tigertail in new york

Apologies to those who thought I'd died and not had the foresight to tell them.. I've been in film-land, that magical place where you work long-arse days (16+ hours), get very little sleep (averaging 3-4 hours a night), have no food in the fridge (unless you count vitamin water, red bull, a jar of branston pickle, jalapeno slices and some sweet thai chilli sauce), have no social life, and don't get to respond to emails or texts unless they specifically relate to the project you're currently working on.

I actually got a text from a friend here that simply read have you disappeared? I had to reassure him that I hadn't been kidnapped by aliens. Other friends who knew the deal sent me encouraging "we're thinking about you texts" which helped keep me sane when things were totally otherwise on set.

So if you were wondering where the hell I was, the answer is something like:
Production Office / Queens / Brooklyn / Manhattan / coming home and collapsing and getting up in the morning and doing it all again.

Of course it's more complex than that, but the internet is a very big place and you never know who may drop by via a well chosen word in a google search, and I'm not the most anonymous of bloggers, so no juicy salacious info from me - sorry!!

However, some personal highlights include:
*learning my way around some obscure parts of the city to the point where I may even know them better than my own hood
*networking / negotiating / dealing with people and reminding myself I'm really good at it and have heaps of experience in this area, and haven't used it professionally for a while
*negotiating the ups and downs of film permitting in NYC and coming out the other side with a much better understanding of how it all works for next time
* becoming a new york driver in 1.5 hours while having to suddenly move 6 vehicles and personally re-park a 4 wheel drive / SUV in downtown Brooklyn in the middle of a week day
*remembering that I'm really good at training people and helping them get the best out of their experiences so they'll do an even better job next time (as long as they have initiative - without that, as Flava Flav says I can't do nothin' for ya man)
*pulling off a few coups that people didn't think were possible and getting praise for them and for the job I was doing from a whole bunch of different people.
*working with a great crew of people, and making some good friends and great contacts for the future.

Have lots more to write about (like how excited I am that my friends Tom & Ish are here!), but this will have to do for now... another 5am start tomorrow...

Hasta la proxima,

Ness xxx

Posted by Ness on Monday, May 14, 2007 at 6:12 PM | Permalink