Author Archives: Marchand

Nightmare

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 31
Occupation: Office Technician and Administrator
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/24/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant is an office manager living in Hollywood, California. He grew up in the midwestern United States and moved to Los Angeles to attend USC’s graduate program in film production. He now does media work in an office at USC, and in his spare time stays active with creative endeavors like creating web videos and writing a web comic that updates twice weekly. He completes the daily crossword puzzle at lunch every day, and is the type of person who probably always wins Trivial Pursuit.

The Cauchemar

I was chatting with my informant (my boss) at our office – near the water cooler, yes,  it actually happens – and he told me a strange story about his roommate who had recently attempted astral projection (magical transportation of her consciousness to another place) by putting herself into a meditative state. Though her attempt was not successful, she did descend deep enough into her meditation that she had a dreamlike vision of a small, humanoid creature sitting in darkness. She asked it, “what are you doing?” It replied, “waiting.” Frightened by the image, she quickly snapped herself out of her meditative state.

My boss thought the creature sounded like a cauchemar. The cauchemar, he explained, is a demon-like creature whose name means “nightmare” in French. He had first learned of it from a friend who lived in Louisiana, though he suspected stories about the creature had been brought to Louisiana by the French because the myth “seems European.”

According to my informant, the cauchemar is an evil creature, that chooses its victims at random. It sits on your chest while you sleep and either: rides your sleeping body where ever it likes, or sucks the breath out of you, killing you slowly while you sleep. My informant thought that the cauchemar sounded like an explanation someone might have given for conditions that cause sleepers to wake in the middle of the night feeling pressure on their bodies, like sleep apnea.

Because the cauchemar does not discriminate when it chooses a victim, it seems to me to be a simple personification of nightmares. Its impossible to control whether or not one will have a nightmare, and that lack of control, especially while vulnerable (unconscious), is frightening. Giving them a face makes nightmares easier or us to understand, and even if depicted as a hideous, malicious creature, this is comforting.

Authored Forms

This painting of the creature from the 1700s  by Swiss painter Johann Heinrich Fussili supports my informant’s suspicion that the mythological creature may have been brought to the United States from Europe. It depicts an impish creature with large ears and fur covering its body, sitting on the chest of a woman in white. In spite of its comical appearance, the distressed pose of the sleeping woman, and the alarmed face of her horse suggest that this is indeed a creature to be feared.

Cited

Image found at: “Cauchemar.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 4 Mar. 2012. Web. 24 Apr. 2012. <http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cauchemar>.

Driving under a yellow light

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student (Animation)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/5/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio

My informant was born and raised in the small town of Hanford, California. She describes it as a town so small that everyone knows each others’ business. The industry there is largely rural, and my informant belongs to a wealthy family that owns a successful mill. She spent much of her time as a teenager with her friends driving around the country roads because there was nothing much else to do.

A Driving Gesture

My informant was driving us to an event when I saw her kiss her ring finger. I asked her why she did it and she told me that she does it every time she drive under a yellow light. We had talked in my Forms of Folklore class about the practice of hitting the ceiling of the car when you drive through an intersection, and that there are variations that make this a game (to see who hits the ceiling first). When I told my informant this, she told me that its different in her town.

My informant explained to me that she had a friend in high school who kissed the ring on her ring finger every time she drove through an intersection. Though she never knew why her friend did this, my informant suspected, based on her personality, that she preferred kissing her hand to hitting the roof of her car because it would be easier on her hand. Sadly, this girl was killed in a car accident in town when she tried to beat a yellow light. Ever since her death my informant, and many of the young people in town who knew the girl, have taken up the practice of kissing their ring finger when they drive through an intersection when the street light is yellow.

This variation on the common gesture acts as a severe reminder to the people of Hanford of the poor girl’s memory. I believe that the practice may have once inspired some guilt in those who would speed up to beat a yellow light instead of slowing down; guilt over not being more cautious. However several years later I cannot say that I’ve noticed that my informant has driven any more cautiously. It has become a reflex action for her. Underlying it however is the grief for the loss of a friend, and when traveling in a car with someone else who kisses their hand in Hanford, those who knew her share their loss.

Warming up to the rest of the cast

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 19
Occupation: Acting Student
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/20/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio and Context

My informant is a first year drama student attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood, California. This student has described his classmates as being dramatic even in their day-to-day lives, placing equal importance on weekend partying and writing character bios of their characters for plays in classes. The informant considers himself to be a writer, rather than an actor and speaks cynically of some aspects of the acting community.

