OK, a good lunch it is, then, if we do more than 10 hours. But, what if it's just 8 hours, as in a normal working day? Or what if we're shooting on location far from home?
Eating and drinking (and smoking) scenes are the kind that most often get continuity errors. Even in some Hollywood productions, you can often catch someone's drink change from shot to shot. This is why you try hard, whenever you're shooting a dialogue around glasses with drink and plates with food, to avoid as much as possible your talent actually drinking/eating any of it. The main problem isn't doing multiple takes of the same shot and same angle (going from "Action!" to "Cut!" to "Let's do it again!" to re-filling the glasses). The bigger problem is when you change angle, then do the scene again from a different angle, again with multiple takes. If the same drink/food shows up, and especially if your talent takes several sips / bites between shots, you'll have a very hard time matching it in the post, unless you carefully planned everything.
quote:
Originally posted by Aspiring mogul
OK, a good lunch it is, then, if we do more than 10 hours. But, what if it's just 8 hours, as in a normal working day? Or what if we're shooting on location far from home?
A "normal" working day in the movie industry is twelve hours, not eight.
In the union world, overtime "in town" begins at eight hours (at time and a half). Double time is at twelve hours. But "on distant location," Double time doesn't begin until fourteen hours.
But still, lunch begins six hours after official crew call and that last "officially" for thirty minutes though the reality is more like forty-five or so. If Production does not provide lunch (with an on set Caterer) then the lunch break is one hour.
So, the point is that a "normal" working day for most other people is more like just a half a day for those working on a movie. If a crew works just twelve hours, that's like a short day. Fourteen hours on set is "normal" and upwards of sixteen isn't abnormal.
So the idea of feeding the crew on a regular basis, if for no other reason than to keep their energy up, isn't a silly idea at all, as some people occasionally claim.
If you do truly shoot for eight hours ONLY... meaning from the moment that the crew arrives until the moment they are driving away, then maybe you can get away without lunch. On such a short day, some crew may be more interested in just finishing the day's work and getting out of there instead of taking an hour to have lunch, thereby extending the day. But even in that case, perhaps even more so, you should still have GOOD Craft Service available. That doesn't mean just some cookies and water. It means a consistent refreshing of what's available including something like a sandwich tray (like wrap sandwich slices) and fruit and mixed nuts. Things like that.
Again, food shouldn't be considered a "cost" so much as an "investment" in YOUR project. A fed and content crew will give you much better results than a disgruntled crew.
Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
IATSE Local 600, SOC
http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
http://www.realfilmcareer.com
Brian Dzyak
Cameraman/Author
IATSE Local 600, SOC
http://www.whatireallywanttodo.com
http://www.realfilmcareer.com
