I showed up at work to find I've been moved from one portion of the show I'm working on to another, which meant another day trying to catch up and figure out what I'm doing. At one point in the act I'm working on (it's a design show), the writer told me, "There's a bite where he talks about that countertop - it's really important to have there. The Producer said she saw them do it after the show was over as a pickup." Already, this is not good. Whenever a Producer (or Director for that matter) says they "saw" something, it doesn't necessarily mean there was a camera there to capture it. I once had a director tell me he not only KNEW he had shot a specific shot, but had written down the scene and take number, allegedly from watching it on his dailies tape (a copy of all the footage that was shot the previous day). All paperwork I had from the set contradicted him, but he wouldn't let it rest. I had to go through the motions of calling up the lab, having them put the film up on the film bench and look for it. They couldn't find it, of course, because it didn't exist. The director still wouldn't back down. I had to throw my hands up and walk away from him.

With the type of reality show I'm currently on, there are no scenes and takes, no script supervisor diligently keeping track of what's been shot and what hasn't. The sheer amount of footage that comes in is so overwhelming, it becomes tedious and time consuming to edit the smallest piece, just because you can't find the needle in the haystack. Today, I spent an hour sifting through hours of clips with 9 hours running at the same time and couldn't find the one that had supposedly been shot. I eventually stopped looking and told the writer it probably didn't exist. He had to make a call to another person who thought they remembered something, then called someone else who was on the set, and through an intricate chain of information, finally discovered it had actually been done in the middle of the show and was given the approximate time. Within 5 minutes, I found the clip. Of course, the day was nearly over. It was like being in "24" but instead of finding the guys with the suitcase nukes, we found the clip where the guy talked about the countertops. Tomorrow, more of the same.

Oh, and I realized I actually DID buy the wrong snowboard for myself and had to return it to REI today (which was actually quite easy). Time to search for another one...