The 400 Days : Program Trains Aspiring Assistant Directors on the Set

Meeting Robert Redford can be a trying experience.

“I shushed him--but I didn’t know it was him,” said Kelly Cantley, a Directors Guild of America trainee who was trying to silence a set during the shooting of “Sneakers,” Redford’s new Universal Studios film.

“ ‘OK,’ I said to myself, ‘Let’s yell at the star for making noise.’ But he said, ‘Don’t worry, it’s your job.’ ”

Cantley’s job goes far beyond ordering celebrities to pipe down. As part of DGA’s Producer Training Plan, also called the Assistant Directors Training Program, Cantley puts in 18-hour days rounding up extras, delivering coffee and bellowing “10 minutes, please!” to anyone who will listen.

The 28-year-old former Boston stage manager said she checks her attitude at the set door. “You have to help the second assistant director figure out what’s happening now, what’s happening next, what’s happening tomorrow and what’s happening next week. There’s no room for an ego.”

Cantley, a Studio City resident, is midway through the Sherman Oaks-based program, which takes 400 workdays, or almost two years, to complete. Formed in 1965, the program trains participants to become second assistant directors who assist first directors and assistant directors in filming TV shows, movies, miniseries and feature films. The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers also sponsors the training.

In recent years, more than 1,000 hopefuls have applied to the program each year; just 20 are chosen after the Jan. 11 deadline. Assignments are given in the fall. The West Coast program has trained 359 second assistant directors to date. The New York program, begun in 1967, has graduated 100 trainees.

After graduation, trainees join the Directors Guild of America and are listed on the Los Angeles County Qualification List, which studios and production companies use for hiring.

“The training is a classic apprenticeship model,” said Elizabeth Stanley, program administrator. She says the program is for people “who love production and want to know everything about it. It’s not for someone trying to work themselves up to a suit job.

“As a trainee, you can’t be a person who’s out for glory. People don’t usually come up to an assistant director and say, ‘Gee, you’ve organized a great day.’ ”

Applicants must have at least an associate of arts college degree or two years of full-time work in on-set motion picture or television production. Trainees, who are on call 24 hours a day, are rotated to a new show or film every 50 days, ensuring that wide industry experience is gained.

On the set of “Murphy Brown,” trainee Eric Oliver wasn’t gaining much experience beyond deciding whether to cross his legs or keep them flat on the floor. Oliver, 24, a Hollywood resident, was acting as a stand-in so camera operators could block an episode’s action on the Warner Bros. Burbank set.

“On days like today, I don’t have much to do,” said Oliver, a former restaurant manager. “I end up being most approachable because I’m the trainee. My job is to get along with everyone else.”

Oliver’s supervisor, second assistant director Teresa Pfiffner, said, “We all stand around and wait--but it’s those who stand around and anticipate that something might go wrong who make good assistant directors.

Oliver is also in charge of distributing and collecting actors’ contracts, ensuring that actors and extras are settled in makeup and wardrobe trailers each morning and “basically getting everything ready for the first shot.”

Multi-camera shows such as “Murphy Brown” aren’t usually hectic, said Oliver, making room for Candice Bergen, who was wielding a meat cleaver as she headed toward the All Angel’s Mission kitchen set. “It’s usually hectic during the one day out of the week we shoot.”

Oliver works 12 to 14 hours a day, five days each week. But other trainees, such as Nunzio Fazio, have clocked in 22-hour days. “I sleep the weekend away,” said Fazio, 36. “I just try to take care of myself as best I can. I take lots of vitamins.”

Like other trainees, Fazio’s social life is nearly nonexistent, except for the industry friends he has made since he moved last year from Florida, where he worked as a production assistant. Fazio has since worked on a Movie of the Week, the TV show “Quantum Leap,” and currently, a Columbia Studios film called “Hero” that stars Dustin Hoffman.

Pay for Fazio’s lengthy hours is meager. A trainee’s starting salary is $361 per week and is raised to just $443 a week by training’s end. Work over 54 hours a week is paid at time-and-a-half.

Twice-monthly seminars, which teach the rudiments of paperwork and set production, are also part of his training. Most participants are younger than Fazio--in their mid-20s to 30s, but some in their 50s have been accepted. About 85% of the participants complete the program.

The low pay hasn’t affected Fazio so far. “If you don’t have the time to spend the money, you don’t need much to survive,” said Fazio, who rents a Sherman Oaks apartment for $595 a month.

Upon graduation, trainees can expect to be paid about $1,500 a week as a second assistant director. First assistant directors start at about $2,300 a week, and unit production managers begin at $2,400 a week. Out-of-town jobs earn up to $800 a week more than that.

Some former trainees eventually surpass the usual career ladder (from second, to first assistant director to unit production manager--at least a four-year journey), becoming studio executives, directors and producers.

Producer Howard Kazanjian (“Return of the Jedi”) was a member of the program’s first class. Other graduates include director Alan Rudolph (“Choose Me”), producer Michael Grillo (“Accidental Tourist”) and David Nicksay of Morgan Creek Productions.

Developing industry contacts is an important task for many participants. Trainees can often network themselves into free-lance work after graduation.

Cantley, who has worked on the sets of the film “Terminator II” and the “New Lassie” and “Murder, She Wrote” TV shows, got an early assist from contact Angela Lansbury when being considered for her current assignment, “Sneakers.” Besides Robert Redford, the movie stars Sidney Poitier, Ben Kingsley and River Phoenix.

“After I interviewed Kelly, not 20 minutes later did I receive a blue envelope on my desk from Angela Lansbury,” said “Sneakers” producer Lindsley Parsons Jr. “She highly recommended her.”

Parsons, who helped form the training program, was working in MGM management in the mid-1960s when “several of us became interested in getting better-qualified people into the guild,” he said.

He explained that before 1965, there were few ways to join the DGA. “Having 52 weeks of continuous on-set employment was one,” he said. “Also, major studios were allowed to nominate two candidates per year. Sometimes you got the chairman’s gardener or a president’s son or nephew. Neither had the aptitude for production or directing work.”

As a trainee, Cantley said, she has no illusions about becoming an actress, director or producer. “My goal is to become a first assistant director. I really want to be an excellent one,” she said. “The A.D.’s job is to facilitate the director’s vision, and that’s what I think I’m best at.”

Cantley considers her voice a prized asset on the job. “I have a loud voice, and I think it’s helpful,” she said. “Sometimes you have to get people’s attention in a really big way.

“When I was a stage manager for opera productions in Boston, I could stop an orchestra and company in a full swing rehearsal from the back of a 3,000-seat house. They appreciate that kind of lung power in Hollywood.”