WORK, TRAVEL, WORK, AND MORE TRAVEL

It's been just over two months since my last post and I have been pretty busy, what with my place being renovated extensively and a relatively steady flow of work.

I had mentioned that I was hoping for enough work before I left that I would have enough set aside to pay my bills for a month or so after I came home, so that I could go away and not worry about all that stuff.   Well, that's why I haven't written - I have been working a fair bit since.

I had more work than I could do, quite frankly.  In fact, I can't think of a time in my career that I have had so many calls for different shows.  I could not do them all as most offers ran on the same weeks... sometimes one wishes one could clone themselves!  Since my last post, I've worked on two television movies (the two I mentioned); I ended up not doing the movie for a producer friend as I had mentioned, as I was asked to work on a union TV series - Arctic Air and it involved a trip to the Northwest Territories. Having never been there and not ever intending to go there (after all, my goal in life is to get closer to the equator, not farther away!) I was excited at the prospect of seeing somewhere very different and not having to pay for it.   I have to say that, despite the biting cold wind that howled relentlessly across the Canadian Shield, it was beautiful in a way that cannot be denied.  Rugged, raw, big sky, crisp air, and Yellowknife is a town like no other.  Art wherever one looked, even the refuse containers.  I am so thankful I was able to have the experience.  The only thing that I was unhappy about was I didn't get to see the Northern Lights.  The first three nights I was there they were spectacular, apparently.  I wouldn't know because I was sleeping (they don't come out till 1:30 am) due to early calls each morning.  The last night I was all set to go out and see them, blanket and all, but the sky was overcast so they were not there.  I will regret forever not skipping sleep for a few hours.

I have to say that I LOVE AIRPLANES so getting to work with so many on this show was a real treat and getting to be RIGHT ON THE RUNWAY as airplanes, both ours and commercial ones, took off and landed was an amazing experience.   At one point, we had two of ours in the air and they flew really low and right over our heads as we filmed them.  What a RUSH!!

My first glimpse of The Canadian Shield, something I remember learning about in grade 4

Gorgeous view from one of the highest vantage points in Yellowknife; the Pilot's Monument

Perched at the very edge of the cliff at Pilot's Monument as we shoot a scene, the monitor placement meant one step back and it was over for me!

Bullocks, a pub in Yellowknife.  The interior of this pub is recreated on a stage in Aldergrove, BC for the shooting of Arctic Air

One of many painted dumpster bins around town. Unfortunately I did not have time to take pictures of them all as we had a gruelling schedule

A house I came across while walking from one shooting location to another 

Up close and personal to four water bombers.  Huge and impressive aircraft

Photo op with a fellow crew member

Buffalo Air, home of  The Ice Pilots.  What a great place.  I haven't ever watched the show but it is an iconic brand that Yellowknife is very proud of.  The DC-3's are amazing!!

Another photo op!

Me and 'Buffalo Jim' the owner of Buffalo Air

Mikey, Buffalo Jim's son

No sooner did I get back from the Northwest Territories than I received calls for no less than four different productions, two of them TV series.  Unfortunately I had to turn all of them down as they each had schedules that overlapped my trip to Grenada.  Some might say I should have cancelled the trip, and to be honest I wondered myself if that was what I should do.  But then I thought, this is why I work... to take trips like this. I have heard so many stories of people in this industry who take work over all else and thus never get away, never spend time with their families, never live.  I don't live to work, as much as I love what I do, I work to live.  The incidences of divorce in my line of work is high and attests to the folly of the 'work at all costs' mindset.  It is also the industry that has the highest number premature deaths of all ... ALL ... unions in North America.  The work is hard, not glamorous as everyone thinks, and the hours long.  My week is never less than 72 hours and most often is in the 80's. Some weeks I have worked 90+ hours.   That is hard on anyone's body.

I also just worked a day on Almost Human, a new TV show for Warner Brothers.  A colleague was ill and needed a day off.  Wow what a day (or should I say night).  We started at 13:30 and I was not off the clock till 07:30 the next morning and we were in a dank, cold, dark old filthy abandoned foundry warehouse.  It was brutal but it was a union show at a great rate so that cheque waiting for me when I get home from my trip will be nice!

Anyway, all that to say, I leave for my trip in 5 days and am able to go with a clear mind.  I don't have work lined up for when I return but I am not worried.  Something will happen, it usually does.

Tomorrow I will write about the plans for the second half of my trip ...  10 days on the island of Grenada.

