Remote

I worked today on a One Life to Live Remote shoot--a combination of day and night scenes (you'll just have to watch to see exactly what)--thus, the reason that my blog today waited until 1am.
 
I am tired, to be sure--there's a lot of standing and some running--a monitor on a stand rather than a control room, and a crew full of people accustomed to working the Law and Orders and White Collars of this world. It is truly amazing how different life becomes when you leave the four walls of the studio. And it turned out to be a welcome challenge going into the end of my week.
 
Once upon a time, soaps did ginormous location shoots in other countries for a week at a time. On One Life to Live, there was Austria and South America and a bunch of places in between. Toward the end, however, a day or two in New Jersey or on the studio roof for scenes from 8 shows became the norm. And as an AD, I rarely went on location--near or far--so today was a great reminder that the skills of good storytelling do translate from studio to location. I fit in with people used to working differently, and it was great to see that, in the end, though our backgrounds and paperwork might differ, our desire to tell good story united us as a crew, and enabled us to be waiting for darkness (already ahead of schedule by then).
 
I could say more deep things about working with a new crew, but then I would never wake up to work with the daily crew tomorrow.
 
So--Tune in tomorrow for the further adventures of Oltl, AMC, and me.