Hi.
I'm not dead. Really.
I blinked and it is now mid October. At some point, it was the beginning of September and I took The Countess to the Austin Out of Bounds Festival, the Scandal Cruise Ship wrapped and Scandal Summer Camp opened. After that, it's a big giant blur.
I have been working at XXXXXX, slaving away in the puppet mines. (you know, puppets make crank calls. Steve just advised me to eliminate the name completely instead of just altering it.) For whatever reason, this season was way more challenging to us as a shop than previous seasons. On paper, it shouldn't have been. Only 6 episodes instead of 12. 2 months of work instead of 6. The "same" 10 hour work days. Not one six day week. Supposedly, the same amount of puppets per scene as last season. What was different?
No full time puppet builder. They hired my sister Carole for two weeks at the very beginning of the season. According to producers, that's all the money they had in the budget, and they wouldn't write any gags they didn't already have existing puppets for. Somehow, that went out the window. The rest of us ended up covering for it or they outsourced. Not that we don't have the mad skills to do it, but it's time away from what we are supposed to be doing.
Closer scrutiny of "portraits," aka puppets of famous people. It seems like we did them a lot last season as well, but this time around, the producers would hem and haw over them. I don't remember them caring that much over Ozzy and Sharon Osborne. Two or three passes instead of just one. Snide remarks from one of the directors that "we just don't try hard enough." Hey, Mr. Muppets*in*Space, we have two hours to make Paris Hilton, not 2 months and ten grand. And how about we all get on the same page with approved art? Do we make it look like the approved art or photos from magazines? Why bother giving us approved art at all for famous people? It ended up being "like photo" every single time. By the end, we just disregarded the art. Sorry they made you take the time to draw it in the first place, Todd. Hope the check clears.
No bathroom. A HUGE deal. The real issue that killed morale swiftly and early. The best I can say was that the almost 1/2 mile round trip walk to the working, clean, ladies-only bathroom meant that for once, I gained not one pound during production. I usually end up putting on 5 pounds because of the abundance of food on a set, between craft services and catered lunches. This season, I got my 2 mile walk in every single day, which I would never, ever get normally. Unfortunately, even with riding my bike or walking swiftly, it still took ten minutes to take a bathroom break, so you are looking at an extra 40 minutes out of the day not working on puppets, puppets that still keep coming. By the end of the season, our producer finally made a few phone calls and got the bathroom near us cleaned up. Better, because in no longer looked like a gas station rest room in hell, but perhaps a dive biker bar. You know, you'll take a piss there because you are really drunk. Still, rather unacceptable because we are not drunk all day as a rule, and it is the bathroom for all of the maintenance men who work on the lot. There is almost always some guy sitting right outside of it, watching tv. The maintenance women don't even use it, they use the one we were walking to as well.
Final word on that. Floaters.
Every other department was as disgruntled as we were this season for their own good reasons, so it is not just a case of whiny, spoiled puppet girls. I think the issues come from the top. A ship is only as good as it's captain, and if you have a full blown mutiny after so few weeks, perhaps we should be looking to the helm. Just in case you didn't know, in movie talk that would be the Producers.
If you don't have enough money to do a tv show, you don't have enough money. Don't do the show or get more money. Accusing your staff of not working in production before, so we just wouldn't understand is a huge crock of shit. Perhaps eyebrows are raised because we HAVE worked in production before, including this show, and recognize what's going on as a train wreck. We did see the first episode edited together and it looks great. Funny, I've worked on shows where it all went smoothly and it also looked great, so don't sell me the line about it has to chaos all the time.
Sigh. My checks arrived on time and cleared. (Rebecca's didn't!) I've earned the union hours I needed for insurance, even if the payroll company hasn't reported them in a timely matter, creating another problem that will need to be solved. Was it worth it? I guess so, but it's close. Close enough that I won't take the job again if the same folks are at the helm.
