Today, we were Shooting a promo about something exercise-related.

I know this since it took place in a gym and all the Extras were very, very fit.

Actually, extras is a bit of a loose term here. Turns out, not all the extras were actors. Some of them were just gym rats that had gotten lured into the maelstrom by the promise of getting paid to work out for a few hours. They sure as hell weren’t

Which would be fine, of course, if we weren’t on a very, very tight schedule and shooting in a room with one entrance, 100 people, and 5,000 pounds of Equipment, most of which was being carried one way or the other though the door every few seconds.

An added degree of difficulty was the non-actors didn’t really understand the lingo or what was going on with all the non-fit people wearing toolbelts, so they didn’t respond to ‘coming through’, ‘make a hole’, ‘excuse me’, ‘get out of my way’, or ‘I’ll fucking kill you I swear to God’.

I’m normally not that cranky, but when I’m carrying a really hot light I get…upset when I have to have it over my shoulder for longer than absolutely possible.

The ADs spent much of the day yanking people out of doorways and out from in front of our lights.

This particular location had a hard out at noon – which means completely out – gone, no trace, opening for business. No option to pay to extend that. Hard, hard out.

We told them we need about an hour to wrap out and, of course, they kept adding shots until about 18 minutes before 12, and we ended up in a shot that used damn near all of our equipment. Lucky for us the riggers were there to wrap the cable or we never would have made it. As it is, we got out of the building in time, but still had to load the truck, which wasn’t what the location wanted, but we can only do so much so fast.