Studios, stages and the people who keep them running.
Forty-seven speaker cards, a tray of Henri Baptiste's dated floor-paint chips passed along the dais, and a studio attorney who announced — in her twenty minutes — the first booking the stage has had since August. It goes to the council next. Lorne Szymanski, 61, rigging gaffer, spoke for two minutes and sat down.
The studio's paid-test policy is now in every posting and has been copied by a third corridor studio. Priyanka Sundaram is assigning lunch to her leads. The umbrella shot has a sequel.
The animation studio that hires in waves against its board's advice says the apprentice math is holding — barely, on the mentors' side of the ledger. The second wave posts next week, and the paid-test policy has started to travel.
The Cultural Heritage Commission has set the format for September 17: timed presentations, written record, no surprises. Marguerite Han's file now includes a scenic painter's private archive of the stage floor — and the speaker card of a rigging gaffer who has spent twenty years declining to be identified.
The commercial production house that has held the 1928 stage all summer wraps in just over two weeks, with nothing booked behind it — the first gap longer than a fortnight in several years, and the first autumn in anyone's recent memory not sold out by Labor Day. The landmark hearing is five weeks away.
Foxglove Animation took its second floor in July. Filling it has turned into an argument the studio is having with itself about whether a junior artist can still be trained at a desk.
Twenty-two years in one building, and the mixing stages now run until four. The owner says it is the only way to compete with facilities eight time zones away — and the people working nights have opinions about the arrangement.
Four days of triple digits pushed exterior work to nights, moved three shoots indoors and cancelled two outright. A crew on a weekly deal gets paid anyway. Most of the people on a Hollywood set are not on a weekly deal.
Permitted production days in Hollywood rose 9 percent over last summer — a headline the city is pleased with. Break the number apart and the scripted work is still going the other way.
The Cultural Heritage Commission will take up the 1928 soundstage on September 17. The lot's owner, which has never commented on its plans, now says it has no intention of demolishing the building — and will oppose the designation anyway.
