Oscar Time

Yes, it's Oscar time again -- which is why half a dozen helicopters will soon take their assigned stations hovering over the intersection of Highland and Hollywood Boulevard.  There they will remain for the rest of this day, filling the air with a clattering mechanical din as the media fulfills its cultural mandate to saturation-cover any and every celebrity dog-and-pony show -- and Oscar is the ultimate celebrity showcase.  None of this would bother me if I lived in Simi Valley,  Santa Monica, or Beverly Hills, but since I reside in Tinsel Town -- ground zero for Oscar madness -- this is one day of the year I can count on not being able to hear myself think.

In other words, it's a good day to get the hell out of Dodge, but since I'm lucky enough to be working tomorrow, that's not gonna happen. Guess I'll just have to fire up the stereo with some good rockin' blues to drown out the cacophony of my industry's annual orgy of self-congratulation.

The arrival of Oscar also means Hollywood Boulevard has been closed to vehicular traffic all weekend, but that's okay.   Unless you're a tourist, there's really earthly reason to drive down this boulevard of broken dreams, which -- as Hollywood's version of Disneyland, absent the oppressively smothering security of the "happiest place on earth" -- is strictly for out-of-towners.*

While discussing Oscar in this space over the years, I've referred to the annual pageant as "a bloated exercise in onanistic narcissism" -- or was that "narcissistic onanism"? -- I really don't recall, but you get the point.  My first Oscar post detailed an oblique brush with the little golden man way back when -- and if you're interested, a click of the cursor will take you back in time -- but better yet, read this, which was brought to my attention by good friend, skilled gaffer, and the ever-observant Dr. Kagen.  It's a rude, politically incorrect (in all the right ways), and to my mind, highly entertaining take on tonight's festivities.

Who will win what?  Having seen none of the entrants, I don't know and really don't care -- but if you do, I hope you enjoy the interminable broadcast.  Me, I'll pick up my trusty Mexican Strat, crank up the amp, and proceed to piss off my neighbors as I try (and fail) to match licks with BB, Albert, and Freddie King, among others.

Different strokes for different folks.


* And if Disneyland is where I have to go to be "happy," just shoot me now.  Please...

Another One in the Can

Here we go again...

The end of January brought the curtain down on the show that has sustained me since last June, with 26 episodes of cable-rate Disney fluff that kept the rent paid and the wolf from my door.  We returned from the Christmas break to reel off four straight episodes – the finale a hellaciously ambitious effort that involved two dozen moving lights and a full array of rock-and-roll LED-effects lighting, along with the usual tungsten package to be hung, powered, and adjusted. Given that the last three episodes were directed by this clown, closing out with such a complex show would pose a real challenge under the best of circumstances, but when our DP went down for the count on Tuesday with a very nasty flu bug, we were in for trouble. 

And trouble it was, in the shape of the substitute DP. The groans from our Gold Room were audible as he  walked on stage.  Although I hadn't worked with him before, some of the crew had – and judging by the stories they told, we’d all need to strap on our track shoes for the rest of the week.  As it turned out, he wasn’t a bad guy, but just a terminally indecisive DP who didn't know when to say “when,” and could not resist the urge to keep lighting and re-lighting right up to the moment the cameras rolled – and sometimes beyond.  

Although lighting certainly isn’t easy, it’s neither brain science nor rocket surgery, and a good DP understands that once a shot is lit, it’s lit.  At that point, you don’t fuck with it anymore absent a compelling reason – or as our gaffer likes to say, “Don’t put your foot through a Rembrandt.”

In this situation,  the substitute DP's job is to keep a light hand on the wheel and make sure the producers don't freak out.  Our gaffer had been lighting this show's sets for the previous thirty-plus episodes, and pretty much has it wired.  All the substitute DP had to do was take a good look at each shot, suggest a tweak or two, then sign off and let the cameras roll. 

Needless to say, this did not happen.  Instead, he came in hard on Wednesday – the last day before two long days of filming – at full throttle, and immediately began to change all the lighting our DP had already established for the huge swing set.  On a day when we typically add three or four lamps, then tweak and polish the lighting until every set is camera-ready, he forced-marched us through a major re-light, shuffling around (and re-patching) most of the big, heavy moving lights way up high on the grid.  Six long, sweaty hours later, we finally got around to the tweaking and polishing, which took us right up to the point where we had to stop or else violate the next morning’s early call turnaround.

