I’m back in London. It’s hot. It’s about to break, dammit. Dan came by in an open top car and dropped his driving licence. I’ll be picking up a van tomorrow. I’m going into the production office tomorrow. It’s my first day.
Ha. My “first” day.
I’ve been building this team for over a decade, but tomorrow is the first day I’m officially on the payroll. I’ll know half the team. As ever I’ve been balancing ability and personality with the recommendations I’ve made. Once on one of these jobs, CrapDuncan the location manager who literally thought I had made my life up said “You’ve just employed loads of your friends,” and it really disappointed me that he thought that. I mean he was a bumwinnet of a human being but it still hit home, as he wanted it to. I barely knew half the people I had employed, and didn’t know some others. He was totally wrong, just as he was totally useless. But it made me question it – I got one broke friend in because they were broke, and they were the only one to let me down. They showed up steaming hungover. Lesson learnt. The rest I got in based on my knowledge of what they bring, but loads of them I had only met once or twice and was rolling on instinct. My instinct was borne out. I had lots of conversations with people – the first conversation is always theoretical – and wrote them off based on their approach to the theory. For the hardest ones (6″5′ actual policeman willing to act) I went to Funemployed. I have had some very tricky things to source over the years. Funny to realise that just by living my life wide I’m good at a thing that others aren’t. I’m good at diverse team building on a large scale. I have an absurdly wide life and a very varied and full address book, even though I mostly haven’t contacted you for ages. I’m not the guy who phones through everyone once a month. But I get to meet a very wide variety of people.
I’ll start work tomorrow on this shoot and see loads of people I’ve known for ages. Competent professionals. Some will be driving, others will be behind the camera or lights. One of them will be doing the job I usually do. I won’t see her tomorrow as she’s suddenly got COVID and is staying in Aberdeen until we get there.
Yeah which is FLASHBACK CITY! Remember when we had to send a lateral flow test before we could go to work?
I did one day of work once when we had to register the fucking test before they let us in the building. Ahhh the sweet nostalgia. Horrible craptimes. We all have to do it… Tomorrow morning I’ll send a photo of a bit of plastic before they let me in. I’m going through my old photos as I threw all the tests I had away some time ago. This is SO 2021 dude but I’m game. It’s worth it for the fact we are making something that isn’t shit, with interesting people. I’ve been looking forward to getting started and yeah, loads of crew are doing the “oh I’m sick but you still have to pay me” lark. It’s abject. I thought we were past that sort of thing.
Yay. New job. Should’ve started a week ago. But yay anyway.
AlBarclay 