text: "Safety first, unless you're too busy." That's what a co-worker said when the carpenters pulled the walls away and dropped a ceiling on my head as they rushed to dismantle a stage set while I was inside it removing fixtures. Luckily, it was a canvas flat and did no harm.
  
  Safety is an issue when things are booming. You get more new people who don't yet know what's unsafe.
  
  12 hours-plus is a standard work day in the film industry. The hours Mr Apa worked that day were the hours that the entire crew of 50 or more people works, 5 and sometimes 6 days a week, for the duration of the production, weeks or months. Things may have changed since I left it, but in 13 years in the film industry in Vancouver the only time the production ever mentioned paying for a hotel room was when no one could get home that night because the highway was shut down.  It would put a major wrench in the budget if even half the people in the crew said "I'm tired, I can't drive home" every second night.