Tag Archives: occupational folklore

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.

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.

Accountant Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Oceanside, New York
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“We don’t bury our mistakes, we only erase them.”

 

I found this joke interesting because I don’t find it particularly funny, but, according to the informant, accountants enjoy the joke a lot. The joke refers to another profession: doctors. According to the informant, the joke means that doctors bury their mistakes whereas accountants only erase them. The joke seems to operate on a couple of levels. On the one hand, the joke implies a rather negative view of the field of medicine. It seems to say, well, accountants might mess up, but at least we don’t kill people when we mess up. On the other hand, the joke also indicates that what accountants do is not as serious as what doctors do. Accounting can be a very stressful job, especially during tax season, and the joke serves as a reminder that their job is not a matter of life and death. It is almost a way of comforting fellow accountants by reminding each other that if they make a mistake they can simply erase it and start over.

Dirty Accountant Joke

Nationality: American
Age: 61
Occupation: Accountant
Residence: Oceanside, New York
Performance Date: March 2012
Primary Language: English
Language: None

“Accountants do it with double-entry.”

 

This dirty joke is a double-entendre. It implies a sexual situation, but really it refers to the fact that bookkeeping is a double entry system. You enter information in a total column and a transactional column (hence, two entries.) The informant is an accountant and I believe that one of the major reasons the informant likes the joke and repeats it is that his profession is generally viewed as boring and accountants tend to be stereotyped as suit-wearing, brief-case carrying, straight-laced professionals who spend their days working with numbers and doing taxes. The dirtiness of the joke is unexpected and telling the joke seems to be a way for the informant to prove that he is more than a drone.