Ever notice how it's the little things in life that amuse us so much? More to the point, ever notice how it's the silly little idiocies in life that amuse us more than anything else? Well, this is not as much ''the little blog that could'' as it is ''the blog that enjoys going up the down escalator in your local mall.'' Will it have anything of real importance? No, probably not. But enjoy the ride never the less!

 
Versus

Yesterday, my Dad finally declared war on the family stapler. This happened only after he tired finally of the stapler's uppity shenanigans. Now in all fairness to the stapler, it is in fact a decade or so old, so in one sense it's allowed to be a little crochety from time to time. However, months ago that almost endearing trait crossed over into the realms of "Just plain malicious & capricious."

Sometimes it would let you staple your papers together. Sometimes it wouldn't fire any staples into the paper. And then sometimes it would be capricious and freeze in mid-staple. Thusly you have only part of the staple lodged in the paper, and the stapler stuck in its "firing" position, which makes it a tasking effort to wrench the entrapped staple out. Typically, this requires the use of one's teeth to yank the staple out and return the stapler to its original, non-offending position.

Which brings us to the events of last evening. All my Dad wanted was to staple a pack of guitar chord song sheets together. The stapler, it appears, had a disagreement with him. It did not want those sheets stapled together, and went out of its way to show its intentions to my Dad. Eight times in a row.

After the 8th failed attempt to staple the sheets together (all of which required my Dad to make considerable effort in prying the staple out and returning the stapler back to normal), my Dad began to voice his frustrations to the stapler by slamming it against the armrest of the chair. From what I gather, it was right about then that the stapler bit him in retaliation.

From there on in, things got ugly. My Dad did not take too well to the stapler head swinging up and trying to staple his forearm. So he threw the stapler down at the base of the desk. The stapler suffered minor injuries, and has left an impressive gouge along one of the desk legs in the process. Seemingly, my Dad had bested the stapler and subjugated it to his will.

He tried to staple his song sheets together again. The stapler blatantly refused, and locked up again in mid-staple. And so my Dad, being the calm, patient man that he is, smiled nicely at the unco-operative stapler, gently took it up in his hands, and proceeded to bend it into a U-shape.

Needless to say, we are now coping without a stapler. I'm sure we'll get along somehow. A new stapler will probably be purchased later this week; I can only hope it behaves better than its predecessor. At the very least, if it decides to offer any resistance, my Dad can now make valid threats about, "You know what happened to the last stapler that vexed me..."

Today's Lesson: sleep is good. Sleep no longer lets my brain think only along the lines of "Fire bad, tree pretty."


posted by Phillip at 7:17 PM

 
"The first rule of Fight Club is…"


It’s Thursday.

My calves no longer ache horribly. I am no longer feeling like I have only half my usual energy to spare. And my brain is no longer the equivalent of Shake N’ Bake. Amazing what happens when you’re allowed to sleep in, isn’t it?

Suffice to say, while I’m still recovering from three consecutive, 16-17 hour days, I’m quite happy to have had the experience of being there for the filming. Of course, there’s still the whole Medieval dancing shoot that happens in late August, but I’ll wax ecstatic about that when it arrives.

To answer anyone’s questions of what I’ve been doing the past few days to warrant a lack of bits of nowhere, here’s the brief synopsis:

Monday morning, I went to bed at 2:30am, woke up at 8am. Ran errands and other random tasks that needed completion. Attended the filming from 5pm – 2am.

Tuesday morning, I went to bed at 2:30am again, woke up at 7:30am. Took my puppy to the clippers (she now resembles a cross between a skinny pig, and the Luck Dragon, Falkor, from The Neverending Story). Ran more errands. Attended filming from 4:30pm – 3am.

Wednesday morning, after crashing at 3:30am, had to get up at 9am to help empty a garage filled with junk and run it down to the local dump in the morning. The early to mid afternoon was spent loading and offloading large, heavy boxes of food (filled with ridiculous quantities of canned lentils and Campbell’s soups, might I add) from the Waterloo Food Bank. Rest of the day was spent with me staring at the walls, unable to get any more coherent than, "Fire bad, tree pretty."

And today, I’ve been reveling in having a day off where I got to sleep in. Yay!

But for those of you curious, here’s some detailed rambling about the adventures and exploits of the past few days.