It’s bad enough going into two long shooting days with a hack director at the helm – by now, we were more or less accustomed to that indignity– but without our unflappable DP to keep the producers happy, this thing could get ugly.  And with the substitute DP lobbing a steady rain of metaphorical Molotov Cocktails on the equally metaphorical fire, "ugly" is exactly what happened.  We hustled and sprinted our way through nearly thirty hours over those two seemingly endless days, and the dust didn't settle until early Fraterday morning.

After all that running around at his behest, you’d think the sub-D.P. would at least make a point of thanking every member of the grip and electric crews for their effort – but once wrap was called, he vanished into the darkness.  

What a guy.

It was a rather sour note to end the show on, casting a shadow over what is always a bittersweet experience.  Emotions tend to collide when production ends -- everyone is tired after the long season, and ready for a break, but without another episode to crank out, the sudden lack of forward momentum is unsettling.  You never really know if a show will come back for another season, and even if it does -- particularly with these low-budget, cable-rate shows -- it's doubtful that all of the crew will return.  None of us likes to trade our sweat, labor, and hard-earned skills for the low-rent, sub-scale wages paid by so many cheap-ass cable outfits, which is why anyone who gets a chance to work another show for more money will take it every time.  Still, cable rate or not, a crew bonds through the ordeal of grinding out a season -- and as A.J. put it so well in a recent post: 

"...this is the last day of the show, and like all shows, it will come to an end. After they call wrap, each department will disappear, spreading to whichever corner of the world (or Hollywood) the wind takes them. You might see a camera person or a grip or two somewhere down the line, but never again will all of you be on the same set. It will never be like this again."

And it won't -- it'll be something different, maybe better, maybe worse.  You never know.  It's a crapshoot every time.  

Early Monday morning, bleary-eyed and yawning, we all gathered on stage once again – still tired from the month-long flogging – to begin wrapping the lamps and cable, tearing down something that had taken the past six months to build.  As the saying goes, “It comes down a lot quicker than it goes up,” but only after what feels like an endless uphill slog.  The five day wrap turned into three days for me, when I had to bail early to start a new job with my old crew at another studio across town.  There, on Thursday morning, we'd begin hanging, powering, and adjusting the two to three hundred lamps the new show would need.    

We put the lamps up, we take the lamps down, then we do it all over again.  Our work is never done here on the Mobius Highway of Hollywood until we drop dead or retire, which makes this job feel a lot like the endless labors of Sisyphus.  

And so I threw a weary leg over my bicycle and pedaled on home one last time.*  Another show in the can, and another brick on the road that will eventually lead me out of Hollywood.  There's a way to go yet -- another four years, assuming I can make it -- and if the Gods of Hollywood are with me,  a few more rigs and wraps lie ahead.  But the end is now in sight.  

For better or worse...

* Yes, you heard right -- for the first time in 35 years, I landed a show within bike range of my apartment, and for every one of those 26 episodes, five days a week, rain or shine, early morning and late at night, I commuted to and from work via pedal power.  It felt good, too -- all 390 miles -- but the next show is over the hill in The Valley, so I'll be back in the car...

Hooks Redux

And what’s wrong with the Source Four


In response to a comment on the Good Hooks, Bad Hooks post a while back, I checked the pipe clamps on my show, but couldn’t find a brand name on the older bad hooks – which means they’re very old indeed. The Best Boy thinks they’re ancient Mole Richardson clamps, and given that such clamps pretty much last forever, he may be right. A quick quick look at Mole’s on-line catalog revealed nothing, but the bad pipe clamp pictured in the previous post came from ETC, and was bolted to an ETC Source Four lamp. As far as I'm concerned, ETC should be ashamed of themselves for manufacturing and sending out such a potentially dangerous clamp as standard equipment -- but a true sense of shame seems to be an exceedingly rare commodity in this town.

