Making Friends

First off, those of you who are as anal about schedules and punctuality as my production manager is, you will have been dreadfully hurt that I didn’t post last week. By way of an apology, I’ll try to cleverly craft my excuse into a blog. (Just like I craft my overspends into ‘critical editorial inclusions, sanctioned by the network’ when talking to my Production Manager)…

So, yes, at the risk of sounding all pompous and big headed, I was shooting last week. It was a long and demanding shoot in a city I’d not really shot much more than interviews in before… and it was in the other side of the country.

The last few blogs have touched on this process of selling shows I’m going through right now. This shoot last week was what they call a ‘Paid Presentation Reel’, basically before the network can finally, fully commit to buying the show, you first have to make the show. But for cheap. So, the network gives you some silly, tiny amount of cash to go away and come back with a tape they can look at and go ‘that looks like a tv show’. They can then show their advertisers, who all agree it ‘looks like a tv show’, then, ideally they now feel happy to pull the trigger and go to a full pilot or series, fuelled by a new-found enthusiasm and sense of wonder (bordering on euphoria), based largely on the fact that you’ve done so much work for virtually free.

So, here you have zero money, to speak of, no time, (because time is money… and we don’t have any of that), and no real network of friends or crew members in our city of choice. And the ticking clock of the network’s deadline you must deliver this tape to them by in order to give them enough time to decide to buy the show before some arbitrary sounding date in the VERY near future, (usually not more than a month!).

What do you do? Well, this is where the subject of this blog comes in. You make brand new wonderful friends. Fast.

I’ve worked in movies, and there your work is pretty insular a lot of the time, aside from the hectic six week shoot you’re working with the same four people for four or more years to get your film made. TV is the opposite.

TV, especially reality TV is SO consumable that the turnover of colleagues and crews can make your brain ache and send you down the road of beginning to refer to this barrage of faces that you ’sorta- kinda’ remember collectively as ‘mate’, (it pays to be a Brit), ‘my man’, (less convincing from a Brit), or ’sugar-tits’, (I dont frequently quote Mel Gibson… but you should know my agent enjoys me calling him that one).

I recently heard a quote from an angry producer, mad at yet another audio screw up, that “it’s almost impossible to work with the same crew twice in LA” because there’s so much work out there. (He added under his breath that this was often a very great blessing too). The point is that from my experience you’ll do anything you can, (short of actually paying people properly), to hang on to good people. The reason is obvious - especially when it comes to pulling off the seemingly
impossible as we did last week.

To pull in favors you need to have friends out there willing to come to your aid when you need them. This is all very cool when you’re shooting in your home town, but last week we just had to make calls to random vendors, other production companies based there… and above all I
had to cross my fingers and hope that we’d find good people.

Part of my job here is to inspire people that the show we’re making, if it should go to series, would bring wealth, happiness and inner fulfilment beyond their imaginings… and we might even manage to pay their rate. I never lie to people, I just tell them this is how it is, that I’m working for absolutely nothing, (which is painfully true), and that I’ll be trying to make this whole experience fun in its own right, (which is mostly true… see my previous comment about time/money…).

So here’s my main advice about finding and keeping good crews… take money from anywhere you can in the budget, anywhere at all, and put it in the ‘crew meals’ line, (you know what they say, “happy crews run on hand-held meals that cost less than 8 bucks”. To be honest I’ve never
heard that quote, but ‘feed often and swiftly’ is my final word on feeding crews).

Second, thank them sincerely for their time, (but don’t grovel, they do have their reasons why they’re there with you, and the last thing you want to do is make them feel like victims!).

Lastly, do good work. Simple. If they’re good people, they’ll appreciate they’re in good hands if you take pride  in your work and don’t cut corners… (and don’t goof off writing blogs when they’re all
working as hard as they are), they all want this show to be as good as you do.