My 7:30 am call time is never early enough to fiinish the work I must have done before I am ready to "roll record" at 8:00 am. On some shows there is slop time, a grace rehearsal -going - on period where I can be finishing setup but the first AD on this show likes to see if we are ready pretty much first thing and will ask to roll on a voice over or something right when we are supposed to be ready.
So I showed up at a quarter to seven -- that is o'dark 6:45, meaning I left the house at 5:30. I turned on the tone and bars and commenced to putting a minute of bars and tone (SMPTE standard) at the top of 50 tapes, 5 at a time. 45 minutes later I was ready to start booting the five computers, five hard drives and all the hardware I run. That process took about a half hour.
So and hour and fifteen minutes after I arrived, a half hour after my call time, I was ready to roll record.
Production proceeded, recording files and tapes with DVD backups stopped and started, and QA for the backup of the low resolution files. The show editor showed up as we finished recording the last scene. He wanted the files to start editing.
We gave the drive they were on to him, twenty minutes later I got a note that the one camera's files would not load. We copied them to another drive, those loaded.
The pattern continued. Frenzied recording, copying files to a drive, production assistants walking the quarter mile on the lot between post and production carrying hard drives with files on them between the production truck and post.
There were intermittent problems with files not loading. Mid-morniong I noted one of the cameras occasionally showed a black field or two, the video stream being interrupted in some way. I wondered about it but it was SO occasional. I did not mention it other than asking if anyone else saw it.
Then it happened while I we were recording! Yikes!!! Lack of perfection is not acceptable in any way and people get fired for even minimal inattention. There is so much competition for production jobs that people get not rehired for lots of reasons -- things like having the wrong attitude (anything besides cheery willingness to work). Oddly enough even tech people in Hollywood tend to be fit, attractive and well educated and on the set there are few if any truly unattractive people.
As soon as we stopped we rewound the tape to the spot where I had seen black -- though there visually had been a black frame the video was fine. But the audio vanished for a second. Were the files ok? Call to post. Yes the files are fine.
So I got told to watch that deck carefully and why had it not been mentioned before?!!! The first half hour of lunch was researching whether all tracks of audio disappeared, confirming the video was good on the files for editing, and discussion about what might have caused the problem.
For the next few hours I focused on watching that deck's video stream. It happened again once during a record, the same pattern shown on the tape. Files were ok.
Files seemed to be OK for a while. Then at about 8 pm, one of the file capture computers just stopped wanting to go into record. But we were up against it with the child actors, who CANNOT stay beyond the time allotted by child labor laws.
The clock ticked on, the tapes rolled, we got the scenes shot. The kids left, and we got the files loaded in to the drives from tape and gave the post production folks their drives. And waited. After an hour they told us to leave, so I clocked out -- and walked to post to wait. Unpaid. Of course when I got there suddenly the files began to appear properly, and everything was there.
Gratified, I walked out to my car. And a note on the door. Hmmm. Picked up the card, which complimented my little car (only car I ever had that people leave notes saying "If you ever want to sell this car...") and told me they noticed I had a flat tire.
Drywall screws are like leaves on production lots, I probably had picked one up earlier in the week.
So -- Siri on my iPhone found me a local roadside assistance, I called them and they could be there in ten minutes. The cost would be $55. No, they did not take credit cards after 10 pm. I had $44. I was owed $10 back from my parking charge for the day, so that would make $54. I called a friend on the lot and said "Can I borrow a dollar?"
By the time I got back the tire was off, the new (mini) spare was on in five minutes and it was time for the long, slow drive home. I got back home at midnight.
Call time for tomorrow was 9, which meant I needed to leave the house at 7:40.
Sometimes, making TV shows seems a lot like making bell housings.
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