MONDAY

When I woke up, I discovered that thanks to all the hair gel I had courtesy of the “Wade” character I was playing, I now resembled some poor sot who had stuck a fork in the toaster. All I needed was the melted fork, and I could have limped down the streets scaring people into thinking I had managed to electrocute myself.

But the wonders and aftermath of Sunday’s hair-gelling experience proved to be nothing compared to what the make-up crew had in store for me today. You see, there were no scenes being filmed that required me as “Wade”. It was all outdoor shooting, but I wanted to show up just to hang around and enjoy seeing everything behind the scenes.

Halfway through the shoot, I would up being volunteered into being the guy who clacks that slate together and says official-sounding things like, “Scene 112, take 2.” Did that for the rest of the night, as it turned out, which was interesting.

Incidentally, the Monday night shoot proved that filming isn’t always this glamourous stage. That’s not to say it’s boring, but it proves rather tedious at times, if not downright quiet and blasé. Then again, I wasn’t in any of the scenes, and outside of all the slate-clacking, I had very little else to do. But it was still cool to watch everyone through the monitor.

Back to the hair, though, Cecelia (the director) thought she might need some extras for one scene that required some people milling about the front entrance of the Stages club. Since I openly said I had no other obligations, but was willing to help if they needed it, I was sent within my first hour of being on set to the make-up crew.

There was only one requirement: I could not be recognizable on camera. I had to look nothing like Wade. The ladies asked if there was anything I wanted or didn’t want done to me. I said they had carte blanche to work with; whatever they fancied, I’d let them get away with it.

You know, perhaps that evil little glimmer in their eyes upon learning that might have been a good indicator what was to come. It is no small understatement in saying the two of them had waaaaay too much fun dolling me up. 20 minutes, a little white foundation, and a lot of hair glue (I kid you not, it was glue for hair), I looked like Alice Cooper trying to look like a clown, or else I resembled a mime from hell.

For those of you who are familiar with my appearance, take a moment to think about how I look with my glasses off. Now give me a white face. Now give me black lipstick. Now add black mascera and eyeliner to my eyes. And for the final touch, turn my hair a bright purple--yes, purple--and give me 4 rows of spikes lining my skull, two on either side of my part, and one just above either ear. I resembled a purple-headed pincushion.

Some you may now want to banish that mental image from your minds. At least until I show you the actual pictures I simply had to take just to terrify people with.

Everyone seemed rather impressed that I could undergo such a drastic change of appearances. Alas, though, we never did get to film that scene. So all that hair and make-up was all for naught. But it was fun to see how I looked like a goth, however. Besides, I spent the rest of the night being Slate-Clacker Guy looking like that.

And what made it absolutely priceless were the looks I was getting when John (still dressed as a Catholic priest) and I were milling outside of the bar beside Stages. Apparently people just can’t wrap their brains around a priest who is smoking and chatting next to someone who seems to belong at a Marilyn Manson concert.

So for the rest of the night, I looked like that. During the course of all the filming, I discovered a number in interesting things. Like, boom mikes can be hazardous to your health. I lost count of how many times I nearly clothes-lined myself on the damned thing as I clacked the slate and then raced out of the way so the camera wouldn’t pick up me or my shadow. I also discovered that many of the women there for the shoot, actresses or crew, could not get enough of me doing my best gay voice and going, “Fabulooouuus!”

I wonder if anyone should be worried that there were not one, but four of us guys there who were notably heterosexual (I'm engaged, Dean's married, and John & Ralf adore women), but could act over-the-top gay at the drop of a hat.

Anyhoo, the night shooting finished just under the wire. We could only use Stages until 2am, and then we had to be out. Last scene was completed to the director’s liking with 5 minutes to spare. I went home, and even though it was quarter after two in the morning, I had a shower.

I must openly confess that I didn’t care who I might have woken up. I was not about to go to sleep still wearing all my make-up and giant purple spikes of hair. Everything came off surprisingly well, given how it was only a ten-minute shower. Even the glue, which made my hair so hard I could have been used to gore someone, came out easily.

Then again…when I woke up later that morning, there was still enough residual glue in my hair to make me look like Shaggy from Scooby Doo in mid-scare. My hair was literally standing perfectly straight up. Had I not been possessing the thinking capacity of a rutabaga, I would have taken a picture of it. Alas, I did not, so you will just have to envision it for yourselves.