At the Academy the students exclusively study acting techniques for the stage and screen. At each semester’s end the students are cast in “final exam plays.”

Before each play, the students gather on the stage and perform warm up exercises. This student described to me one particular exercise that was used before his play that was not directly related to limbering up the body or warming up the vocal cords.

Transcript

The first thing we would do typically is just free stretch, standing in a circle. Has to be a circle because if its not a circle you can’t, “feel the love.” You do a free stretch and you crack your neck, and your back a little bit. And then you hold out your hands [he stands with his legs spread and hands out at his side, as if to grasp the hands of people standing on either side of him] like this and everybody joins hands, so we’re in a circle, holding hands. First thing you do is you close your eyes, take a deep breath, connect yourself to the earth. Feel grounded. And you’re constantly aware that at the center of the Earth there is a great, glowing ball of fire. And you can feel that energy radiating through the surface of the earth. Whenever you’re feeling low energy, or negative, or making negative choices – character choices, not like “don’t do drugs” those kinds of choices – you just pull on that energy and you can feel it, lava, moving slowly like sap, through the surface of the Earth, into your body and out through your hands. And send that energy out your hands and into the hands of the person next to you. So you can send that energy so they can feel your warmth, and your energy, and your love.

Last thing you do, you close your eyes, and picture a blank white screen right behind your head. And whatever you’re feeling, whatever problems you have, emotional issues going on in your life, you can always go back to that white screen. It’s all that matters; its your emotional center point. Picture a star in the center of that screen, and the star is in complete focus. It is the termination of your energy, it is where your energy is going, the same energy you’re drawing from the Earth, which is that whole ball of fire. Yep. Okay. And then, open your eyes and picture in front of you a person, place, or thing that you love, just without reservation, that fills you love and joy. And look at that thing as you love it and now look at everybody around you in the circle and send them out, with your eyes – not sarcastic, warm, unmedicated, positive eyes – send them that love for that person, place, or thing. Any time you have to stand up and act, if you are in any way troubled, go back to that white screen, and white star and look at people with love and they will feel your love and your energy, and from there you can give them whatever emotions you need. [This last sentence means that the other actor will be receptive to you if you look at them with love, and that they will then be able to convey the emotions that you need from them to play your role.]

Then, give everyone’s hands a reassuring squeeze and radiate out that love, so that the person next to you knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that you love them, that you are there for them as an ensemble, as a cast. Then you let go, take a deep breath… and then we typically do articulation exercises.

Analysis/Background

My informant explained that this exercise is meant to ensure that every actor is connected to the other members of the cast prior to the performance. When asked if he felt that the exercise worked in this way he responded: “Not in the slightest. Total waste of time. Probably works for most actors and not me. I am a writer. I feel more connected to a character when I’m an actual person doing things that normal people do and this isn’t something people do. Well, it does create an emotional connection, its a fake emotional connection, but its there.”

This ritual, whether the actors feel it is silly or not, is a transformative one. The group performing it when they enter the stage are individual actors preparing to play roles. The ritual links each actor purely by virtue of the fact that everyone performs it together. As the last act of the group before they perform together, it allows everyone to cross the liminal threshold from actors to characters, and individuals to ensemble. The meditative quality of the ritual would help to clear the mind of concerns brought to the stage from the actors’ lives outside of it, bringing each person into the mindset of the job, so to speak. The individual is set aside to that that the actors can now act as a collective.

 

The Martini

Nationality: Mexican-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Film Student (Producer, Assistant Director)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 3/16/12
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

In this image my informant holds up a slate for a video project titled “Two Portly Guys.” There are martini glasses drawn around the shot number “2” – this is meant to indicate that this shot will be the last shot captured on that shooting day.

It is a strange paradox of working on film sets that the experience on the set has little to do with the subject matter of the film itself. There is no way to extrapolate from a finished film the experience of the crew members working on the set.

In a set environment at a film school, students who have known each other and worked together for several years are often thrown onto crews together for a project. The familiarity of the students with each other creates a unity to the entire filmmaking process, from pre-production (planning of the film) through post (editing and sound designing the film) that does not exist in the film industry outside of school. For instance, on a USC project the on-set crew will likely know the students who will be editing the film. However, at the USC film school in particular, the way that some classes are organized require that the editors of a film not be present on the set. This results in some pranks played on the editors within the footage.

