Bread and Circuses

I learned a very important lesson on Sunday. If you can't pay your crew and actors, feed them well.

No, this valuable lesson was not learned on the mess of an independant feature I'm working on (they cancelled again, dontcha know!). This lesson was learned on a low-budget Digi60 directed by Claudia Jurt. Pictures from the weekend are actually up on her site right now (please ignore the pictures of me, for some reason, I look kinda fat and my arm seems flabby when, trust me, I have arms the she-hulk could envy).

It was a professional atmosphere, alot of fun, and they had a full craft services area for us with coffee, veggies, breakfast supplies, and some junk food. There was also a full crew (script supervisor, director of photography, assistant director, boom mic operator, craft services operator, stills photographer, behind the scenes videographer, ect.) and extras to supplement the scenes. I witnessed the very same thing the last time I worked on Claudia's set for her short, There's Something Wrong with Jake.

My theory is that the amount of food you provide through craft services is directly proportional to the amount of people who will be showing up on your set. Hence, that would be why the vast majority of the crew for the independant feature I'm on have been disappearing into this black hole in the earth's atmosphere and have not been seen or heard from in weeks.