thu 21 aug 2008 18:56:35 — witte de withstraat
i had a bad dream
i dreamed that i and a small crew had finished shooting the master shot of a scene involving some people meeting at a conference table. that went so well, it seemed this job was gonna be een makkie.
we broke for lunch.
when we got back we would do the closeups and reverses that were necessary for coverage. and since we were ahead of schedule i was thinking of some extra pickup shots that might come in handy in post.
then i began to feel that it was taking a long time for the crew to reassemble to get back to work. everybody seemed to be busy with something.
we needed to get shooting again, the daylight was changing.
i found my trusted art director, ajw, involved with a couple of PA's finishing work on a big curved construction, about the size of a small piano, made of canvas on some kind of wire frame. it was a tribute to aj's resourcefulness that they'd fashioned it so quickly. ... but i had to ask, what is this for, what have you guys been building? aj told me this thing they'd built was to hide the [... fireplace? giant television? christmas tree? ...] from view. something across the room we were shooting in, which we would not want in the shot.
but that thing's not even in the shots i'm planning, i said -- why do we need to hide it?
i went back to check at the conference room we were filming in, just to confirm that i wasn't crazy. (at this point i first realized it wasn't the only conference room, there were others adjacent to it.)
so i inquired of my crew, who told you we needed to build this clever thing i never asked for? aj said she just got a post-it note addressed to "art dept" telling her this needed to be built. but who sent the note? she of course didn't know, she assumed it was from production. i started asking among the PAs and other crew members, whose idea was this time-consuming thing i never asked for? no harm done, i just need to tell him no thanks. but nobody would own up to having suggested it, or even knowing who might have. so i got this weird feeling that my project was coming out of control, whether by intent or by sheer entropy.
at the same time, i noticed that the building we were filming in had grown deeper, more warrenlike, like a victorian era mansion converted to ad agency offices ... and my crew were scattered further about in various offices and conference rooms, doing various things i hadn't asked them to do. i was surprised and a bit distressed that we had hired such a big crew. and in fact i didn't personally know any of the keys. except for ajw they were all strangers.
somewhere i paused, waiting for someone to show up, and became part of a conversation about how with a big crew everything takes longer. everybody needs five minutes to put up another three mafer clamps or whatever, and nobody can keep to the schedule. i said to this girl: well it's that way here, but that's not how it is in LA. really? she said. i confessed that i'd only actually shot in LA once, but the crew i had were blindingly fast. then for some reason i said "it's good to be nice, though". and the PA i was talking to agreed.
still being as nice as possible, to find my way back to that one room we'd so easily done the master shot in that morning, i had to follow the trail of equipment and power cables on the floor. as i moved through the building, in each room i kept calling out "is anybody here on my crew? If so, follow me!"
i never did get back to the set. woke up troubled and irritated.
so this is another one of those work anxiety dreams where the more you try to get back to zero, the further away you slip. but the timing seems odd, that i should dream this only after the real anxiety has abated (ie, i now do have my current project under control). so i'm trying to think if it is metaphoric of something larger than just work.
usually the sprawling house in my dreams seems to represent my personality, or my life or something. maybe the crew at work in my personality are too busy trying to do too many disparate things that i never asked for.