Your First Day on Set
Below is a reprint of a guest post I wrote for the Work in Entertainment blog. If you’ve never worked on set, you should give it a read. It covers everything: where to go, who to talk to, what you’re going to eat.{{1}} And if you haven’t heard of Work in Entertainment, you should definitely […]
What’s Taking So Long?
Different types of shows have their own rhythms. Multi-camera shows build slowly, from a simple table read and maybe a rehearsal on day one, all the way up to the full-0n craziness of a 16 hour shoot night. Single-camera comedies can be a grind, because something is always going on, whether it’s a tech scout or […]
The Next TAPA Meetup Is Happening!
So this is going to be a monthly thing, now. We’ll all get together, get drunk, and complain about how little PAs get paid. Because I really hate it when groups meet up at the same time at the same place for every gathering, I’m shaking things up a bit. First of all, we’ll be […]
Wrap Binders, Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love Wasting Paper
If you don’t know what wrap binders are, take a moment to bask in the beautiful bliss that is your ignorance. Your world is a magical one, but it is one I can be a part of no longer. Wrap binders might just be the biggest waste of time, space, and paper in a business […]
Looking for the Next Gig
First up: a reminder to check out the Kickstarter campaign for Crew Call. On to the real topic of the day! Holly writes in with a question that a lot of people can probably relate to right about now: With a little over a week left of shooting, talk of “the next show” has already […]
Coming to America
Jess writes in: I’m an experienced production set, location and office runner in Britain (basically our equivalent of a PA, sure you know that…) with loads of credits in prime-time UK TV programmes. I’ve wanted to work in the US since ‘always’ but can’t for the life of me work out how to get my […]
Crew Call: The Below-the-Line Podcast
I have officially launched the Kickstarter campaign for Crew Call: The Below-the-Line Podcast! And I couldn’t be more excited! Can’t you tell by all the exclamation points?! Crew Call is just about the only place you’ll hear interviews with below-the-line crew; you know, the people who actually make the TV shows and movies you watch? It’s […]
Upward Mobility
As we approach the end of the televsion season, Jason writes in about moving onward and upward to other shows: I work on a tv show right now as a PA, but really I do more personal assistant type work for one of the shows producers. It’s not that the job isn’t a good one, […]
What to Claim on Your W-4
Christoph writes in: Since last fall, my gigs have been getting more and more frequent, and I have even been lucky enough to land some longer jobs. However, I have been noticing that as a job gets longer, there seems to be a larger percentage of my paycheck being taken out by taxes. I have […]
There’s Lazy, And Then There’s This
It’s been a while since I complained about ADs, so how’s about I do that right now? We had a [glossary]tech scout[/glossary] on yesterday. When the party bus{{1}} returned, the 1st AD called the office and asked for a PA to come down and gather the stuff that people had left behind. Now, our production […]
How to Schedule a Meeting
After Sunday’s get-together, I received a few emails like the following{{1}}– Hi, APA! I met a lot of people on Sunday but I don’t know a polite way to continue the connection. Do I just call them out of the blue? Email? Text? Several of them are PAs (like me) and work 60+ hours a […]
Crew Call: The Below-the-Line Podcast
UPDATE! The Kickstarter campaign is back on! Here’s the new link. * * * I have officially launched the Kickstarter campaign for Crew Call: The Below-the-Line Podcast! And I couldn’t be more excited! Can’t you tell by all the exclamation points?! Crew Call is just about the only place you’ll hear interviews with below-the-line crew; […]