Tag Archives: Film

Film Company Hazing

Nationality: Moroccan
Age: 19
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles/Tucson, Arizona
Performance Date: 4/21/16
Primary Language: English

SS interned at a production company, and experienced occupational folklore in the form of hazing. When someone at her company messed up as bad as she did, they would be forced to coil cables indefinitely.

SS: Once upon a time when I was a wee lassie, young, naive, full of enthusiasm for the art of filmmakimg, I in my ignorance accepted an internship at a local prod. company in Tucson, Arizona. The production company was supposed to train me in grip and electric work on film sets in addition to giving me a better understanding of how film industry worked. one evening, the most useful work they could put their intern to do was to go through the email of the previous owner of the company. This owner never ever understood how technology worked. This man is a modern dinosaur. It was astounding he could even turn on the computer. So when I was given the task to clean out this guys email (had had it for 10+ years), tidy it up, and find contacts I knew it would be daunting, but never knew it would be impossible. As I ventured to the abyss of this inbox, I realized there were over 15,000 unopened emails in which I have to find any important filmmaking connections. So I’m going through and trying to set up a system. I learn this guy’s entire life, lots of personal details just by going through his email. My boss comes in and says ‘Hey if you find any pics, download those as well.” So sure enough I find a few emails with pictures and try to download. It doesn’t work. I keep clicking download, download download. The I realize the computer is frozen. Completely overloaded and overworked. Ok, just gonna take a step back and give it some time to breathe. An hour goes by. The little rainbow wheel of death is still spinning. The boss comes in and asks “Are you done yet?”

“Fuck no, also the computer’s frozen.”

“Turn it off and back on.”

I leave work at 5 o’ clock usually. Clock hits 5, gotta go, man. I think it might just need to figure itself out overnight. Later, I realized what I had done was download 6,000 copies of this picture to the desktop. The next Thursday, I get back to my internship. No one is speaking to me. This guy goes “Hey do you know what you did to the computer? Well, you completely destroyed that computer.” Whoa danger zone, unprotected. Long story short, they had to take computer into apple store, because it wouldn’t respond for 3 days. Took some cray diagnostic.

“We aren’t going to let you do anything on the computer today, instead we have a different assignment for you.” They’re obviously pissed.

Keep in mind, it’s a casual 100 degree day in Tucson, Arizona. My new job: go outside and recoil a bunch of massive cables that were coiled counterclockwise. I had to recoil them all over, in clockwise direction.

They told me that “we know you’re not really good at coiling cables, so we thought this would be good practice.”

It was ACTUALLY ABUSIVE I went home and listened to music people picked cotton to I felt like I could relate for the first time in my life to slaves. I couldn’t move for 2 days. It’s the heaviest cable that exists. Also, I still can’t coil cord.

Avoiding Exclamation Marks in Film Titles

Nationality: American
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Palos Verdes, California
Performance Date: 4/26/16
Primary Language: English

The informant is an 18-year-old Film Production Major, freshman.

 

According to the informant, there is a tradition in Hollywood filmmaking to avoid exclamation marks in movie titles, for they are considered bad luck to box office success. Under the tradition lies a paranoid tradition of film studios avoiding any decisions outside the norm, so as to not risk a poorer performance in profits. Therefore, this tradition is rooted in a likely statistic that films with an exclamation mark in the title make less money, whether by chance or a subliminal dislike of Americans towards exclamation marks. As a result, the informant claims he also avoids using exclamation marks in any films he produces in the School of Cinematic Arts, perpetuating a widespread habit among filmmakers.

 

STAR WARS “IMPERIAL MARCH” DJ BATTLE

Nationality: Chinese-American
Age: 22
Occupation: Student
Residence: USC, From Portland, Oregon
Performance Date: 4/18/15
Primary Language: English
Language: Chinese

ABOUT THE INFORMANT:

My informant is a senior graduating this semester from USC. He is a biomedical engineer, and is the oldest son of two immigrants from China.

EXAMPLE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uw0v6kkasMk

DESCRIPTION:

“This is this weird video I found a while ago when I was searching through the bowels of the internet. I guess it’s this DJ {DJ Skratch Bastid} like scratching the Star Wars song on turntables. Not the like heroic one, the one that Darth Vader comes out to all the time. But it’s like during this head-to-head DJ battle, and he basically just plays this out of nowhere and shuts it down.

It’s just such a classic song, you know? It’s legendary. To pull that out so spontaneously, to mash it up that way, it’s really unique. Because, like, everyone knows that song and Star Wars and Darth Vader. It’s just a show stopper.”

ANALYSIS:

The setup here is that two DJ’s are battling back and forth, with each DJ allowed a certain amount of time to cut and scratch the records of his choosing. The idea is that from the music and sounds that someone else made, using the turntables, a person can make a new song or beat to it.

This is similar to mashup culture in general; in fact it is most likely the precursor to it, as this whole DJ culture of mixing and mashing records together has been popular for several decades.

The idea of mashups in general already create some grey area as to who the writer, owner, and author of the piece of music is, considering that it someone, the DJ, is using other previously authored, by the artist, pieces of music, which are owned by the record label, to create new music.

This version adds a new wrinkle to it, in that the new music created is in fact a cover of the “Imperial March” written by John Williams from the Star Wars films. This is therefore a mashup of previously recorded material. The folklore here has a few different dimensions to it.

