At some point last year, the unthinkable happened and I landed on a job full time, putting my perpetual day-player status on hold for several months. As such, my usual 3-4 day work weeks turned into full time 65+ hour work weeks with little time to spare that wasn't spent inside the walls of a sound stage.
With virtually no free time left, I fell behind on a lot of things, like housekeeping (not that I was ever caught up to begin with), keeping in tough with friends, and blog reading, just to name a few. Now with my show ended and the tsunami of pilots that came with it slowing down to a trickle, I can finally attempt to catch up with my neglected reading, and I spent the day gorging on the past several months of Michael Taylor's blog (hey, some of you binge on Game of Thrones; I binge on Blood Sweat and Tedium).
His recent(ish) sharing of a reader's tale of how he was shushed over ice on set reminded me of the most ridiculous shushing moment I've witnessed so far. We were shooting downtown in a new hipster loft (aka: new studio apartments made from converted warehouse space) so the square room and cinder block walls made any sound echo and magnify. Which no one really minded or paid much attention to until we were between set ups.
Now, being a film crew in a small space meant you were going to have some noise, but we were doing our best to keep it down to a minimum out of respect for the neighbors. That, however, didn't keep the AD from yelling at us to be quiet and constantly shushing us.
Funny thing is, the noise didn't stop despite him almost hyperventilating from all the shushing.
At this point, I should mention that while we did our best to use our "inside voices," there was also a large piece of crumpled up blackwrap laying on the concrete floor. Add that to about two dozen people coming and going, accidentally kicking it around in a small room that is built like an echo chamber, and the rustling from an unassuming piece of blackwrap is going to sound loud.
So yes, the AD was getting quite pissed off at us for not keeping it down when he really should have been yelling at a piece of foil.
After a few minutes, I tried to explain to him that his frustration should be aimed at an inanimate object, but he just glared at me and kept "shhh-ing" so I went about my own business. I thought about ending the ridiculousness by simply picking the damn thing up, but with so many people scattering about, I'd be like Simba in a stampede.
Eventually, I think the AD finally understood why his pleads for working quietly seemed to be ignored, and by that point, everyone had more or less settled down. That's when he walked over to the offending piece of blackwrap, picked it up off the floor, glared at me and said, "Now, was that so hard?"
ADs. You gotta love 'em.