My informant (in the image above), who had held the slate for a USC undergraduate thesis film prior to the “Two Portly Guys” project, told me that drawing martinis on the slate is one way to bring the editors – friends of the set crew – into the set experience, albeit after the fact. “The martini” is the name given to the last shot of the day before everyone goes home. There are various stories about why the last shot has been named this, but it is an accepted and recognized term. It is common among film students at USC to indicate the “martini shot” on the slate by drawing martini glasses onto it. The slate, as the marker which tells the editors what shot and take of that shot is being captured after the slate has been shown, should be (if the shot was taken correctly) the only indication throughout a single shot that the film crew is there, thus it is the only time that the crew can communicate with the editors as fellow filmmakers.

I feel that the martinis on the slate can also be an indicator of set morale. On the “Two Portly Guys” set I noted that the crew was greatly enjoying their work because the scenes they were taping were humorous. My informant seemed excited when told that the last shot had arrived and quickly draw the martinis. However, my informant also told me that there were days on her undergraduate thesis set that she did not draw the martinis. Though she did not connect this to crew morale, she also told me that there was rarely a day on that set that she didn’t feel tired or stressed by the miscommunications among the crew, or the slow pace of the work. Thus I believe that a crew that is working together well and runs into few problems throughout the shooting day will be more likely to be in good spirits by the end of the day, and have the energy and inclination to take a moment to draw the merry little icons onto the slate. If the last shot of the day lacks martinis, it might be an indicator that by the end of the day the crew was too burnt out to have any fun with the slate.

Assistant Directors Make No Friends

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 21
Occupation: Film Student (Sound technician, producer)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/13/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio and Context

The following joke was told on the set of a USC student music video. My informant was a grip (crew member working in the lighting department) who told the joke to the assistant director (or AD: production manager who keeps track of time) of the set. My informant is currently a film student at USC and often works in the sound department, but who like most USC film students has held positions in other departments as well. She has also worked as an assistant director and producer, for instance. On this set my informant knew the assistant director from classes and by reputation, and likely felt that the joke would amuse the AD who works as an assistant director almost exclusively.

Transcript

Hey, so why are ADs bad in bed? Because they think two minutes is a really long time.

Analysis and Background:

Understanding of an assistant director’s job sheds light on the reason for this malicious sounding joke.

In the United States, the assistant director (AD) belongs to a film’s “production” department, meaning that they work for the director and producers in a non-creative capacity. Their job is to “run the set” so that the crew is able to capture every shot planned for that day. The AD is responsible for scheduling the order of the shots taken that day for maximum efficiency, communicating with every department so that they know what they need to prepare for as the day moves along, and keeping track of the time. This can mean that the assistant director needs to make decisions that place higher priority on one department’s work over another. For example, if the crew is running thirty minutes behind schedule, the AD may need to talk to the director about cutting a shot, or to the art department about spending less time dressing a part of the set, or to the director of photography about making the lighting on the actress’ face a little less perfect than he wants. Anything to save time. Because assistant directors serve the big picture, they are often viewed as the enemy of the individual departments.

This joke belittles the sexual prowess of the assistant director by using the AD’s primary function as the set’s time-keeper against him. The intention of this is clear – while the joke itself does not undermine the authority of the assistant director on the set, it separates him from the rest of the crew, and depicts him as being the same as, even less than, everyone else in other aspects of his life. The joke tells the crew that while the AD’s watch has power on the set, off of it, it would make him look like a fool.

My subject felt that the joke was humorous simply because it is, in her words, “accurate.” Assistant directors are always keeping track of the time, but off-set in many situations this trait is often inappropriate. In this way the joke also comments on another aspect of life within in the film industry, which is the necessary separation of one’s life in film production, from their home life or social life. The long, fast-paced, stress-heavy hours of film production work are often compared to being at war. One’s mental, emotional – and as this joke implies, sexual – health can only be maintained by a clear separation between life on the set, and life off of it.

Notice too that the joke seems to imply that the assistant director is a man. (Jokes revolving around the premise of climaxing too quickly during a sexual act are typically aimed at men.) This assumption within the joke is not entirely inaccurate as the majority of crew positions in the film industry have historically be held by men. In this particular case the joke was told to a female assistant director, who laughed in spite of her position.