As
a student at Arizona State University in the mid-90s, a professor
suggested she get a job as a production assistant on Jerry
Maguire, which was in town shooting football scenes. "I
ended up being a PA in the wardrobe department of all places,"
she tells me as we begin our interview, "and there was
like jock straps and all this stuff, but I was just so happy
to be working on a movie."
When
the shoot was finished, the producers told her if she was willing
to move herself to L.A., she could stay on the film. "So,
I did," she says. "I came to LA and I never left."
Fast
forward several years, and Brown is now an Assistant
Director. "There are usually three AD's on the set,"
she explains. "The first AD is standing with the director
at the camera dealing with everything that is happening in that
moment. The second AD is preparing the next day, the next week,
the next two weeks, with each department so that everybody is
prepared for what's going to happen, as well as dealing with
the cast and the scheduling. Making sure that everybody knows
their schedules, including the actors and the managers. When
it comes down to it, every day in making a movie is money, every
minute is money, and if you are not prepared, you’re losing
money. So it’s all about making sure things keep moving
ahead--the AD’s are basically the cogs that keep the wheel
moving."
Becoming
an AD requires approval from the Director's Guild of American
(DGA), which is no easy task: members must first complete six
hundred days as a PA, then submit a book of production notes
and policies chronicling each day they worked on a film, and
then they have to go in front of the DGA review board. And once
they're accepted, they have to pay a $5,000 member's fee (no
small sum on a PA's salary, which averages between a hundred
and two hundred dollars a day).
Brown
finally got her letter of acceptance in the DGA when she was
working as a PA on Minority Report. Steven Spielberg
immediately bumped her up to AD. "Steven was amazing,"
she recalls, "he’s been wonderful to me."
