So my life has been consumed with this stage shoot the last 2 months. Things with this company are the most unorganized, unethical and unrealized as I have seen in my 12 years in this business. The problems within the company itself are so extensive I cannot even begin to go into detail as it would take WAY too long. Not to mention, if you have never worked in Hollywood, most of it won’t make sense. So I figure why bore you with the detail.

What I can say is that I was handed a “budget” on my first day that took me almost a week to decipher. This show is slated to be 6 1-hour clip shows with host-wraps (if that makes sense). Upon reading the budget I was told, “These sections are by show and need to be multiplied by 6, but the host-wrap stage shoots are considered all together and need to be DIVIDED by 6.”

What?

I never really figured it out.

I was also told that the stage shoots would be shot over 3 days with 3 days of prep and 1 strike day and I only had about $160k to work with.

I choked. In this town a sound stage rental alone will run $50k-$70k. Lighting will go for about $30k-$40k and set design & construction another $30k-$40k. That does NOT include cameras, camera crew, director, technical director, support crew & staff, food or even wardrobe for our show host. Taking all that into account, I’m sure you can easily do the math and realize this company had NO CLUE and were screwing themselves.

I said point blank it would take at least $250k to get these stage shoots done.

Too bad – you get $160k

Too bad – I don’t listen to stupid people. I have a high-profile host, a crew of 60 and a network that hates all of your set designs. I can’t book crew or gear in advance because you won’t let me. You want to shoot these host-warps during THE BUSIEST time in LA for production, which gives me Z E R O advantage in rate negotiations. $250K.

To make a looooooong story short I spent about $240k and they all hate me. I really couldn’t give a shit. Why? Because the 3 days of production went PERFECT God damn it!!! Even after the 1 week total on the stage stretched into a week ½ as a result of the “set from hell.” The content of the show sucked ass, but that wasn’t my problem. From a strictly technical aspect not a single thing went wrong. All of my crew were amazing people! My A-Team PAs were STELLAR and my Coordinator, CT, kicked ass!! We had regular crew asking us if we were staying with this company, as this was THE FIRST show they had ever worked on for this place that was so smooth and CT & I were so easy to get along with in comparison. Even the network was happy at the technical execution


HA!


So I was over budget…GROSSLY over budget….whatever. Will they want me to stay on here? I hope not. Because this was the hardest show I have ever worked on with some of the most difficult & clueless people…ever.