Which brings me to the subject of ETC’s Source Four lamp, which I first saw back in the mid-80’s. Small and light enough enough to hang anywhere, the Source Four could be equipped with a wide variety of focusable lenses and patterns, and proved very useful for adding luminous texture and/or color to set walls. Using an iris, the Source Four could even serve as a low intensity follow-spot.* We used lots of them to good effect on the sets of “Will and Grace,” and every other show I’ve worked on over the past 15 years.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that ETC hasn’t bothered to improve the Source Four much at all since those early days. The 500 watt bulb was upgraded to a 750 at some point, but that’s about it. Given that the lamp was apparently created for the theatrical world -- where lamps are hung and set, then left alone for the (hopefully) long run of a live show – this comes as no surprise, but lighting for feature films and television is a much more fluid endeavor. For the most part, the lamps we use on set were designed for durability, flexibility, and ease of use, but the Source Four remains stuck in a more static world.**

A couple of minor changes would make these lamps much more user-friendly. First, ETC should send all those crappy, dangerous 90 degree hooks back to be melted down and made into good, safe hooks. Then they should replace the tiny bolt on the stem (which controls the right-left pan function of the lamp) with an honest-to-God T-handle knuckle so that a juicer hanging and adjusting the lamp doesn’t have to pull out a crescent wrench just to loosen the bolt, pan the lamp an eighth of an inch, then lock it back down. These two modifications would make the lives of every juicer I know a lot easier on set.

Another long-overdue upgrade would be more complicated, but worth doing – adding some kind of worm gear along the barrel of the lens that would allow the light emitted from the lamp to be quickly and accurately focussed to DP’s liking. The current method is simple – a slot with a screw/knob adjuster – that requires both hands to use.  That's okay when the lamp is on a stand and easy to reach, but we rig most of these lamps on crowded pipe grids that can be very difficult to access. I can’t count the times I’ve had to go up in a man-lift (or climb to the very top step of a 12 step ladder), then stand on the rails in an incredibly precarious position to hang, focus, and cut a Source Four – at which point that sticky lens barrel suddenly makes the job much harder than it should be. A simple worm-gear mechanism with locking knob that could be operated with one hand would make a huge difference, but given that ETC doesn’t seem to give a shit about how bad their hooks really are (much less display any willingness to replace them with good hooks), I won’t hold my breath waiting for them improve the lens-focusing mechanism.

My job as a juicer is to make do with what we’ve got – to get the set lit whatever it takes – and I’ll do that until my days in this business are over and done.  Still, it would be nice if companies like ETC would help us out a little rather than sit there with both thumbs firmly inserted up their corporate ass.

But I suppose that’s asking too much.


 * I’ve done some day playing working for a DP who uses well over a hundred Source Fours on every show.  He’s something of an idiot, though, so I‘ll leave that discussion for a future post. 

** There are exceptions, of course. I don’t like the 200 watt Mole Richardson Inky or 1000 watt Baby Baby, and am no fan of small-wattage Pepper lamps, either.

Resolutions

                             And we can't have that...


I'm not one to make a big deal of New Year's resolutions.  Although I've declared a few over the years (and even managed to keep one or two), most of these good intentions -- like overloaded boats wallowing amid turbulent seas -- sank under their own weight into the muddy waters of reality.

Such is life.  It's hard to be perfect.

Still (having yet to learn my lesson, apparently),  I made another such resolution near the end of 2012 that will have a discernible impact on this blog.  Following the urging of many readers over the past five years, I plan to make a serious effort at putting the best material here into a book.

Whether anything tangible will come of this, I honestly don't  know. As the project takes shape, it will probably involve re-writing and combining selected posts to meet the needs of a different narrative platform, along with new material that has not yet appeared on the blog.  If all goes well, you'll find out here.  If not,  then this resolution -- like so many others -- will soon be forgotten by you, and regretted by me for a long time to come.

But nothing ventured, nothing gained, so for better or worse, I'll give it my best shot.

I set a goal early on of putting up a readable post here every Sunday, with an occasional mid-week offering just for fun.  I needed that discipline, and having to meet those weekly deadlines at the keyboard was a very good thing for me... but all good things come to an end.  Factoring in the time and effort the book project will require with a tentative-but-busy work schedule stretching into the foreseeable future, something has to give -- and the loser will be this blog.  There just won't be time to put a book together, make a living, and publish a weekly post.  Although it may not be apparent to anyone else, I do try to uphold a certain standard here (loose though it may be), and don't ever want to foist crappy posts on you simply for the sake of posting.  I've fallen short of that aim from time to time, but not for lack of trying.

A desire to work on other writing projects almost pulled the plug here three years ago, but I decided to forgo those and keep it going. For as long as this book takes -- and given my track record, that could be a while -- I'll continue to post whenever time and inspiration permit. Although BS&T isn't going away, there will be less of it in the year to come.  I have mixed feelings about this, but such is life.  We really can't do or have it all.

