After effects...

There I am, on-set, filling in the slate, getting ready to shoot take "Only God knows the number we're on..." last week.

It was exhausting.

I try to not be too much of a whiner when it comes to workload etc.  I remember hitting the level where everyone was tired all of the time because they were hustling their butts off trying to find a way to 'make it' in this crazy industry and I just realized that I should stop commenting on my fatigue level.

So I just say, "I'm well..." when I'm alright and "I believe I shall be well..." when things are looking bleak.

Then you have a day like yesterday, where your philosophy/faith butts up against the requirements of your body.  

I got home Sunday, chilled with the family Monday, then yesterday I was supposed to go right back to work.  So we did breakfast, did our coffee, then I came downstairs and tried to start working.  I got through my email and crashed.  Seriously.  I had to stop, walk upstairs and lay down on the couch.  I fell immediately asleep for an hour or so.  

I did that three times yesterday.

Just couldn't go on any longer.

Strange to feel that kind of weakness.  Like at the end of a battle or something.

And that's what the last two weeks have been like for me.  Principally, the issue was shifting our studios.  See, for the past year on the main show I produce we've been shooting at a fabulous mainstream studio in the heart of downtown Vancouver.  It's a pro place full of pro people and pro gear.  You basically walk in, they've already got our set in place, we get the hosts dressed and made up and off we go.

Simple.

And expensive.

Yes we had a great deal.  Yes, the team there were a wonderful bunch (and we do miss them...) but, at the end of the day [as my EP loves to say] we just couldn't afford it.

We had known for some time that a cash crunch was going to hit us later this year and we'd been exploring various options all year long, trying to find the best way through it.  Eventually, my EP and I had a sit down at his office (while our wives and kids hung out upstairs) where we crunched the 'actuals' budget in real time and I did my best to estimate the 'moving forward' budget and we realized that we had to act NOW.

Here's where it gets miraculous (or strange--depending on your worldview...)

So, I get home that night, and while Niki and I are sitting on the couch watching CNN and she's surfing Facebook, I'm on Craigslist looking for office space rentals.  I find like ten of 'em that look like they might work.  Email all ten.

Next day.  I get one response.  The guy sounds nice and his space, in the perfect location, is still available.  BOOM, I book a flight, fly in and out in the same day--see the space and spend the evening working on a mock trailer with my Vancouver editor.

Oh yeah, on the way to the space, I walk through the neighborhood where it looks like we're going to live for the first few months of 2009, just checking it out on-foot to make sure it's 'suitable for the wife', and it turns out to be as awesome as we'd hoped.  

So, I get downtown, to the prospective space.  Meet the owner.  Walk into the space.  Look at it for ten seconds.  Tell him we'll take it.  "What just like that?"  Yeah, just like that.  "But how can you be so sure so quickly?"

When you know, you know.

(and that's near miraculous, finding the 'perfect space' just like that, with one call...)

Fast forward to last week.

I arrive on the Saturday.  Sunday the race begins.  Turning an empty space, with walls in all the wrong places, into a space we can actually use.  Then I find out our set (from the studio) won't fit.  Actually, I find that out AS the movers arrive (I'd been worrying about it all week though). They call me downstairs to see for myself and I'm standing there, in the rain, with a thousand other things [like figuring out how to shoot this...] going on at once all around me, and I have to improvise.

Think, Todd.

So I ask the movers if they can keep the set in storage for a day or so.  They say sure.  I tell my guys to bring in everything that will fit.  They do.  I talk with my associate producer (the brilliant Karl Richter) about the issue, we spitball some solutions, I keep working on getting the space set.  That night he calls me.  

"Yo', it's done."  What do you mean 'done'?  And he proceeds to explain that our Toronto-based Production Designer is going to have one of his west coast guys go to the mover's, take the set apart, pack it, deliver it then rebuild it in our space.

Just like that.

And that's how it went down.

The set came in, got rebuilt, and ended up looking great.

Thanks Jer.  Thanks Karl.

But that's just one of the several dozen crises I had to deal with all week.  Never mind that I had to re-shoot my stand up sequences for 14 of the shows we shot in L.A over the course of two days and never mind that the two days following I had to direct 100 segments for 25 new episodes of the main show I produce and never mind that we were shooting it film style and switching to shooting it ALL in HD (can you say 'render time'?) and introducing two new assistant editors into the mix and a new DP and new shooters...

See, a film set and a TV studio are two different beasts.

To borrow 'preacher speak', a TV set is like a Church building.  It's there, it works, it looks good and does exactly what you need it to do.  You just show up and do your thing.  A film set is like a Church Plant except worse.  You bring everything you're going to need with you, you set it up in a blank space, turning it into the kind of space you're going to need, then when you're done you tear it all down again.

It's crazy.

And you can imagine the things that can go wrong.  Everything you can imagine does, in fact, go wrong, and then some, and as the guy in charge you've got to make sure that the train keeps rolling 'cause not doing it is not an option.

So you push through and you get it done, then you come home and you crash and you feel silly and 'weak' for crashing.

I guess the only SFS 'applicability-oriented' thing I've got to say is:

If you want to do something difficult with your life, remember that it is going to be difficult. Remember to leverage your relationships in such a way that they're going to help you do that difficult thing.  Don't expect your life to be 'normal', 'cause it won't be.  Push yourself as hard as you can when it counts, then listen to your body when you're done, in case you need to take a nap.

'Cause you don't want to push so hard that you push yourself right over the edge.

T