Spring 2017
BY BRANDON KYLE GOCO
For New York-based UPM Gwen Bialic,"typical" is not a word she would use to describe her work routine. "The day in the life of the
UPM on Crashing or on Master of None is different than it is on Carol or on High Maintenance," says Bialic, who has not only served as the UPM on all of these projects, but also relishes their idiosyncrasies. "Even though it's still all UPM [work]... it's always different."
Bialic is busily prepping season two of High Maintenance, which started out as a free web series, eventually graduating to Vimeo On Demand, before being picked up as a half-hour comedy by HBO. "It was literally just the creators, Ben [Sinclair] and Katja [Blichfeld], running around with the camera, a credit card, and like six of their friends," says Bialic about the series' humble beginnings.
Bialic found the series' evolution fascinating: "Ben
and Katja joined the DGA as co-directors, and they worked with a DGA AD team for the first time. So, it really is this incremental growth of the show."
Like the series, Bialic finds the job of UPM a continually evolving venture. "You need to know at least a little bit about every single department that you're overseeing," she says. "It's impossible to have too
much experience."