My day as a PA
Friday, March 21st, 2008Today was SO MUCH FUN!
I was told they would start at 11. I TRIED to get there at 10:30, but I got lost. I showed up at 10:40. Nobody was there! The first person (besides me) to show up was the sound tech, and he got there about 5 to 11.
I was SURPRISED by the predominantly female crew. The crew consisted of me, director (female), DP (female), camera operator (female), writer (female), producer (male), sound tech (male), boom operator (male), set decorator (female).
They’re using a super-16 arri! Rock on! I tried to watch how they loaded the mags and put on the focus puller… but the set decorator dragged me away to put up posters and move furniture. So sadly, I’m still clueless about how to put together a film camera.
The DP showed me how to check for flares though. Mainly because she needed me to flag them out! 
They were short on extras, and the director wanted to put me in the scene, but the DP wouldn’t allow it because she needed me for other stuff. *shrugs* I don’t like to be on camera anyway.
I got sent from department to department, doing jobs for set decoration, the DP, the director, the producer… all over the place! And it was so much fun!!!!!
Things I did included:
-putting up posters and fliers as decoration
-moving furnature
-blackbagging several windows
-adjusting the tripod for the camera
-setting up lights, adjusting barndoors, putting up diffusers
-loading and unloading equipment vehicles
-flagging out flares
-bouncing light
-finding where extras ran off to
-setting up the craft service table
-doing the film log when the producer had to fill in as an extra
-being the “dummy” to hold the graycard
I even helped make the look of 2 shots better!
1) For a close-up, the DP was having some troubling lighting it. The lead’s nose kept casting a nasty shadow. So I said, “You could light her from below…” She asked me what I meant, so I said, “Turn that arri a bit, so that it comes down across the face of the camera. Put down the eyebrow to block out any flare. I can kneel down here with either a reflector or bounce board to cast the light up from below. It’ll kill that one shadow.” She asked the camera operator if she thought that would work. she said it might. They asked the director. She said sounds good. I grabbed a bounce board, the DP moved the light, and bam! They shot it how I suggested (and loved how it looked).
2) For another close-up, I noticed that there might be something missing. So I asked the camera operator, “How tight is this shot on her face?” She answered that it’s “pretty close”. I said, “Well… can you see over this shoulder at all?” Se checked the frame and said yeah. So I answered, “in the master shot of this, you had such and such standing back here…” They put the actor in place. I saved the continuity!
After the shoot was done and I helped put everything away, the director and DP praised me saying how much of a help I was and that there were certain shots they’d never have gotten right without me.
The producer asked me if I had a card (thanks guys!!!!!) and told me he’ll probably be contacting me in a few weeks with some more jobs.
Of course, it started snowing while we were shooting, and it was REALLY bad by the time I left. The one hour drive home took more than 3! And I almost had accidents a couple times (people deciding “oh I have 4-wheel drive, I can do 70 through 4 inches of snow… OOPS! What was that I almost hit? And aveo?”)… but all in all, a SUPER fun day!