February 11, 1999
Dear Everyone:
After 24 years of attending the
Oregon Shakespeare Festival each summer, and after watching
countless excellent (and incredibly bad) movies and television shows, I
have developed quite a level of admiration for the acting profession.
But after last Saturday, I have to say that this admiration has
achieved new heights.
Last Saturday, I got to participate in the making
of a…well, let’s just call it a video.
Or, you could call it an “infomercial”.
You know, one of those programs where they pay the local TV
station to broadcast a half-hour of poorly-paid (but professional)
actors sitting around in a fake living room, pretending to have
“informal” chats about some product?
Well, what we had here was a group of
highly-non-professional non-actors sitting around in a
real living room, pretending to have an “informal” chat about the
changes that are taking place in ARMA
(Association of Records Managers and Administrators), International.
The people at the top of ARMA, commonly referred to as
“headquarters”, or “those people”, or “those #@%& people”, have decided
to make some changes in the way the organization operates.
And they’ve hit on an interesting way of explaining
the changes, and the perceived need for these changes, as well as
answering “Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)”, whether said questions
will ever actually be asked or not.
They decided to make a video in which the president-elect (we’ll
call him “Tad”) and a regional director (“Terry”) would sit around with
some just-plain-folks from one or more of the local chapters and explain
what’s going on.
However, they have very little in the way of a
budget. The person who
usually does video taping for educational sessions and the annual
International Conference (we’ll call him “Frank”), suggested that they
could save a lot on his travel expenses and renting a studio if they did
the filming in his living room.
Which is why we were all sitting around in "Frank’s" living room,
having our “informal chat”.
By the way, he has a very patient and understanding wife.
I forget what her “name” was.
So how did I get to be so lucky as to be included
in all this? "Frank" lives
in
Pleasanton, about a 20-minute drive from my place.
And, they were desperate.
I figured, “If the best representative of professional records
management that they can find is an overweight spinster in her forties,
I guess it won’t hurt me to help out.
It’s not like I’m ever going to see this tape, after all.”
That was before they announced that copies of the
tape would be sent to every ARMA chapter in the world.
On the plus side, virtually none of those people know, or will
ever meet me.
I arrived Saturday morning at "Frank’s" place and
got a copy of the script.
That’s right, we had an actual script.
20 pages. Written by
a committee and completed some time after midnight the night before.
At least I hadn’t been up all night revising.
We had four “volunteers” from the three
Bay Area
chapters. (This was another
reason for filming here.
Anywhere else and they probably wouldn’t have been able to have
representatives from so many different chapters.)
Two were from the Mt
Diablo chapter. One came
up from the Silicon Valley chapter.
And the one from the Golden Gate
(San Francisco) chapter had almost reached Pleasanton when she realized
that she had left the name and address in her office, which was in
San Jose.
One drawback was the fact that all four of the
“volunteers” were women.
Originally, "Charlie" was scheduled to appear as the other Mt Diablo
chapter person, but at the last minute, his company sent him out of town
on business. So "Rhonda"
bravely stepped in to replace him.
(Charleton
Heston once said that, when the director comes to you at 4:00 in the
afternoon and asks, “Can you go on as
Brutus tonight?” there’s only one possible answer:
“You bet!”)
In addition to our “director”, "Frank", we had a
sound technician and a cameraman who managed to operate two video
cameras at the same time.
Each of us “just-plain-folks” was assigned “two
questions”. Actually, there
was usually a lead-up to the question itself, so each person had “a few
lines”. Luckily for me, my
“questions” were pretty short.
Poor "Terra" got assigned whole paragraphs (another drawback to
being a chapter president).
My lines were, specifically:
(Page 13)
“If directors don’t come from geographic regions, won’t large
chapters from certain areas have the votes to control the board?”
(Page 19)
“How can chapters or members bring their concerns to the board of
directors? Do we have to go
through our regional coordinator?”
In truth, the most frequently repeated line was,
“Sorry, guys” as we blew one take after another.
After the overall, wide-angle shots, it was time for our
close-ups. The first two
weren’t too difficult. Since
the cameraman was shooting over my shoulder, all I had to do was sit
quietly. But, when it came
time for my close-ups, the cameraman had to climb over the sofa to get
the right angle. (Did I
mention that Frank has a patient and understanding wife?)
What’s more, because he couldn’t rest the camera on
anything, he had to hold his breath during the filming.
So I would keep repeating, “If directors don’t come from
geographic regions, won’t large chapters from certain areas have the
votes to control the board?”
(One, two, three.) “If
directors don’t come from geographic regions…” all the while watching
the cameraman turn first red, then blue in the face.
On the second line, the “director” wanted more
feeling. “Pretend you’re
pissed.”
Right.
Angry overweight spinster in
her forties. “…Do we
have to go through our regional coordinator?”
Apparently, I was effective enough.
"Terry", who was holding the sheet of paper just out of camera
range so I could read the lines, kept shrinking further into his chair.
Yes, read the lines.
If Marlon
Brando doesn’t have to memorize his dialog, why should we?
And anyway, how many times can anyone say, “How can chapters or
members bring their concerns to the board of directors…” without
stumbling over something?
To call this Amateur Night would be the greatest
understatement since Noah
said, “It looks like rain.”
The finished product is scheduled for “release” at the end of March.
I can’t wait. I have
the feeling our chapter members are going to be rolling on the floor
when they see this.
In other news…
“Jeannie” and I tried to see
Waking Ned
Devine on Sunday, but too many other people with the same idea
got there ahead of us.
Instead, we did a little shopping and I found a toy for the St
Valentine’s Day Teddy Bear drive at work.
It’s a charity thing.
And the toy was 60% off, so the day wasn’t a total loss.
Love, as always,
Pete
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