June 2008 Archive

The following posts were made in June 2008. You may subscribe to the RSS feed for this archive if you would like to take your time reading through our posts.

Austin (crew)

By Lesley Grossman on June 24, 2008 8:25 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments

Travel is frequently awesome, especially for work. The thrill of the alarm going off at 3:00 a.m. to catch the 6:15 a.m. to Austin, the trashy magazines and airport muffins, the sweet, sweet sounds of the TSA agent clucking disapprovingly over having to hand-search all the shot tapes.

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San Francisco (crew)

By Michael Wechsler on June 12, 2008 2:48 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments

Food, Glorious (Chinese) Food

San Francisco's foodie weekend was a tantalizing and calorie-splurging adventure for Sam, but also for many of the crew like myself. Though I swore I would jog every day just to allow myself to indulge a little more than usual, but I was too busy doing my job, and part of that job was clean-up crew. Let me explain. When we're shooting a food scene, I've got my headphones on, and I'm concentrating on the scene at hand, whether it's watching Sam eat from a gorgeous lazy Susan filled with dim sum (at Imperial Palace) or participating in a cooking competition in Berkeley at Kitchen on Fire. Now, after shouting, "CUT," my sneaky hands somehow find a neglected dumpling, a freshly baked piece of sourdough (from Boudin Bakery) or a million-dollar cocktail (Harry Denton's Starlight Room). I can't help it. Sam couldn't help notice that I would get distracted whenever a new treat was put before the cameras, and being the generous sport she is, she'd make sure that I could be the off-screen taster. That sounds better than clean-up crew, but essentially I was directing and eating on the fly. Yes, I can't ever complain about my job.

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London

By Samantha Brown on June 9, 2008 9:59 PM | Permalink | 20 Comments

Day 1

This will be my first trip back to Europe after doing "Passport to Latin America." After spending two years traveling throughout Europe, I had gotten very good at shaking off jet lag. My body just acclimated immediately to a five- or six-hour time difference. But after having spent a year in Latin America, where the time difference averages two hours, I am completely out of time-change shape. I'm so exhausted that at night, I can't sleep.

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Carnival Cruise

By Samantha Brown on June 9, 2008 9:57 PM | Permalink | 27 Comments

Day One

The Carnival Cruise show will be a full hour, but we only have four days to shoot it, which is usually the time we need to shoot a half-hour of ... so it's a pretty busy schedule. Great thing about being on a cruise is you can fit a lot more into a show, seeing that everything is a 10-minute walk away as opposed to an hour's drive. In travel production, stamina and momentum are key, and nothing can kill that more than long drives to destinations or even a long lunch. So, even though the shoot schedule looks challenging on paper, we're all able to get into a zone. Of course this is great for everyone except Allan on camera, who might actually enjoy putting the 40-pound camera down for a spell. Another wonderful thing about shooting on a cruise is the plethora of bathrooms. After my last travels in China and Latin America, the thought of being no more than 50 feet away from a clean bathroom is just bliss. So I'm sure you're thinking, "She gets to go on a cruise with pools, spas, bars, food and partying, and this is what makes her happy?" Yep, pretty much.

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New Hampshire (crew)

By Michael Petrella on June 9, 2008 9:50 PM | Permalink | 0 Comments

Road Trip (to New Hampshire)!

Grab the Twizzlers, some '80s mix CDs and an atlas! It's time to hit the road.

OK, it's a little different than the road trips from college, being that a television hostess sat shotgun (Twizzlers still remain, however).

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