Sleepy

You work some pretty long hours in the film business.  No one works less than twelve hours, while some work as many as sixteen on a daily basis.  Throw in a director who doesn’t know how to cover a one page scene before lunch, and you’ve got a week that starts with a 6:00am call on Monday, and ends with a 5:30pm call on Friday.

Needless to say, I was pretty tired heading home.  I was looking for the exit from the 101 to the 405 freeway, when I saw a sign reading, “Sherman Way, 3/4 miles.”  For those of you who don’t know the Valley, that means I drove four miles without remembering a thing.  That’s pretty scary.

My worst experience was working at a video game company.  We were in crunch, and working horrible hours. By the end of the week, my mind was fried.

Our tech guys were downloading a new build from the developer (who was in another country), when the server crashed.  Even though they only got about half a game, it was still playable, so our lead made us stay and test this monstrosity.

The game was a first person shooter.  We were able to move around and stuff, but most of the environmental textures were missing.  This meant we could see grass and trees, but the ground was black.  We could see doors, but not walls.  It was very weird.

Also, the characters weren’t rigged properly. The seams were broken, so the body parts didn’t all connect with one another, and everyone was floating around in this neutral, half-fetal position.  And shooting at you.

Playing a video game when your tired is bad enough, but playing the inside of a Hieronymus Bosch painting will just plain screw with your head.

On my way home, around four in the morning, I realized I could actually see the sides of the freeway.  I thought to myself, “Hey, they fixed the textures on the walls!”

Man, I was tired.