My call was 4.

The cast and crew call was 5.

Our first shot was to be at 7.

We called action at 9.15.

We called wrap at 4.42.

A.M.

In between that time, I was privy to watching someone's dream be put onto film (well, tape), the talent work the same lines over and over, my headset pick up everything, hunch over a monitor <-->this big while sitting on a milk crate and making 4,752 notes on each take to keep the continuity straight... now, if I can read those notes and pass them on to S, the editor, so HE can keep the continuity straight, I'll be able to live.

It was, "No, you said the word "but", you keep dropping that word... you jump down off the beam on the word 'sleep' .....you move out of frame on the word..." and so on.

In theater, you block and the talent knows their lines and if they don't always get the cue, you give them notes after the show. The audience doesn't know something went wrong most of the time...unless, as in the case of one of the shows I worked on where the set was two feet off the ground.. don't ask... the actor fell off the front of the set.

His comment? "Thank goodness that was the testicle they'd removed."

He was a trooper, he really was.

In film, they HAVE to do the same thing every time, because the editor has to match all those bits and pieces into one coherent piece of seamless film. Otherwise, people like me sit in the audience and say, "Hey, didn't he have four pickles on his plate when they showed him just a minute ago? And, I don't see him chewing."

There were four trains to take to get there, forty pounds of crap to carry, a terrier who has to sit in the production office... thank you K for making her the company mascot... the heat and no thyroid to control my inner body temperature. Cables, and techs, and cameras, and the DA and the and slates and grips and PA's and gaffers and the all important DP... the director/writer.... and me. Equipted with two copies of the script, 147 pencils, a clipboard, nerves, a keen eye for out of sequence issues...thank you OCD