Tag: setlife

It’s showtime!

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Ah, confinement life in times of Corona. People have to stay home, work from home and watch Netflix in substitution of a social life. Or as a screenwriter calls it: Business as usual. Well… minus the severe anxiety of getting sick or loved ones getting sick. Minus that.

When people ask me, if I am not concerned about film making and the future of film making and cinemas, I reply that yes, I am very concerned and my personal funds are low and I don’t know if and when we can shoot, but that  is not the most important right now.

The most important thing now is to stay healthy. Since there are so many people, who normally arduously work and whose days are filled with so many activities that they didn’t have time to watch TV all day, I put together a list. I am aware, that there is an endless number of lists out there, but this list is different (as would every professional list-seller say). I categorized the productions in “what you want to feel when you watch them”, because that is how I chose. We’ll start with series.

“If you want to get to know new friends and spend some time with their nuttiness”

-Obviously: Friends

-New girls

-It’s always sunny in Philadelphia

-Modern family

-Santa Clarita Diet

-Derry girls

“If you like fantasy, where people wear normal clothes and their super powers are used in a clever way to tell an exciting story and of course they save the world”

-The umbrella academy

-Misfits

-the Boys

-Stranger things

-Sabrina (okay they don’t wear normal clothes)

-Locke and Key

-Watchmen

“If you want to be aware how our life is already horror, technology-wise”

-Black mirror

“If you want to feel uplifted by super quirky people who make you believe in the good of humanity”

-Queer eye

“If you bought a sewing machine and can’t sew for shit, but you’d like to see what you could do with it, if you could sew”

-Next in fashion

“If you like a tied-knit gritty story and want to dwell in awe of fine acting”

-The killing

-Top of the Lake

-Handmaid’s Tale

“If you want to see the most bewildering human interactions, who also committed a crime”

-Tiger King

-Wild wild Country

-Don’t fuck with cats

“ if you like to feel all warm and fuzzy, as you’d lived in the village where Belle from ‘the Beauty and the Beast’ lives”

-Gilmore girls

-Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

“ If you want to see a series where there is romance, but also some serious shit is going down, but it always ends good-well kinda”

-good girls

“If you want to watch a harmless rom-com, where she is a nurse and moves into a small village and is courted by a very sweet bartender”

-Virgin River

“If you want to watch girly stuff and dress up fabulously after”

-Sex and the city

-the Bold Type

“If you want to maybe pursue a career in stand-up, when this is all over”

-Trevor Noah

-Sarah Silvermann

-John Mulaney

-Ali Wong

-Wanda Sykes

“If you like to watch at food and either enjoy your food therefore more or because you’re hungry and this looks really good”

-Chef’s table

-the Final table

“If you are terrible at baking and want to meet fellow artists or if you are really good at it and want to laugh at people who aren’t”

-Nailed it

“If you want to be excited because some serious shit hits the fan in fictitious lives”

-the stranger

-the bodyguard

“If you’re in the mood to consider how just the justice system is“

-unbelievable

-5 park guys

“ If you feel a bit lost and fucked-up and weird and think you are alone and also see the most romantic plot in recent tv-history”:

Fleabag

“If you like to revisit your youth in a much more excessive version that it really was”

-Skins ( Only season 1-4 and then 7)

“If you like political scandals and also a bit of romance”

-The good wife

“If you miss Hollywood or would like to experience it”

Entourage

I left out some classics on purpose, since I am mad at them, mostly because they messed up the ending. Did I forget a favorite series of yours? You can tell me in the comments.

Murphy’s law or: That’s setlife, baby!

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/ˈmɜːrfiːz ˌlɔː/ Murphy’s law is an adage or epigram that is typically stated as: “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong”.

You know the beginning of a 90’s movie? You have this upbeat, poppy music (‘There she goes’ or maybe something from Placebo), the setting is revealed, the sun comes up, the universe of the main character is revealed through a smooth dolly shot.

It’s four in the morning (you get up early, to catch that early light). On other mornings, this light would feel harsh, unwelcoming, but in your state as a director who is going to start their first shooting day, it is the most beautiful light you’ll ever feel prickling on your thumbs, erm… skin. Before pocketing the call sheet some nice assistant printed out for me, I skim it with pride, this is what I worked and fought for what feels like an eternity. I step in front of the door and fill my lungs with that cold air, that is soon going to heat up.