WINNING!!!!

Watch the video below:



Yep... I WON THAT!!! Yes I did!! That is why I am going to Grenada in October. Once I won and we got to talking, Rick, the captain of Sophisticated Lady, extended the prize from 7 days to 10! To say I am excited seriously understates my feelings about this.

First of all, I did not expect to win at all because I abandoned the whole thing half way through. I know my friends on FaceBook and I know human nature. If those videos weren't going up at approximately the same time every day, friends were not going to be sharing them every day. Rick was very hit and miss about getting them up first thing in the morning and eventually at getting them up at all (several days went by with no video - turns out he was at sea with no wifi) and so I decided to stop posting them.

Next thing I hear from Rick is after the contest closed, in a private FB message saying "Why did you stop on day 20? Do you realize you were winning?" My heart sank a little. Then he told me that the person who 'won' did so with questionable tactics so he was having a 'sudden death' posting for three days and that could get me back in front as I was only eleven shares behind first place. So I got back in it and shared the video a couple of times a day for the three days over the weekend, and bugged the life out of my FB friends to share it, which some of them did.

Monday morning I woke up about 8am PST and when I checked my FB page, not even thinking about the contest, another BVI friend had posted on my page that I "better get your (butt) out of bed and start looking for flights to Grenada... what a way to start a Monday morning". My head was still thick with sleep and the exact meaning of the post was not sinking in. Then I went to Rick's page at Ambient Real Life Video and saw a post stating that I was the winner of the contest.

I was elated... a dream come true!! Several in fact... sail some of the Caribbean Islands, see Grenada, go to the Tobago Keys, meet Rick. And instantly worried; could I afford to do this? Yes, the cost of the cabin on the boat was totally free, but I still had to fly there and back and have some spending money, help provision the boat, etc. I have had even less work this year than last, but I have been saving faithfully - setting aside in a special savings account the dollar amount of the number of the week of the year as it rolls around (so $1 first week, $2 the second...all the way up to $52, saving about $1,300 by the end of the year) AND every cent of 'holiday pay' on each paycheque. I realized I had enough saved for the flight with about $200 left over. So that was good as Rick said provisioning the boat would run only about $100 each. But, if you know me at all, then you know that I am not travelling all that way and only staying 10 days. So I knew I'd want to have a land-based week or, better yet, two as well. That could be a problem. I also hate to travel with the bare minimum amount of dollars on me... that is just way too stressful. So I need to do this and I need to do it right.

With no work on the horizon, and almost two months since my last job, I had no idea how I was going to make this happen. Then I got a call from a colleague who, four days into a shoot, had to leave the show and wanted me to take over. That was two weeks work. Then, almost as soon as that show wrapped, I got a call from a show to take over for a colleague who had a family emergency - on a show that had not gone to camera yet. THEN I got a call from a producer whose show I did three years ago, and he was in town to prep a new show and wanted me on it. So that gives me work right up to a month before the trip.

Now all I need is one more show in that month and I am good to go. It's not about the money for the trip now, it's about having enough set aside to keep paying the bills when I get back. A show in that last month would be just the ticket.

I am very optimistic that it will happen. Optimistic enough that I just booked my flight for 20 days in the Caribbean!!

I'M BAAACK!

So I think this is the longest spell I have gone without posting since I started this blog in 2009. I was incredibly sidetracked from my normal day to day life spearheading the Save BC Film campaign. That is pretty much over with now, the election has come and gone, we didn't get who we wanted in office as Premier, and we just lost two HUGE movies - Man of Steel 2 and Fantastic Four Reboot. That is hundreds of millions of dollars lost to our economy. It's just criminal how little our government seems to care about the livelihoods of over 25,000 film workers here in B.C. Not to mention the revenue that is lost to the province in spin off business. Criminal.

Anyway, I got sidetracked, but I am ready to pick back up because...

I AM GOING BACK TO THE CARIBBEAN!!

Yes! I am going to realize my dream, for 10 days, and sail the southern Caribbean islands otherwise known as The Grenadines. I leave October 10th and arrive in Grenada the 11th, will be on the sailboat until the 21st and then I am going to stay on the Grenada for 10 days, flying home on the 31st.

So... I will have lots to write about in the coming days. It won't be every day, as I start a movie on Monday that we will shoot in two six-day weeks. I will then have a week off and then start another movie that we will take four weeks to shoot... that will take me to September 14th... so the time between now and leaving for Grenada is going to FLY BY.

I am so excited!