Thoughts on Professionalism.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011 5:14I walked off set today.
I feel really bad because I really like this particular director, but I had a problem with his crew today. Let me just lay it out there for ya:
I live in Huntington Beach and the location was in Woodland Hills. 57.7 miles, door to door, with a 10am call time. LA traffic is a nightmare, so it takes me two hours to get to the valley in the mornings. So, I was up at 6:30am, out the door by 8am, fought horrible traffic and was at the location at 9:55am. The owner of the location was there and let me in… And we sat and waited.
The makeup artist (who was also apparently the production manager) pulled up just before 10:30am. She parked her car, wondered around the location scoping things out, pulled her car into the driveway, unpacked all of her things, pulled her car back into the street, gave me a stack of paperwork, and continued roaming around not accomplishing much. I filled out my paperwork, even had to ask for additional paperwork that she had forgotten to give me, and I handed it all back to her. I stood around, sort of lingering as a sign that I was ready when she was. Well, she wasn’t. I waited around a little more… Still nothing. (The production assistant had arrived shortly after this girl did and he sat around doing nothing. The director and the photographer/videographer never showed up.)
At exactly 11am, one hour past my call time, I picked up my purse and my suitcase and headed for the door. Right at that moment, she approached me. “I’m ready.” Really?! NOW you’re ready? One full hour after my call time? One full hour of me sitting around here waiting for you?! I explained to her that I was now irritated and in a bad mood because I had sat there doing nothing but waiting on her for an hour, and that I was extremely disappointed in the lack of professionalism, and that I was sorry, but I was leaving. Her response: “You’re leaving because I was half an hour late?”
No, hunny, I’m not leaving because you were half an hour late. I’m leaving because I’m mentally and physically TIRED. Unlike some people, I’m very business minded and professional and I was up very early and sat in a lot of traffic to get there ON TIME, and you, someone who lives here in LA, couldn’t even do that. And, even after arriving late, you continued to take your own sweet time on getting your things set up, all the while never once apologizing to me for making me wait on you. You have ZERO respect for me and my time, and no paycheck would be worth putting up with you all day. Thank you, I’m sorry, and goodbye.
I know, I know, it was definitely not ‘professional’ of me to walk off set. But, when comparing the two, where’s the greater lack of professionalism?
I know that there are not many girls like me in this business. And when I say “like me”, I mean girls that show up on time, sober, and freshly showered and shaved. Most production companies spend a lot of time waiting on the girls, wasting time and money. So, I can see why an instance like this would not have mattered if they had booked almost any other girl. But they didn’t book any other girl. They booked me. The director has been shooting me since I first started in this business and he knows me and knows my tendencies and maybe should’ve given the crew a heads up. (Wow! Reading back… DIVA STATEMENT OF THE YEAR right there! lol.) But it’s true. I cannot stand when there is a lack of professionalism on set, and he knew that. Regardless of what we do for a living, this is a business and we’re all trying to make a living. I personally think that, if my call time is 10am, I should be able to show up, put my bags down, fill out my paperwork, and sit right down in the makeup chair and get started. I have a life and a business to run and I don’t like my time being wasted and I don’t like wasting other peoples’ time. I want to get in, do the shoot, and get out and get on with my life.
Again, I feel really bad, and they tried and tried to get me to come back, but I couldn’t. I work in an industry that requires getting very personal and intimate with others and I can no longer do THAT when I’ve been upset/irritated/disrespected/etc.
I find more and more these days that people just don’t care about their business. (Makeup artists are bigger divas that the performers these days!) Every set I’ve been on in the past month, the makeup artist has been anywhere from 15 to 40 minutes late. That’s ridiculous. What’s worse though is nobody ever says anything. It just gets brushed off. Then, when the girl is finally out of the makeup chair 90 minutes later, the crew THEN decides to set their lights up and get ready. WHAT?! Shouldn’t they have done that while the girl was getting ready? This is the kind of stuff that irritates me to my core. I can’t stand it! To me, it’s common sense: Let’s do everything in our power to make this day go as QUICKLY and smoothly as possible so that we don’t waste anybody’s time. Period. That’s how I personally do it. I shoot on a weekly basis. I book several girls at a time, and when they show up at their call time, my crew is already on set and ready to go because they were aware of the girls’ call time and were prepared to get going. Nobody wants to dick around and be there any longer than they have to. Why is that so hard for other people to do?!
Over the past 5 years of me being in this industry, I’ve said this over and over: All I want is professionalism. It makes me happy. Yes, we fuck for a living… But get your shit together and let’s keep it professional.
