Missing the golden rule

I worked on a tough set yesterday.  I was hired as a dancer -- outside in 80-degree sun all day wearing winter clothes.  I've worked in worse physical conditions, including heat, cold, and extreme dust and smoke.  I've danced in 90 degrees on a dusty set with fake snow, and I've gotten sick from set several times before... but I've never before worked in tough physical conditions without a crew that acknowledged the conditions and tried to make our experience positive.  On this set, however, no one bothered to ask our names or even introduce themselves.  No one asked how we were doing in the sun in our hot costumes all day.  No one attempted to boost our morale.  No one thanked us.  I was not offered water once in a 14-hour shoot or told where I could find some myself.  No one told us where craft services (the area with beverages and food) was located.  Wardrobe repeatedly snapped at us to keep our coats on between shots, for no reason other than that they clearly thought we were irresponsible children incapable of following the language of a set and putting on our coats in time.  During ten-minute breaks we were asked not to sit down, despite our three-inch heels, because the only seats were in the sun and they didn't want our faces to look burnt.  When we tried to oblige them by taking off our heels and standing in our hose on the shady sidewalk on our breaks, we were snapped at to put the heels back on so our hose didn't run....   So our "breaks" were to be spent standing in three-inch heels... (several of us simply sat anyway -- with our shoes off)....

Since the set was on a public sidewalk, pedestrians constantly took pictures of us, and I found myself literally turning my back on people who were sticking cameras in my face, including one particularly persistent paparazzo who, unable to find a movie star on set, harassed the elaborately costumed dancers instead and took much interest in my conversation with another dancer.  On a nicer set, I might have found enchantment and glamour in the attention and perhaps even felt flattered....  But here, it simply increased my crankiness as I tried to block my face from the intrusions into my breaks.  In fact, I found myself marveling at how many people think they have a right to invade someone's personal space with their cameras and phones without so much as a tiny thought of what that's like for the person of whom they're taking photos.  We were simply interesting objects to them -- opportunities to get unique Tweets and Facebook posts, no different from the Empire State Building or any other inanimate tourist attraction.

So, hot, dehydrated, and cranky, many of us were relieved when told that our part of the day was done and they were moving on to a completely different scene in a strip club and we would all be wrapped…   Well, all of but three of us would be wrapped.  As it turned out, they hadn't hired any stand-ins for three of the principals in the evening work and so needed three dancers to volunteer to stand in (stand-ins do the blocking of the principals during shot set-ups and camera rehearsals so the principals don't have to be on set then).  The logical thing to do would be to say nothing and let them wrap me.  But I'm not always logical.  Continuing that night as a stand-in meant (aside from a much larger paycheck, because union rules dictated the stand-ins would be working at the overtime dancer rate rather than the standard stand-in rate) getting to see how this set worked from a completely different point of view.  Plus I really like William Shatner's first rule in his book Shatner Rules: Say Yes.  So I said yes and volunteered.  And that's how I got to sit in "video village" watching a four-minute scene get methodically covered from six different angles, on a set run by the first ever female director/ female 1st Assistant Director team I've seen -- all while sitting behind the Director of Photography's monitor (the DP became the first and only crew member to introduce himself, and he made a point to learn the names of all three of us and talk to us about the show), where I took turns with the other two girls wearing his headphones as we watched.

Eventually we were kicked out of our seats by some strippers with really great names, but by then it was almost time to wrap us anyway.

So am I glad I stayed?  Absolutely.  If I ever run a set, will I make sure to thank everyone and keep a positive environment and make sure everyone feels like an individual person with worth?  You can bet your life on it.