16-SEP-21 Tired Thursday

[DiveMilw]

I haven't napped as much today as I did yesterday but I've been tired all day.  I'd love to take a nap now but that would mean I'd be up all night.  8PM is rather late for a nap!  Instead, I put a load of laundry in the washing machine.  I may even do a load of towels to liven up the evening!!

[scenicdesign71]

I should be going to sleep but I'm not very tired, having been conscientiously getting to bed early most weeknights ever since my job started up again about a month ago.  Also, today I did what I believe may have been my first more-than-ten-hour day so far this season -- just under eleven hours, to be exact -- but, rather than tiring me out, it left me somewhat energized, since the actual work was all crammed into the final partial-hour of an otherwise notably slow day.

After originally having been assigned to a certain filming location this morning, the schedule changed and we ended up staying at the studio doing busywork for the first half of the day.  Then, after finally going to said location after lunch, we waited two more hours there for the further-delayed arrival of a (prop) bus that then required barely 45 minutes of work: applying printed decals to change its ostensible route number and destination, covering the modern MTA logo with its 1991 counterpart, removing a pair of tabloid-size vinyl-mesh post-9/11 American-flag window stickers, and covering a few other period-inappropriate graphics.

(According to the semi-obscure division of labor in TV-land, anything inserted into a frame or stuck onto a surface with double-stick tape -- such as the early-90s-style ads and posters that went up inside this bus -- is handled by set dressers; but anything involving contact paper, self-adhesive vinyl, or static-cling frost falls to the scenic artists.  I guess the latter processes require a certain kind of relatively specific and subtle hand-eye coordination...?  Vinyl, especially, wants to stretch or wrinkle or bubble if you don't know how to handle it, and sometimes even if you do.  But whatever the reason, it's a skill-set that scenics are expected to develop -- along with, for instance, hanging wallpaper).

Not wildly exciting work, but good for a mild sense of accomplishment, and executed (after all the delays) with a sense of mission, albeit only that of finishing as rapidly as possible so we could finally go home.  (The actual filming wasn't until hours later -- indeed, they may just be shooting that scene now -- so at least we weren't fighting the clock in that sense).

From what I could gather, this bus isn't a "hero" prop of any kind -- I heard the (exterior street) location referred to as a bus stop, but to my knowledge there's no scene labeled "INT: CITY BUS" or anything, and its appearance onscreen doesn't seem to be significant in any special way, unless perhaps we're meant to briefly see someone -- either a named character or an anonymous background figure -- boarding or exiting it.  All I learned is that it will be seen coming down the street as a principal character pulls up from the opposite direction in his car; the bus itself may well flash by in a background blur (or, it's always possible, get edited out entirely).  If it is in fact a night shot, there's a chance the viewer might be at least subliminally aware of the period ads in the (lit) interior, while our work on the outside -- camouflaging tiny anachronisms like "Clean Air Bus" -- might, under nighttime lighting, prove all but superfluous (which would be just as well, since our vinyl patches weren't always a seamlessly-invisible match for the existing bus colors).  I can't even really ballpark how much this bus cost the production in total, but I'd guess it might easily stretch toward five figures, perhaps depending partly on how many background passengers were hired to populate it; our scenic labor alone set the show back several thousand bucks (for four man-days spent mostly waiting around to do less than three man-hours of work; one of us, working an eight-hour day for personal reasons, finally ended up having to leave before the bus even arrived).

Anyway, after getting home around 5:30pm, I'm still not feeling very tired, but I should start counting sheep or something.  If I crash now, I can get seven hours of sleep.