Pippa is a Busy Bee

Alright, I've had a little time to process everything now. So, to recap, last week was my first week. Depending on the size of the screen you're reading this on, you may be able to see my previous post as well and know that already. And to that I say . . . well played.

So last week I dove headfirst into the world of animation, although my experience in production leans more on the live action side. But, despite diving into the deep end of the pool instead of the where I could at least see the bottom, I managed to tread water long enough to survive my first week. I'll admit, I almost lost it in a sea of casting emails on Friday, but I pushed through and made it back to the surface.

I suppose it's probably not advisable to use so many metaphors involving water in a place with so many electronics, so I'll try to stop the flood of bad jokes here.

Besides helping as a casting assistant for an upcoming web series that Smiley Guy's sister company iThentic is working on (which involves receiving more emails than you do when you subscribe to email updates from your favourite chain stores, except you actually have to answer all of them), I've also been learning about the online database system that Smiley Guy uses for their productions, and I've been working on setting up the database that we'll be using for an upcoming animated web series that Smiley Guy is working on for Teletoon. Since the auditions took up such a large chunk of last week, my work on the Vampire Steve continues this week as well.

Erin taught me how to organize a workback schedule in spreadsheet format. We learned how to make workback schedules on a spreadsheet in my college program, but I could never fully wrap my head around how the spreadsheet thing worked until I saw how Erin made the one for Vampire Steve.

Also, on Friday, I got a moment to try a Virtual Reality gaming system – which was super cool. I accidentally punched Joel in the process, which I still feel bad about, but other than that, only a few virtual characters perished during that particular adventure.

This week, I've done more casting. I've become better acquainted with the Casting Workbook system (finally!) and I finally feel like I'm riding the accompanying wave of emails instead of getting bowled over by it. Which is good, because Lisa's warned me that when we send out the prospective audition times, everyone is going to want to change their time.

Okay, so timeskip and now it's Friday again. The bulk of my week consisted of casting emails. Audition schedules, audition re-schedules and chasing agents to confirm their clients' scheduled audition. I've also been working on cast reports, which was the first time I'd ever used Final Draft, but it was user-friendly enough. I believe next week I'll be back using Final Draft to work on some script note compilations that Lisa wants me to make.

In the time that I haven't been working on the casting call, I've either been in meetings or adding concept links to the Vampire Steve database. I think I've pretty much got the latter just about finished for the first three episodes – I just have to go over them one last time and then I'll be ready to start parenting builds (which I think is the next step?).

And I'm at a full page so I should call it for this entry. Tune in next week for chapter 3!