The Star Wars films are unequivocally one of the most iconic film franchises of all time with its music being equally as recognizable. The song in question is the theme to the villain in the film, one of the most famous villains in all of cinema, and therefore carries a sort of clout and power with it. For someone to use the song in a head-to-head battle is almost like asserting your authority over them because of the context behind it.

Here, the song takes on a new power to it than it originally did when it was featured in the films because it contains all of the lore of the Star Wars films behind it.

Hear the original “Imperial March” in the Star Wars films.

How many…

Nationality: Canadian
Age: 22
Occupation: Film Student (Sound, Producing)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/13/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio/Context

The following series of jokes was told on the set of a USC student music video. My informant was helping out as a grip (crew member who works setting up lights and moving equipment).  She is currently a film student at USC and often works in the sound department, but like most USC film students she has held positions in other departments as well.

Jokes

How many actors does it take to change a lightbulb? One – they change it and the world revolves around them.
How many writers does it take to change a lightbulb? Do we have to change it?
How many producers does it take to change a lightbulb? Does it have to be a lightbulb?
How many electrics does it take to change a lightbulb? It’s not a lightbulb, it’s a “globe.”

Analysis

This series of jokes is best heard all together as my informant told them because it makes clear the comparison between the departments. My informant liked them because she herself has functioned in each of the roles mentioned above on a film set, and has noticed that her perspective on a particular task or issue does change with each job.

The joke plays on stereotypes of each role, but also simply their function as part of the collaborative process of making the film. Actors are viewed as vain and egotistical, however it is also true that all of the work done on a film set “revolves around” them, as its their actions that drive the movie. Writers are portrayed as those whose visions are trampled on by the changes asked of them by directors and producers, but they are also here seen to be defensive of the integrity of their work. The implication about producers here is that they will always look for an easier, and more cost effective solution than what it written, and it always shows them to be people who think outside the box. Electrics (film crew in charge of all electrical equipment on a set, including lighting) are portrayed here to have a specific way of viewing their equipment, and special terms for it, that differs from most others’ perception. The joke says that electrics are an exclusive group on-set, welcoming only to those who understand their methods, equipment, and terminology.

My informant felt that these implications about each department, both positive and negative, were accurate. Because of her experiences in these departments she enjoyed that the jokes clearly separate each department from one another, showing that no one on a film set is going to look at something the same way as anyone else will, because every department is in charge of considering different things. With actors its the performance, writers the story, producers the money, and electrics the gear.

I think the jokes also show that each department views their interpretation of the object as the one that makes the most sense and is most important to the making of the film. The humor in the joke comes from this separation of points of view.

F*** Sound

Nationality: Caucasian American
Age: 21
Occupation: Film Student (Director of Photography, Assistant Cameraman)
Residence: Los Angeles
Performance Date: 4/6/12
Primary Language: English

Informant Bio/Context

My informant attends the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts’ film production program. She is primarily focused on camera and lighting work and works often as a director of photography (crew member in charge of lighting scenes and composing shots in the camera). On a recent student film set she told the following joke while waiting for the director to finish rehearsing with an actor. The camera was already set and ready to go, and she reflected that it was a good thing that on this project they didn’t need to worry about recording sound.

Transcript of Joke

So this actress comes to Hollywood, right, and she’s having trouble you know, um, getting in. So she decides to sleep with a sound guy. And afterwards everyone’s all like, why’d you sleep with a sound guy? You should sleep with the director. Sleep with the director. And she says, well everyone’s always saying, fuck sound! Fuck sound!

Analysis and Background

After telling the joke the informant told a brief anecdote about a set experience she had where the assistant director (set manager) needed to find the production mixer (crew member who records sound on the set) in order to shoot a shot because in between shots the production mixer had fallen asleep and was not responding to calls. The informant herself took the joke as a humorous comment on the fact that the sound department has a lot of down time on sets. Like the actors, they are really only needed just before and through the recording of takes. Much of the rest of the time spent on a set changing lighting and re-dressing set pieces is time during which the sound department has nothing to do which gives them, according to my informant, the appearance of having an easy job and being lazy workers.

My reading of this joke however is more focused on the gender and position of power of the subjects in the joke. The main character in the joke is an actress who is portrayed as naive and desperate for fame. The joke plays upon a general belief that sex will help one, especially a woman with little experience, to get ahead in the film industry. The joke assumes a “green-ness” to actresses in Hollywood. The laugh comes from the understanding by film crews of  the truth behind the statement that “everyone’s always saying, fuck sound” and that newcomers to Hollywood would not understand why that is and would misinterpret the meaning. The actress who is new to town can hardly be expected to know the perception of sound technicians with film crews.

Also notice the use of the term sound “guy.” Rarely in the film industry does one refer to a crew member using a female pronoun – often the word “person” is substituted for “guy” or “man” if one is attempting to be politically correct, or even to refer to a female crew member. The gender dynamics of this joke indicate that it is young, naive girls who seek fame and fortune in a male-dominated work environment, where sex appeal is their only power. The desperation of the actress to break into the film business also hints at the brief shelf life of actresses, who seem to age quicker (and lose that sex appeal) in the public eye than male actors. This reveals not so much a gender bias among film workers as a tradition of acceptance of the fact that many roles in the film industry have historically been filled by men – particularly skilled crew roles.

The fact that the gender dynamics of the joke held even when being told by a female director of photography reveals that while the dynamics of film crews and the business itself may change, a stereotypical image of the film industry planted in the 1920s still holds in the public consciousness, and is source of ironic amusement even to modern film workers.