Photos From Work: Station 19's 100th Episode

Station 19 recently completed shooting its one hundredth episode, something of a milestone for any series. To celebrate, there was cake. I took a few photos during the course of the episode's production, and thought I'd share a few with you. No spoilers or anything like that, so don't worry.

I don't know how I never noticed these stickers on the sound mixing cart before, but they tickled me when I did finally see them.

Here we are on Stage 2. The door to the left leads to the cast green room.

We shot something in the parking garage at Disney. There was indeed a bump, where the electric department had run power across.

This made me laugh. It was a long, odd day, but even if it had been a short, normal day I still would have found humor in this.

Obviously, I had to get a photo of this sign.

This was the day we had cake. In the second half of lunch, the cast and crew gathered on Stage 2 to celebrate the one hundredth episode. There were short, heartfelt speeches. The difficult part was getting the cast back to work afterward.

This season, each day a different crew member is selected as Employee Of The Day. During this episode, I was chosen, and so got to wear this special piece of jewelry. It started out big and clunky at the beginning of the season, and has grown from there, with each person adding to it. The item I added was the hot brick. It would have been much too heavy to add an actual hot brick (a charged walkie battery), so I took a costume tag and labeled it as a hot brick. (This is the one photo that I did not take.)

The great folks of the crafts service department make sure the crew gets a good snack each day. I had the veggie wrap.

This show has dedicated and generous fans. The cast and crew received these cool water bottles.

Photos From Work

Yesterday the third episode of what might be the final season of Station 19 was completed (well, the shooting was completed, that is). It was a wild week, with five of the last six days spent at Los Angeles Center Studios, where exterior scenes were shot. And I spent one other day there in preparation for those days, getting to watch a stunt rehearsal. This show has a great stunt crew, by the way, and I am always happy when I’m assigned to work on the stunt unit. This episode promises to be a good one. I took a few photos during the week, but not of anything related to the plot. Rather, I took several photos of the sky. Monday was kind of miserable, as it rained all day, sometimes hard enough that the crew took shelter and waited for it to subside before filming could resume. But then Wednesday there was a gorgeous sunrise. I wasn’t the only person on the crew to feel compelled to photograph it. And then yesterday we were back on the stages at Disney in Burbank for an easy and short day to wrap up the episode.

The sky on January 24th at 6:38 a.m.

The sky on January 25th at 5:31 p.m., at the background check-in area (which was also the background check-out area). We had, if I recall correctly, one hundred twenty-five background players that day. We had two hundred the day before.

Friday, January 26th, back on the Disney lot, where we belong (I am still hopeful that somehow the show will get picked up for another season - and thank you to the folks who hired a plane to circle the studio a couple of weeks ago with a banner that read "Save Station 19"). This photo was taken from our basecamp.

Theresa And Michael’s Cultural Tour Of Los Angeles: The Getty Center

In 2021, Theresa and I decided to visit every museum in Los Angeles. We got off to a slow start, seeing only one museum that year, and then none in 2022. Last year we visited three. But this year we got off to an excellent start with the Getty. I had been there before (I saw a couple of excellent concerts there many years ago – Greg Brown and Fur Dixon & Steve Werner), but Theresa hadn’t ever visited this museum. The museum is free, but you have to pay twenty dollars to park, and you have to make reservations. We scheduled our visit for 2:30 p.m., and as the tram took us up the hill, I noticed that the 405 freeway is a lot less stressful from that higher vantage point.

Currently, there is a special exhibit of William Blake’s art at the Getty, an exhibit that is only up for another week, and that was the main purpose of our visit. So when we arrived, that is where we headed first. Here are some photos from that exhibit.

As always, I was excited to see work based on Shakespeare’s plays, such as this piece based on A Midsummer Night’s Dream:

And this one:

 And this one, based on the first scene from The Tempest:

After that, we got a drink, and went to the North Pavilion, which houses pieces from before 1700. There are lots of pieces of Italian origin in this section, and Theresa deemed them all excellent.

From there, we went to the garden, wanting to see it before it got dark. And yes, we had seen some incredible art, but none of it really matched the spectacular and dramatic sunset. Most of the sky was taking part in it. I took a few photos, but had only my cell phone with me, and the photos don’t capture it at all.

From there, we went to the West Pavilion to check out the photo exhibits. I was particularly taken with some of the work of Arthur Tress, especially images from his Dream Collector series. That exhibit runs through February 18th.

 

We had been at the museum for nearly four hours, and there were still entire buildings we hadn’t visited. But we were getting tired and rather than continue, we decided we’d have to visit again to see the rest of the place, and check out whatever new exhibit takes the place of the William Blake exhibit.

Theresa And Michael’s Cultural Tour Of Los Angeles

In 2021, during the pandemic (which apparently isn’t over yet), Theresa and I had the idea of visiting every museum in Los Angeles. It was a good idea, a way to get to better know the city. We started on June 19, 2021 with the Wende Museum, which focuses on the Cold War and at the time included a photo exhibit (maybe it still does). This is a free museum in Culver City, and it provided an interesting and unusual start to our tour.

And then two years passed.

During that time, one or the other of us would say, “We should visit another museum.” Then on April 22, 2023, we went to the Italian American Museum Of Los Angeles for a special event, A Conversation With Adriana Trigiani. It was moderated by Cara Mia DiMassa. We got there a bit early so that we could take a look at the exhibits (and have a couple glasses of wine). At that time, the museum held an exhibit titled A Real Boy: The Many Lives Of Pinocchio.

Determined to not let another two years pass, on September 30, 2023, we went to the Autry Museum Of The American West, in Griffith Park. It was celebrating its thirty-fifth year, and for the occasion admission price matched what it was when the museum opened, $4.50. Plus, I See Hawks In L.A. was playing, so it was the perfect time to check it out. Most of the photos I took that day were of the bands, but I did take one of a guitar from an exhibit.

A week later, on October 7th, we went to the Gordon R. Howard Museum in Burbank. This is another free museum. Free is the best price for us, especially during the Hollywood strike, when I was burning through my meager savings. This museum focuses on the history of Burbank, which is exactly the kind of thing we were looking for, wanting to learn more about the area where we live. Here are a few photos:

Gift Wrapping: 2023 Edition

Another strange year. I spent part of it tearing photos from magazines and taping those photos to gifts. Just something I do. No matter.