Long Hours Long Drive Short Turnaround
Share your thoughts, I have plenty especially dealing with the central zone being that our studio zones are so big. I worked on a picture up here in New York, we shot in Yonkers and we had a 3pm. Yonkers without bad traffic is 45 to 60 minutes drive. So I leave around 1:30 pm so I can eat since I know I won’t eat after 8 hours. People were requesting a hotel, the producer said they had already spent the budget for that. We had a representative come out and we asked him to do something about it but he can’t because the producer isn’t required to put us up. He makes a big deal about a short scene involving a cigar in which they used a smoke machine for about 15 minutes in a
VERY limited amount, so this he put up a fit about. I was still pulling focus at 8am. I actually nodded off at the camera. Then I get to drive home at 8:30 or so and of course get in the middle of rush hour traffic into NYC. In Atlanta I have even worse stories where I actually was driving TWO hours both ways and WAS STILL IN THE STUDIO ZONE. Four hours a day on the road added to an easy day was 13 or 14 hours and 15,16, 17 happened as well. This was a big picture.
If you want to vent and don’t want to leave your name I understand. I am really interested in what it’s like in Texas, seems like there it could be horrible.
I live in Texas, and yes, there are times that the commute has been difficult. I was on one MOW in perticular that I remember where our locations were right on the edge of the studio zone. It took 45- 60 mintues to get there. After working a 14-15 hour day which was typical on this one, I had to pull over during my commute home almost every night because I was going to injure myself or someone else. It was a hard shoot for more than just this but it definitely made the job harder.
Hey Sarah,
Do you know the radius of your studio zone. I am not sure how to even find that out per city. I think Atlanta is a little beyond the perimeter which if you live at the top of the perimeter and need to get to the bottom it’s without traffic (which never exists in Atlanta except at 4am) at least 40 minutes solid. Maybe the studio zones should be available to the membership through the website.