your a PA, because, odds are, you're driving people and/or equipment and you have to drop your vehicle at a parking lot and take the train home, making your day a MINIMUM of 16-hours, which means the most sleep you can get is eight hours, and that's if you go straight to bed when you get home. The nail in the coffin, though, is that this is an independent movie. Translation- they are going to go over twelve hours every day.
Therefore, even if you were to go right to bed when you got home, you would average about 3-5 hours of sleep every night. Doing that for one or two nights is no big deal, but after a week or two, that shit starts getting dangerous. PA's start dozing off at traffic lights or weaving back and forth with a van full of crew. Of course, that's the only time some producers start getting concerned. When the union crew members start to be in danger. I'm pretty sure that if a PA died in a fiery crash, their first question would be, "But is the equipment alright?"
Supposedly there are labor laws to protect me from abuse, but somehow I end up perjuring myself to my own detriment weekly as I sign one timecard with my actual hours, and then another one with fake hours so that I can be paid the flat rate we all have to agree to without the government finding out about the often illegal, migrant-worker-type wages we're being paid. A few weeks back I realized how bad it was when I saw some special on TV on the history of unions and sweat shop labor in New York City, and I thought to myself, "They didn't have it so bad. Only 12-hour days? At least they got to sleep sometimes." I heard recently that some director made a documentary on the the TV/Film Industry called "Who Needs Sleep?" that exposes just how bad it is and how many people have died because of it.
And don't even get me started on unions. In principle, a union seems a good idea; people banding together so that no one gets taken advantage of. Protecting the little guy. But that's not what the unions do. They're actually more of an elite country club where you have to pay, literally, thousands of dollars just to take a test that even if you pass, you aren't assured of getting in. It all has to do with whether you have a friend, or a brother, or cousin, or someone that will stand up for you in the meeting so that everyone will vote you in. It's really just another broken and failing system that's been set up. I just finished working on the second unit of a film shoot (I'll talk a little bit more about it after I finish my rant) that got shut down on it's last day of filming because of the union. The shoot was supposedly non-union, but when the union reps found out we had some union guys on, they forced them to walk out, as well as recruiting some other crew members so that they would walk out as well, which totally shut down the picture. It was ridiculous. You know the system's messed up when even the union guys can't pick what they can or can't work on for themselves. I've known union guys who get them to change their name on the call sheet so they don't get in trouble with the guild or the union for working when they need to.
Example 2 - At Home - So here's the bullshit that's happening on the home front: we're being illegally pushed out of our building in Hell's Kitchen. It all started in February when our lease was up. When we asked our landlord for a new lease, he told us he needed to figure out what we were going to be paying. We thought that was a little weird, but a couple of weeks later he told us he was raising it from $1300 to $1400 a month. We told him that that really sucked, but we'd find a way to make it work. Well, after paying two months rent at $1400 and still waiting on a new lease to sign, he suddenly tells us that he's sold the building and we'll have to pay $1600! Well, there's no way we could pull that off, so we just decided we'd have to move. At the time he told us we could have May for free if we moved out, but then a few weeks later he tried to make us sign a new lease for $1500 a month. After talking to a few people about our situation, we found out that not only is our apartment rent stabilized (in fact all NYC apartments under $2000 are), which means he could only raise the rent a small percentage, but that the lease we had signed originally was total crap because it said it was for a non-rent controlled apartment. By now, though, we're already in the mindset to move and don't want to deal with all the legal BS, plus our little crappy apartment isn't worth fighting for. Yet again the legal system has failed us... So, we're moving out to Queens to a bigger place for less money, but with more travel time in our work days. And you know what that means... now I'll only get 2 hours of sleep a night!
Last year, when we were looking for a new place it was just as bad. We even applied for low-income housing that was actually reasonably priced and a better apartment than any of the ones we've lived in here. The only problem was that we made about $100 too much for the year to live there. Once again, falling through the cracks...
So that's the end of my rant for now. On a good note, I have been working fairly regularly. I finished the 'Survivor Finale', and then I worked on 'The Babysitters', which was a weird movie that is basically about a high school prostitution ring and stars John Leguizamo and Cynthia Nixon ('Sex and the City'). I got to actually meet Cynthia just a few days before she won her Tony. Oh yeah, and Helen worked on the Tonys this year. She was in charge of the area where Oprah Winfrey, Harry Connick, Jr., and Julie Andrews had their dressing rooms. The movie I just finished working on was second unit on a 'Untitled Reggaeton Project' that starred that kid Omarion(sp?) who was in that boy band B2K and now has a solo album out. Pras from the Fugees was in it too. We only shot for five days (I guess four, actually), but it was crazy shooting in Harlem. Every night we had these huge crowds of screaming girls that were impossible to control. Next up, I'm starting Monday with Art department on some Nickelodian show for a few months that pays pretty well.
As for the show, Episode 5 is almost done. I've finished all the animation, graphics, and editing, but there's this one little skit on the subwy that needs to be reshot. We'll probably get that done this weekend. After that, it's finished! And it's actually going to be pretty funny. I was worried for a little while when I first stared editing that it was going to be complete crap, but it turned out to be pretty damn funny. At least I think so. Or maybe I'm just delirious because I only got 2 or 3 hours of sleep so that I could finish editing it...
So the fun never stops here in NYC! This weekend the show should be finished, next week I start a new job, and next weekend we move to Queens, with many days of packing and unpacking all around. I'll try to write in this thing more frequently so these posts will be shorter, but I can't promise anything.
Until next time,
-Clarke