So that's what's happening here.  I thought you should know.

Wish me luck folks -- I'm gonna need it...

Picks o' the Week

   The Set Dressing crew's deckers on my show a couple of years ago

It’s mid-season replacement time here in Television Land, when shows that haven't managed to attract enough viewers are replaced by others that – for whatever reason – weren’t deemed ready for the starting lineup when the season kicked off back in September. Picking winners in this business is more art than science, which is one reason so many shows stumble right out of the gate. Some recover to find an audience, but others don’t – and those are cancelled before spending too much network money, then unceremoniously dumped on the ash heap of Hollywood history. Into their time slots go the mid-season replacements, eager to come off the bench, get in the game, and show what they can do.

Okay, enough with the lame sports metaphors...

In a recent piece, Mary McNamara (one of the LA Times excellent TV critics) talks about the relationship between new (and not-so-new) shows and their audience, and the delicate balance in the weekly tug-of-war  that determines what we’re willing to accept in a story and its characters -- and exactly where the line is beyond which viewers are not willing to go.

The equation is different for each show, and as a slate of new offerings hits the airwaves, Mary urges us -- in her usual engaging, thoughtful,well-written style -- to give them a chance.  If you hate a new show, you hate it, but if there's something good about an otherwise flawed new offering, try again next week.  Like all baby animals, new shows often take a few episodes to find their rhythm and settle into a groove.  Give up too soon and you just might miss out on something good.

It's a good one -- do yourself a favor and read it.

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You’d have to be living in one of Osama Bin Laden’s old hideouts in the mountains of Tora Bora not to be aware that the Sundance Film Festival is currently underway up in Park City. I don’t pay as much attention to Sundance as I used to, but given the buzz on the internet and newspapers here in LA, news of the festival is hard to avoid. One item caught my eye the other day, describing how a director, his actors, and crew managed to shoot a feature called  Escape from Tomorrow over the course of 25 days at Disneyland, undetected by the those responsible for running a tight ship at der MausHaus. Given the pit-bull ferocity with which Disney protects its squeaky-clean image, it’s astounding that Randy Moore and his crew were able to pull this off. Whether the legal storm troopers who defend the Disney Empire from any and all perceived threats will allow it to be distributed is another matter. It could well end up a cult movie doomed to travel the underground circuit, and although that would be a great shame, it cannot negate the audacity of Moore's accomplishment.

Given my own love/hate relationship with Disney*, the opening line of the LA Times article hooked me immediately:

 “About three years ago, Randy Moore, a struggling screenwriter living in Burbank, had an out-there idea: What if he took a tiny camera and, without asking permission, began shooting a narrative movie at Disney theme parks?” 

 “What if?” indeed.

A shorter piece on the paper's website includes a video clip wherein Moore and lead actor Roy Abramsohn reveal how they managed to film an entire feature right under the eyes of Mickey Mouse. Personally, I can’t wait to see this film, and hope we all get that chance.

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Another take on the Sundance experience is called just that -- The Sundance Experience -- recorded for KCRW’s “The Business” and rebroadcast as part of the station’s “Unfictional” series.  The website introduces the twenty five minute podcast like this:

“In 2005, director Richard Shephard took his film “The Matador” to the Sundance Film Festival. While he'd made three indie films and directed some cable TV, his dark comedy with Pierce Brosnan as a washed up assassin and Greg Kinnear as his unwitting accomplice was his last, best hope to make it into the big time. KCRW's Matt Holzman followed Richard during that tense week, and produced a documentary for KCRW's show "The Business." With Sundance now underway in Park City, we thought we'd revisit the story and check back in with Richard Shepard to see where his career went after Sundance.”

Offering an inside look at the tensions and pressures that come with chasing the dream all the way to Sundance – and hopefully, beyond -- this is another good one.

 Those are your Picks ‘o the Week. Check ‘em out...


*  As a kid, I loved Disneyland , then came to loathe the place with a passion while doing an interminable series of commercials there in the 1990’s.  For me, the “Happiest Place on Earth” was a nightmare location for filming.  The Disney technical support people were great, but the teeming crowds there left me with a decidedly jaundiced view of humanity after a couple of days -- but  now I suckle on the great swollen teat of Disney for sustenance  making shows for Disney Channel.  To say I’m conflicted about all this is an understatement...  

Why Grow Up?

                                          Indeed... 

