The Minority

I realized on set today, that I was the only latino working on this Terminix commercial. Not even the caterers had a latino brotha working for them! Usually the latinos on a film shoot are the caterers, security, or a P.A. Not this time. Ok, latinos DO work in the film industry, but most of the time I'm the only brown face in a sea of white people. It's changing slowly, but I do notice more and more minorities on jobs these days.

It must be the Holiday Season or something that this job has been so easy! Today we had a 6:30 A.M. call time...a whole half an hour more than yesterdays, they're so nice. Had a quesadilla for breakfast from the catering truck and went off to set.

We shot at another private residence in Long Beach again. I realized why our days were so short on this job. We are shooting a person that has a conversation with a face on this fake wall that is supposed to be part of the house. Since the "wall actor" has to put his head through this wall for this commercial for long periods of time, I guess it's only fair that they shot for a couple of hours a day so they don't over work the actor. It looked so uncomfortable too, poor guy.

One of my fellow P.A.'s had dooky duty today. Ah man, poor bastard had to rake up all the dog poop he could find in the area where we were going to set up for lunch. It's just one of those things you gotta do sometimes in this business if you're a P.A. Thank God, I have never done it...knock on wood. It was funny because another fellow P.A. was like, "Welcome to Hollywood Bro", we all kinda laughed a bit. Everyone has to start from the bottom, right? Well, unless you daddy is the producer or the director, then you can just do what ever you want.

Before I knew it, it was lunch time! The food was great today. I had some grilled chicken, BBQ steak, a baked potato, and some pasta salad...yum, don't tell my girlfriend or she'll bust out the, "That's why you're chunky" speeches. During lunch, the Assistant Production Manager asks me if I could take that 1000 pound TV that I picked up yesterday back to the rental house in Burbank, I was like, "Hell Yeah!" So my P.A. brothas helped me load it onto my truck, and I was off.

As I was getting ready to leave the rental house, I received a phone call from the boss. I was released for the day since they were wrapping over at set, so I got home before 5:00 p.m., dang that's nice!

Tomorrow is the last day for me on this commercial, Friday I do *pick-ups for another job.

* Pick-ups is when your day consists of picking up rented stuff for set, usually there's no filming on these days. Oh, and they are usually less than 8 hour days if you know what you are doing.