TUESDAY

By far, this had to be one of the more interesting days. Namely because today was the day we had to work with all the extras. Stages needed to look as if it was packing a fairly large crowd, which is a surprisingly difficult effort given its size. In the end, we were able to wrangle roughly 40 extras for the shoot, which is actually a more impressive feat than it sounds.

Thanks to John, we were also get a local band to play up on the stage. The band members of Puncture Vine happened to be close friends of his, so when Cecelia said she was hoping to find a band for the crowd shots, John said he’d check with them. From the sounds of it, both sides were thrilled with the idea. So, we had Puncture Vine playing one of their own songs at the club.

Well…they were actually lip-synching since the actual set-up would have taken hours we didn’t have, and all the DJ equipment had long since been removed. The crew was able to jerry-rig a computer to some speakers, which blasted their song across the club. Apparently they also managed to fry part of the speakers in the process too. But all the actual music will be super-imposed during the sound editing process in post-production, so it’s all good.

All the extras, most of them looking the goth part (and that was how they normally dressed too), were wrangled up and put over on one part of the club. We only filmed from one side, but did a hell of a lot of different angles. Despite it being one scene, there were roughly 10 takes, almost each one being at a different angle.

Some of John’s good friends from one of the other clubs, Club Abstract, were able to most assuredly get on film. I’d met them all few times prior to the filming, just from hanging out with John, so we made a point of having them talking to me when the scene starts. The basic of the scene is this: Bailey, a heroine and reluctant vampire, enters the club looking for a lot of really mean vampires (me/Wade being one of them) who started the club up as a local smorgasbord. However, these really mean vamps already know Bailey is coming, and I’ve been sent to keep a lookout for her. Once I find her, I intercept her on the dance floor, and drag her off to the lair.

So, the camera needs to be on me for a bit of the beginning. I’ve got my back to the camera until Bailey comes in, so the trio I’m chatting with were all facing the camera. (Though they were all great in obeying the golden rule: NEVER look into the camera. Directors hate it when you wind up with that deer-in-the-headlights look.) I’m pretty sure they’ll manage to get on film once all the editing is done.

Not to mention one of the guys was a valuable asset to me. As Wade, I’m never wearing my glasses. You can imagine how difficult it is to have to casually look out of the blurry corner of your eye, desperately searching through the dim and dancing lights for a girl in a blue dress. I admit it: I’m a “blind as a bat” vampire.

But Peter, being the helpful sort, kept an eye out for her for me. We worked it in so that when Bailey reaches a certain point, he says as if he’s casually talking to me, “There she is.” Whereupon I deliberately look at Bailey. Then I shake Peter’s hand, and part ways with him & the others to follow after Bailey.

And thusly, this scene was where I got to shine as the sinister “Wade” once again. I swear, the way his ad-libbed role has turned out, the guy is some sort of scary omni-sexual vampire. Some of the other actors have joked about Wade now needing his own movie, or to show up for a sequel. I am emphatically not wanting that; ignoring the fact that Wade has in fact already been killed in a scene filmed Sunday, I don’t want to get anywhere near this persona ever again. I’m just playing him, and the guy gives me the creeps.

More than that, this time around I had lines. I can’t begin to say how nervous I was at having to act creepy while delivering my lines. Given how malevolent the persona had become from all the scenes filmed prior to this one, I felt a great pressure in delivering as much of a creep factor as possible. Being sinister is a hard task when you’re at your best when you whisper, but because of the boom mike’s limitations, you have to talk loudly.

I still think I did pretty well for it. Though once again, the ad-libbed parts were the best. It was never called for in the script, but “Bailey” and I decided beforehand that during the confrontation she & I have, I should lick her across the cheek. Apparently, as a shot it worked great.

However, bear in mind that we did this scene from start to finish roughly 9-10 times. I licked Bailey’s face roughly 9-10 times. And with each successive take we did, I seemed to be licking her even more than the last time. By the end I think I was practically lathering the side of her face with my tongue. Needless to say, her cringing and shuddering was not faked at all.