A tracking shot is used to show me driving from my home to location, on a field in the middle of nowhere. A few tents and a few scattered people in black waiting for crafty to put the coffee machine up, they look like a classic Satan’s cult, but in a Midsommar’s setting.  I get out of the car, the music stops. The First and the DP say hi. ‘Do you want to have the good or the bad first?’ the First asks. The DP and I lock eyes. ‘The bad, of course.’ ‘Well, the bad is that it looks like we don’t get the cherry picker here on time, so we’ll have to ask production to book it again for tomorrow, or we could inverse the shots 2.4 and 1.2 and  we’ll have a free spot at 17:00 sharp to shoot the cherry picker scene, but we’ll only have a window of 18 minutes, before we have to do the unit move.” I say: ‘It’s all going to be fine. I need coffee.’ I head to the crafty tent, they follow me. I impatiently wait for the thick excuse they call coffee here to run into my plastic cup (that was before green shooting). The coffee machine makes the exact noise Christopher Nolan used for his ‘Inception’-trailer and has henceforth been used for every sci-fi-trailer ever. ‘What are the good ones?’ ‘The good ones are that there are none. Yet. Ah and maybe that the producers aren’t coming today. Only tomorrow for the crew picture.’ ‘I see’, I say.

I turn around to my DP. ‘How are you?’ ‘Broke, tired, without hope for the better in the present nor the future and scared that the first is not going to be happy about this.’ He inclines his head to the right, where about a 10 extras chase each other in their animal costumes. ‘Pretty sure, he won’t.’ The First sees the scene and runs over, call sheet and walkie talkie frantically waving. We look at each other and chuckle. I take a sip of the blissful, horribly sweet coffee.

‘How are you? Ready for this?’ I look straight ahead, watching the First chasing the extras into their tent and shouting into his walkie –talkie where the fudge the extra casting is? I light a cigarette, take a deep drag: ‘Gonna find out, won’t we?’ The DP gives me a pat on the back and heads to the best boy, who seems to roll up cables instead of installing them.

That’s when the music starts again, camera zooms out, the set in its whole glory is revealed, technical crew running around, actors standing around in their bathrobe and hair rollers, trucks coming up, when the music is interrupted by a little, squeaky voice:  ’The boom is not here.’ The sound engineer is standing next to me. ‘Well, where is she?’ ‘Car accident, but she is alright. Only mild concussion. She is going to come in about two hours, had to talk to the police, some asshole on a cherry picker ran into her, can you believe?’ I put out my cigarette in the sad rest of my coffee. I wave a hearty wave at the first, who still chases gorillas, zebras, elephants and one big butterfly. ‘Soo…’, Sound says. ‘MOS?’ I nod. ‘Yepp! MOS’ Cut to black screen containingo the opening credits. This and this production company proudly presents:

‘Murphy’s law, or: Anything that can go wrong on a set, will go wrong. A romcom/coming-of-age/slowburn thriller-dramedy based on real events. No animals were harmed during this production, except Dave, the fly. But that’s another story.’

Deus Ex Machina

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Deus ex machina (Latin: [ˈdeʊs ɛks ˈmaː.kʰɪ.naː]: /ˈdeɪ.əs ɛks ˈmɑːkiːnə/ or /ˈdiːəs ɛks ˈmækɪnə/; plural: dei ex machina; English ‘god from the machine’) is a plot device whereby a seemingly unsolvable problem in a story is suddenly and abruptly resolved by an unexpected and seemingly unlikely occurrence, typically so much as to seem contrived. Its function can be to resolve an otherwise irresolvable plot situation, to surprise the audience, to bring the tale to a happy ending, or act as a comedic device.

When I first started working in the film industry, I was quite at a loss for what I say when at a party and people would ask what I do for a living. It seemed so boastful to me to tell people I work in film. The reactions always were a tad too enthusiastic for me to handle. People would ensure me that my job is so much cooler (spoiler alert: it’s not), more exciting (if one would call backstabbing and non-existing tax returns exciting…yeah!) and more adventurous (standing in the middle of nowhere at minus 19 C° trying to write down script notes could be called that, indeed) than their office/lawyer/teacher job. They won’t listen when I try to tell them that, on the contrary, their jobs seem cool and exciting and adventurous and most of all: stable and hence comforting to me, but maybe that is a romanticized view of mine and nobody listens to no one, so fair is fair.

The perception that working in film is not only deeply fulfilling but also fills your pockets, is a common one, I recently learned. The tax office lady called and after a very harsh and quick monologue of hers, I dimly started to understand that they think I would misappropriate taxes. After a desperate try to make the lady understand, that I the salary on the tax declaration is indeed correct, she panted: ‘But Miss Gregory, it says here that you work in film.’ I shouted back: ‘Precisely!’

Apart from the money issues and the anxieties, the job can be fun and fulfilling and enriching and so much more. Standing on a set, creating a film and observing all these talented people do what they do best is one of the most beautiful feelings one can have as a filmmaker. People working in film are not in it for the money (at least not where I live), but because they share the same passion and they believe in the art of film making. That is why they work 14-hours-shifts and eat shitty food of the crafty table, just to do it all over again the next day.

For people who want to work in film, getting into the industry seems like a kind of “deus ex machina”, all the plots come together and the dream comes true-the end! In reality this is where the plot thickens and Murphy’s law kicks in. Join us, we have the stale cookies from crafty.