like riding a bike

"Just you and me, Johnny, like old times."
~Will Ferrell as Robert Goulet on the Conan O'Brian Show

This morning at work was a little crazy. Usually all of the production assistants are supposed to be there by 4:30. Well, two of the guys overslept, which is easy to do when you have to be at work that early in the morning. But one of the guys lives almost an hour away, so not only was he not answering when I called him (re: still asleep), but once we finally got ahold of him, it was 5:30 so he wouldn't be there until 3/4 of the way through the show. Poor guy; I don't even want to know how many missed calls were on his phone by the time he woke up. That is the worst feeling!

So, until he got there, we were short a person. It takes four production people to do a show: a director, an audio board runner, a graphics operator, and a floor director. Oh, and Kim was directing, because our usual director is on vacation this week. So imagine filling in for a week at something you haven't done a whole ton of times and realizing that two of your people were missing.

We went without graphics until one of the late-sleepers got there. Meanwhile, Kim put our engineer out on the floor. But then one of our cameras started flipping out and losing its reds, making everyone look like Smurfs, so I decided to take my time sheets out to the studio and floor direct so we could get the engineer back in the control room to diagnose the problem with Camera 2.

Just like old times.

It was funny putting the old portable headset on and picking up the prompter control. And then I started giving cues and everyone goes, "Oh my gosh, I forgot you used to do this!"

Yep. A year ago, I was a floor director! How's that for a landmark moment?

It was fun producing from the floor, but luckily were were hitting everything on time, or it would've been a lot harder. But I had direct communication with my talent and my director, which are pretty much all I need, although I couldn't answer the phone or take care of any of that stuff from the floor, and we had a satellite interview later in the show, so it would've been impossible to be on the floor and produce that. Luckily I was only out on the floor for the first half-hour, and then the production manager came in to hold down the fort--or floor...hahaha--until our last production guy got in.

But it was a fun little blast from the past for the morning! Just thought I would share that.

OK, time for some singin' and some dancin'.