Making movies and television is hard work, involving long days and nights of seemingly endless toil, often in miserable conditions.  Still, if there are plenty of bad days -- and each production puts its crew through the wringer one way or another -- we usually manage to have a pretty good time.  If that wasn't true, I'm not sure there'd be a compelling reason to do this kind of work.

Although it can be a very serious business involving tons of equipment, complicated logistics, and the steady heat of top-down pressure, it's all essentially make-believe.  While cops, firemen, soldiers, and Emergency Room personnel deal with very real danger and people in desperate trouble every day, we create elaborate illusions to portray their dramatically enhanced real-world life on screen.  We can even make the working life of a lawyer appear sexy and dynamic -- and from what I've been told by the various lawyers I know, that's a huge stretch of the truth.  For all the body-wracking effort and sweat it takes to create these illusions in Hollywood and beyond, working on set can be a fun job.

I was reminded of this when a co-worker gave me a copy of a memo and response saved from her time working on the feature Charlie’s Angels back in 2000.  You'll appreciate it more knowing that the term "L&D" stands for "Loss and Damages," and that one of the film's stars, Lucy Liu, experienced a little problem operating the accelerator and brakes of a very expensive picture car during the filming.

Given that thirteen years have passed, the unofficial statute of limitations has probably long since expired, but I'm taking no chances -- names have been redacted or shortened to protect innocent and guilty alike.

So here's a little glimpse of life on a big, expensive movie...


“Charlies’ Angels”

To: All Crew Date: 3/23/00

Re: L&D

FYI: Loss and damage to date. We will occasionally update this list as necessary. Read it and we’ll weep.

Construction:        $       2,446.00
Set Operations:     $          238.00
Special Effects:     $       1,870.00
Set Dressing:         $          799.00
Props:                   $       1,838.00
Wardrobe:             $       1,916.00
Electric:                $       6,769.00
Camera                 $       1,786.00
Sound:                                       0
Transportation:     $      12,044.00
Picture Cars:         $      36,365.00
2nd Unit Camera:  $           396.00
2nd Unit Sound      $        1,407.00

Total:                  $    67,874.00 


You can imagine the bemused -- and not so bemused -- derision with which this memo was greeted by the crew.  Some of the more creative among them wrote and distributed the following unofficial response the next day.

Charlies’s Angels Semi-Annual Loss and Damages Tournament 

To: All Below the Liners

Dear Foot Soldiers of BTL;

With the publishing of yesterday’s halftime results in the “CHARLIE’S ANGELS LOSS AND DAMAGES TOURNAMENT,” I would like to take a moment to warn our “Below the Line” teammates against fostering some false sense of security.

Although a midway total of $67,874.00 might sound impressive, you have to be one hamburger short of a Happy Meal to think we have a chance of matching our “Above the Liners” in the Total Funds Wasted Tourney. Facts are, we are being toasted by TEAM ATL. In order to avoid a complete rout, I offer a few simple observations.

First of all, Picture Cars and Transportation... you’ve put more points on the board than anyone else combined, but this is no time for gloating and showing off. By my loose calculations, Lucy “Where’s the Brake” Liu would have to ram at least 20 more Gullwing Mercedes into at least 20 more collector Ferraris to match the $2,000,000 in overruns due to scheduling difficulties incurred by hiring her in the first place. “Above the Liners” have outscored you 40 to 1, so wipe that silly grin off your face!!! Word around the TEAM ATL water cooler is that you guys are strictly bush league.

To the slackers in the Sound Department. What gives? Looking past the big game to the Oscars???? Willie, Marv, Bob... where’s your enthusiasm!!!!! My suggestion... by merely pouring one measly cappuccino over the sound equipment you can up your L&D contributions to $23,000. I know this pales in comparison to the hundreds of thousands of dollars we will willingly spend next week shooting scenes at the Gala that will never even be in the movie, but hey, what the hell. You guys have coughed up nothin’ but goose eggs. I want to see some points on the board... Now, Dammit!!!!!

To the rest of you... what can I say? The truth is never easy, but we may not have the gray matter or guts to start a multi-million dollar production that has no viable third act, thus paying millions of dollars to a small army of “$800,000 a pop” writers to “fix it” while the production paints itself into a corner and stalls daily as scenes get made up “on the fly.” Fact is, we’ve been routed from the field. The 68,000 points we’ve managed to muster is a drop in the ocean to the TEAM ATL juggernaut. We must have been dreaming to take the field against a team whose motto is “GO BIG OR GO HOME.”

