Oh my - so much ballyhoo.....
Telling potential 'students' that by becoming and then working as sriptie is the
best way to
become a 'writer' or even a 'director' takes quite some chuzpe. If people
believe that, well,
they have to blame themselves in the end.
In reality it is like: there are directors who tend to communicate with
scripties (usually
asking about eye lines or some conitinuity issue; and there are directors who
never
communicate with them and there's all kind of inbetweens. I've worked with (on
the same
set as) many many script supers including ones that were 'mentored' - what a
stupid
expression, bts - by Jim Kelly Durgin and, nothing against him, but his trainees
are not
better or worse than any others.
Because the job of a scriptie borders on being 'boring' - sorry for that, many
of them fall
mentally asleep on the set - especially if the director doesn't show much
interest in them.
There are scripties - jut recently I had the pleasure to watch her - she was
also 'mentored'
by...... - and because she was so frustrated that she really didn't have much of
a job she
began to invent one - constantly claiming that there are impossible continuity
errors
produced and what have you, until she was practically banned from the set and
almost
'tied' to a monitor.....

Any way - it is a valuable job, no question, but too many most of them totally
concentrate
on useless stuff, filling out endless paperwork that nobody ever will look at,
forgetting
about wht's important: check continuity, have an eye on the eye lines and mark
the script
to the editor finds what he'she needs to find. If one is halfways mentally alert
one can
learn that in 12 hours......

Now talking about the supposedly way in to becoming a director or writer out of
being a
scriptie - that beats me, but then I'm not selling classes either.

Keenast Lustiger
Los Angeles



--- In Film_F_and_I@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Kelly Durgin" <jimkellydurgin@...>
wrote:
>
> David - You are right in that is the way many script supervisors
> work. If you, however, have the pleasure of working with one of my
> trainees, you would have a vastly different perspective.
>
> Unfortunately, it seems that most of the script supervisors trained
> in the last twenty years have been trained in a total course of
> TWELVE HOURS (for years at UCLA, LA Film School recently, and USC)
> or as many as FIFTEEN HOURS total class hours for over ten years at
> AFI.
>
> One script supervisor today, believe it or not, is training many
> script supervisors in ONE DAY!!! What can you expect from such a
> short introduction to the job? I spend about seven hours on just
> the screen direction, including the four-wall set, the triangular
> trap, the poker game, etc.
>
> About ONE HUNDRED HOURS OF instruction and demonstrations, plus many
> more hours of On-The-Job Training is included in my training. A
> little more thorough, eh? That is why so many of the big producers
> are hiring my grads.
>
> One young lady from Denver, Colorado came to Hollywood a while back,
> I trained her, then she worked several feature films in Southern
> India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines for years.
> She worked on the pilot of WITHOUT A TRACE about four or five years
> ago and has been working as script supervisor on that show ever
> since.
>
> A script supervisor working on a show the way you described cannot
> be a very good script supervisor. Certainly not qualified to
> compete with my grads.
>
> The next time you require a script supervisor, consider one trained
> by me and then notice the difference. There is a big difference in
> many aspects of the job. That's why several producers have told me
> they do not hire a script supervisor unless trained by me. jim kd
>
>
> --- In Film_F_and_I@yahoogroups.com, "David A. Maisel"
> <dancingcatprods@> wrote:
> >
> > >the script supervisor sits by the camera close to the director
> and consults constantly with the production manager or producer with
> reference to the writing.
> >
> > Not on my shoots. The script supervisor stands well back out
> of the way, lining the script for each shot and checking
> continuity. Nothing more. Having done this on a number of shoots,
> I can easily say that it's a boring and thankless job. If you don't
> find continuity errors all you're doing is doodling all day. If you
> do nobody listens to you unless you make a big, hairy nuisence of
> yourself (NOT the way to endear yourself to the crew...).
> >
> > David A. Maisel
> > Owner/Producer
> > Dancing Cat Productions
> > 15 Zeta St.
> > Golden, CO 80401-4962
> > (720) 244-5256
> > http://www.DancingCatProds.com
> > DavidM@
> >
>