Day 293 — This Is How Actual Designers Feel About the Design of the Movie Paper

[for Saturday, Oct. 20]



Movie fatigue set in big time when I strolled into the office Saturday — already a cruel joke snickered by the universe — and was immediately informed that my desk would be unavailable for work. Instead, I'd have truck it back to the sports department to do my damn job. There was movie equipment — lights, boards, monitors, etc. — all around my cube. Movie people were standing around, looking at me like I was in their way. I couldn't even get to my filing cabinet. So I grabbed my dummies and my art and my pen and was whisked away so they could resume whatever they were doing that I was disrupting. I felt like a refugee. I knew that it would be tough to make it back to my desk for the rest of the night, even if I forgot something.

Not the best way to start a workday.

Sequestered in the sports cave, those of us whose desks had been taken over tried to get accustomed to the sports computers, which are small (sucks for designers) and without all the bells and whistles of our own (namely, we had to revert to corporate webmail, which lagged all night).

What a pain.

A few times I snuck out into the newsroom to watch the filming. Kate Beckinsale's character walks through the newsroom and gets greeted by several of my co-workers. Everyone hoots and hollers when the staff gets nominated for Pulitzers.

I think by that night everyone was pretty ready for the movie people to pack up and leave. It's cool being a part of something like that, but it's still incredibly annoying to be inconvenienced and then feel like you're the one in the way. It has been so hectic and weird in that place since they came. They've completely destroyed the newsroom and are supposed to put it back together before they leave.

They're supposed to be gone when I get in tomorrow.

Watch eBay for any items they left behind.

Project 365

Day 292 — The Masked Tripper

[for Friday, Oct. 19]



(Why do I suddenly feel like John Ritter really missed a career opportunity here?)

The movie people weren't all up in the newsroom yesterday like they were Thursday. Which was a relief for my workplace ADD. Instead, they were all up in the editor's office filming Angela Bassett-as-editor scenes. They moved our editor's manly leather couch out and replaced it with a more "feminine" couch so as to be believable. (I dunno, they both look like regular ugly fucking couches to me.) And yet this is the newspaper that is going to bring down the White House.

I've been playing a pretentious fun little game, trying to count the typefaces on that front page. (This pic shows the bottom half of the page, where there are no less than four typefaces alone.) Including the nameplate type, we've got at least six. I suspect there may be as many as eight or ten. (Play along! Eurostile, Futura, Times New Roman, Helvetica, etc.!)

Sorry for the snark, but yeesh.

It's truly odd how the attention to detail on the set is so rigorous — the fake cubes are just full of neat little knick-knacks (fake photographs, tape dispensers, mini cassette tapes [which KHall pointed out aren't really used anymore in favor of digital recorders] deadline schedules, news clippings, post-its, leather-bound journals, meaty works of fiction, Washington Redskins crap, crumpled granola-bar wrappers) added by set designers — and yet the actual product the movie revolves around — the newspaper — is so ... whatevs.

In other words, Hollywood, I WORK CHEAP. Resumé available upon request.

Project 365

Moving pictures

When I stepped off the elevator at work today, I entered into a magical land of grips and extras and cameras and God knows what else. The newsroom is quite packed with people I've never seen before and will never see again, including Noah Wyle (who is very handsome), Angela Bassett, and Kate Beckinsale.

You know, you try to be aloof and above the commotion, but when you're a total dork movie fan, the whole thing just gets to be too much and you find yourself scrutinizing every stray piece of paper left on the set after the crew has gone home for the night.

The fake conference room they've constructed is now furnished with some seriously nice furniture that is so laughably better than what we have in our real conference room it cracks me up. I spent some time in there tonight, watching the fake TV news looping on the product-placed flat-screen television, and reading the portion of a script someone left behind. It's a lot of "Rach, we're pushing your story hard for the front!" / "Really?! But I —" / "No buts, we're going to bring down the White House, but remain objective!" -type banter that doesn't actually ever happen in a real newsroom.

And while we're on the subject of stuff Hollywood routinely mucks up, can I just mention my pet peeve (which is shared by many, I'm sure) of dismal movie newspaper design? It's always some spinning depiction of a lead story stripped wide and deep, with awful art and mismatched, unprofessional typography.

Movie newspapers usually look like second-rate college papers. And this movie's newspaper looks no different. The Capital City Sun-Times is theoretically modeled on the Washington Post (they mimicked their nameplate something fierce), but the design is less Washington Post and more Tiger Tracks. No offense to whoever designed it. But seriously, would it kill the producers to spend a little time either consulting some actual news designers or just copying some obvious design conventions (like, don't cake-layer the page, and pick a lead typeface that won't make Jesus' eyes bleed)?

I don't know shit about film, obviously, and looks aren't everything, but it seems to me that verisimilitude is at stake when you expect your audience to believe that a hard-hitting, influential newspaper that can "take down the White House" can look like roasted ass on a stick and expect to survive.

It's enough to make me wonder if there's not some kind of Hollywood in-joke about how awful on-screen newspapers must look.

Anyway, look forward to Kate Beckinsale in a silly-looking ponytail, Noah Wyle with short hair and a smashingly tailored suit, and Angela Bassett with the fiercest flipped-out hair you've ever seen.

If you read this blog for nothing else, I at least hope you'll come back for more Nothing But the Truth hair updates. Coming soon: Matt Dillon and Alan Alda!

Update: The CA story is here.