Remember, the winners move onto face an imposing opponent in the MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 production team.

That crew knew how to have some fun while sticking a retaliatory shiv between the ribs of a UPM who saw fit to point out the relative pennies cost by the below-the-line help breaking a few dishes, while conveniently ignoring the truckloads of money squandered by those higher up the food chain.

Very nicely done -- it makes me wish I'd been on that crew...

Picks 'o the Week

      Kill the baby, save the baby -- it's all the same to a juicer...*

Now that “Beasts of the Southern Wild” has been nominated for an Oscar, we’ll be hearing a lot more about Benh Zeitlin, the young man who ushered this film into the world. If this recent piece in the LA Times is to be believed, Zeitlin has now returned to the down-and-out neighborhood of Louisiana where he made his movie, and seems content to live there in what can only be considered – when measured against typical Oscar nominee standards – as low-rent squalor.

Then again, young Mr. Zeitlin is anything but your typical Oscar nominee.

I suppose there are a dozen possible reasons why he’s doing this, and although cynics might see some carefully calculated angle here – a youth from the privileged world of money donning a hair shirt to enhance his image as a ragged cinematic poet of the streets -- I’m inclined to take young Benh at his word. He sees himself as an artist, and is thus justifiably leery of the powerful temptations that come with proximity to Hollywood, where the black hole of life in the fast lane has devoured so many promising talents before him.

This is an intriguing situation the likes of which we haven’t seen for a long time. Questions abound. Having made such a high profile splash with his first feature, what will he do next? Was that first effort a miraculous fluke, or can he manage to create another equally compelling film -- and if he really has captured lightning in a bottle, how long will he be able to hold out as the Hollywood Money Machine pounds on his door?

This is gonna be interesting.

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As the year ran out, KCRW’s “The Business” ran an excellent summary of film and television for 2012 – what happened and what it means for the future. It’s a good one, and if you're in the biz, definitely worth a listen.

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A recent post from The Anonymous Production Assistant included a link to a terrific piece in “Cracked,” noting that it would have been a lot more helpful if he-or-she had been able to absorb the wisdom therein  back in 1995. Having dutifully followed the link, I agree -- although in my case, 1975 would have been a better time for me to hear the harsh truths of how the adult world really works. Instead (as usual...) I learned those lessons the hard way via my lifetime enrollment in post-graduate studies at the Joe Frazier School of Higher Education.

More than a few readers of this blog found their way here via TAPA’s site, and thus already have (or should have) read that article, but if not – particularly those of you recently thrust from the warm nurturing embrace of the collegiate womb into a cold, uncaring world -- this piece is a must-read. The lessons offered therein may seem needlessly cruel and blunt, but believe me, they’re right-on, and if you can accept this wisdom now, you’ll be way ahead of the game. If not, then you'll just have to learn those same hard lessons like I did, on the receiving end of life’s big left hook.

The choice is yours.

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Long-time readers know that I don’t endorse anything other than an occasional book I’ve read and enjoyed – and that’s not going to change. The following should not be construed as a recommendation, but simply as passing on information that might be useful to some of you. A young man named Jordan Passman sent an e-mail describing a service called “scoreAscore” he created to bring together those who make films and those who make music.

In Jordan's words:

“ScoreAscore is a website connecting content creators with top quality custom music. We've been featured in the LA Times, Mashable, NoFilmSchool and Businessweek, where we won the readers' pick. Our clients include independent filmmakers, editors and producers as well as major companies such as Disney, Google, Chase, Lexus, Burger King, NBC, Reebok, Target, and more. ScoreAscore is expanding and recreating our platform from the ground up, working closely with our clients to address their needs. We are adding Voice Over and Sound Design creatives to our talent pool, which will allow ScoreAscore to become the Internet's leading sound marketplace. It's a very exciting time and we anticipate to re-launch in a few months. We offer professional custom resources with a name-your-price system, allowing independent content creators to access our hand selected creative community. There is nothing to lose by posting a project and you only pay if you find what you like.”

Given that it’s been forty years since I made my last film, I’m way out of the loop, but I can see how this service could be of mutual benefit to filmmakers and musicians.  That said, you be the judge.

Those are your tips 'o the week.  Check 'em out...


* I'm referring, of course, to set-slang for turning off a 1 K tungsten lamp called a "Baby" -- not the oh-so-cute-and-cuddly human variety...