Today I did G+E on a more serious job, a music video shooting in and around a five-story, no elevator building in the Bronx. I'll keep this brief, but here's my lessons for today:
Firstly, and most obviously, G+E is a very physical job. It may have something to do with the fact that I am just starting out, it may have something to do with the fact that in ten minutes, I will literally be asleep, and it definitely had something to do with the five flights of stairs I had to haul all that equipment up and back down, but the fact that this job is so physical seems to blot out everything else about it.
So the sheer exhaustion my body is experiencing right now is the big surprise of this particular job. Tomorrow is going to be even more of a surprise as the sourness really takes hold.
I also find myself worrying about making sure my body will work in another 30 years, and that reason enough for me to admit I don't want to be a G+E all my life.
Other things I knew before or should have:
G+E is a very insular group. Working as a PA, I got to know people in lots of different departments, I usually got to know the neighborhood where we were shooting that day, I had lots of different bosses.
As a grip + electric, there is one guy, and I have to do my best to keep him happy. It's more like having a normal boss, but for I film set I find it disorienting.
Last revelation because I need to get some Zz's: I really do not know what I am doing. I've got the rhythm of the work cycle wrong, it takes me too long to do things because I am doing them for the first time and I don't know where to find the right thing on the truck or where I'm supposed to be.
It'll go away eventually, but not anytime before I go to bed, so I'm going to get on that now.
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3 comments:
Your job sounds more exciting than mine. I spend my days at a desk mulling over spreadsheets. At the moment, I'm frustrated because I can't get a bottle of white-out open.
Very glamorous.
I agree that G+E is probably not the best life long career goal unless you're hankering for a beer gut and an onery disposition. My advice would be to go for camera or maybe that's just me trying to live through your job experience. I need to get back into that game. Oh well, it all beats spreadsheets and white out
The trick to getting a bottle of white-out open is to repeatedly bang the top of the bottle against your desk, then slowly descend in to tears as you realize that this is what your life has become.
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