OK...I'm still up, so I might as well tell you something.

We're shooting "splits" this week and we'll be in nights by the end of the week.  "Splits" are when you start the day shooting a daylight scene and then you work until sometime in the night to shoot night scenes.

Splits suck.  Splits suck only marginally less than nights.

The issue for me personally is that I'm still stuck dealing with people in the real world who don't go to work at noon and stay there 'til midnight.  My solution is that I try to keep on a day schedule and have my Asst. Location Manager work the crew's hours.  That's the theory anyway.

I went to work at 7:30 this morning to get the company in at today's location.  Then I ran around all day working on prepping the rest of the week's locations.  I got back to set around 6:30 p.m.  I intended to leave set by 8ish and start my day tomorrow at around 8:00. It's now 12:48 A.M. and I've been on the phone to set multiple times since getting back to the hotel.  I'll admit that I'm a lot more comfortable sitting here with my feet up in a warm room than I would be sitting in a tent with a heater doing it's feeble best to win the war with the ambient 36º air.  I'll also admit that, since I'm here already, I don't have a 45 minute drive from set still facing me.

But I'm not sleeping.  And I'm not mentally checked out for the evening.  What I am doing is getting progressively less and less time off between the finish of today's workday and the start of tomorrow's workday.

They wrapped a little later than planned, so they've "pushed" tomorrow's call time by 1/2-hour.  So...instead of having a 2:30 P.M. call tomorrow, they'll have a 3:00 P.M. call.  Big Whoop.  I'm sitting here waiting for a call back to let me know that the "evening's" last issue has, in fact, been resolved.  And regardless of what time the crew call is tomorrow...and regardless of how long I end up waiting for the phone call telling me that last "issue" has been resolved...I'll still be getting up at 6:30 so I can make it to beautiful downtown Esopus, NY by 8:30 A.M.

I shall now bring to a close, this evening's unsolicited whining jag.  And I'll continue hoping the phone will finally ring.

Ain't the Film Biz glamorous?

Update 1:08 A.M.:  I just saw the first crew van arrive back at the hotel from location.  This means I started work 2 hours before most of the crew, left set 3 hours before they did, and I'm still not done working while they're done for the day.  And I get to start 7-1/2 hours before they will tomorrow.

Guess I still had a little whining left in me after all.