Posted 12:37am, Sunday, September 7, 2003

I'm about to go to L.A. on production again. People who have never been on a set think it must be pretty glamorous. Admittedly, sometimes it can be cool, but mostly it's a lot of waiting around.

In advertising, half your time is spent comforting the client. There's a lot of hand-holding. There are two kinds of client on a shoot.

First, you have the nervous client. Those are the ones who spend the entire shoot fretting, worrying if we got enough coverage, wondering if the commercial will raise sales. These are relatively easy to deal with.

The second, more dangerous client is the frustrated creative. Their whole life, they were convinced that they are creative. They're positive that they're more creative than the people they employ to do the work.

They sit on the set and second-guess every decision. They sit around editing the footage in their head. They honestly think they would be a better director than the guy they hired. They will second-guess the editor and they ask stupid questions when reviewing the cut...

"Is this the best take of this scene?"

"No, we put the second best take in there on purpose."

Duh.

Recently, I drew a cartoon of myself looking pissed off. Inside the thought balloon: "Mostly I'm tired of making shit up to make the client feel better. It's getting really old."

---

As evidence of just how exciting TV productions can be, here are some candid photos from my past few jobs... location scouting, shooting, editing. Yeah, it's pretty exciting alright. Sadly, I don't have a picture of myself "at work", but I'm sure you'll enjoy these anyway.

-Ron