Okay, I’m not talking about portal-to-portal: what’s the longest you’ve spent, on the clock, working on a set in one day?
I had some friends on the SNL film unit talk about a hellscape of 18 hours, but I know they mostly do two separate crews with separate shifts if they can staff it.
My personal record is 16.75 hours, sadly on a union majors movie. That was a lucrative but horrible day.
I’ve done the 16 hour day for a music video I was directing. Low pay, but tons of fun. Wouldn’t do it again though. I try to plan my shoots out much better now.
Mine is 17:45 on a 30 second car commercial, way too long, but the money was nice :-)
Holy crap!
I mean it’s long but i heard of way longer days? especially in the location departement? A flatmate of mine worked there and told me crazy stories… Anyone to back these up?
I think it like, close to 20 hours on a unpaid gig, and a solit 16 on a paid one
23.5h day as last day of a feature film. At wrap, the producer tried to skip the country (it was an Indian production in the USA) we found him suitcase in hand while checking out from his hotel room. We sat him down, with the grips gently stroking his shoulders until he signed checks for everyone’s paychecks. Bollywood film, always ask to be paid ahead of time. Speak up for yourself and always have a way to leave set by yourself or with a crew member friend.
I’ve crept past 14 hours a few times.
Didn’t like it. My hope is to write stuff that can be filmed at a high rate of pages per day but keeping hours to 8+lunch.