We kept joking about it between takes, to keep the mood light. I wound up saying to the camera as they prepped for another angle, “I think I’m addicted to her foundation! I’m going to be licking Maybelline cosmetic cases at the department stores now!”

And all the jesting was done to also placate her boyfriend, who was one of the key figures on the filming crew. I know that Mel, my lovely fiancée (whose very cute pictures I flaunted all night long to cast members who had been wanting to see what the love of my life looked like), will probably squeeze her eyes shut when she sees this scene on film.

But that aside, the last thing I wanted was to have a take interrupted as “Bailey”’s boyfriend comes flying from off-screen and tackles me in mid-lick.

All the crowd scenes were filmed really fast, and went very well according to the film crew. So after that, the extras were allowed to go home, and we prepped for filming the final fight scenes. During this time, I went up on stage to get a picture of the Puncture Vine band members; since I’ve been using up a roll of film for each night, I wanted to get as many of the people and behind-the-scenes shots as possible. I’ve already got doubles of the photos ordered, so I can give one set of each roll over to the film crew for their scrapbook.

But back to Puncture Vine, in order to take their picture, I needed to get my camera. Ralf had been holding my camera and my glasses for me during the filming, so as he tromped onto the stage, I asked for my camera back (I already had retrieved my glasses a few minutes earlier). Well, Ralf tosses me the camera. It was a gentle toss. I should have been able to easily catch it.

But noooooo, I had to fumble with it. The camera slipped out of my hands just as I was about catch it in mid air. There was some impromptu juggling as the camera bounced from one hand to the other as I tried to snag it. Then the camera went tumbling to the ground--and right towards the edge of the stage. This is a 5-foot drop-off, easily. Visions of my camera shattering as it hit the floor and effectively killing it and the rest of my film horrified me.

What did I do, you might ask?

I did what anyone else would have done: I pulled and Indiana Jones and desperately flung myself across the stage in a frantic bid to catch the camera. I almost wish the entire thing had been captured on film, since I quite literally took a flying leap with one hand outstretched, slid a foot or two on my belly, and grabbed hold of the camera just as it teetered on the edge and was beginning to fall. That earned me applause from the band a few of the extras who happened to see it.

My camera was safe, all was well with the world.

And so, onto the major fight choreography, or as we had come to call them, the “Fight Club” scenes. Admittedly, I wasn’t going to be doing much. The scenes we had done prior required me to be pretty much out of commission for the final fight. I’m sad I wasn’t able to shamelessly show off some of my gymnastics skills, but what I got in return was very worthwhile.

You see, as Wade I’ve already been shot near the heart with a crossbow arrow. This arrow has to stay lodged in my chest, since in the scene where I meet my demise, I pull it out. But, to further complicate things, my death scene happens after the epic battle. So we had to quickly create some continuity that shows I was not killed right off by the crossbow arrow, but also shows how I managed to survive the epic final fight.

Well, the answer turned out to be simple: torture “Wade” more. I get to be sitting on the sidelines as everyone’s kicking everyone else’s ass, the arrow still sticking out of my chest as blood dribbles down my chin. I’m wheezing and looking really worse for wear, and not enjoying it.

Originally, we were hoping to have Bailey see me, storm up to me, deck me in the face, and say, “That’s for licking me!” Unfortunately that just didn’t work all that well with the fight choreography; Bailey is fighting a different vampire with every third step she’s taking, so there’s no real time for her to take a quick stroll and deck me.

It’s been reworked that one of the characters, Ethan (who is the comic relief character, and not very useful in the battle anyways), gets to torment me instead. He already was scripted to be walking up beside where I was going to be sitting anyways, so we added something colourful for him to do.

At this point, I’ve got the arrow cleverly duct-taped to the side of my chest, so I have more arm movement…though the tape had to be wrapped first around the arrow and then around my shoulder so it could be properly secured. Good thing I was wearing an open button-up over my Tshirt, otherwise things could have been messy.

Anyhoo, the planning for the scene is that Ethan sees me and tries to ward me off with a cross when he realizes I’m not too much of a threat. However, I hiss at the cross and try to take a swat at him. Ethan panics and loses the cross…right onto my lap. So basically, the sanctified cross burns a hole through my crotch. As I’m dancing there on the stool in pain, Ethan has this panicked “I’m sorry!” look about him. He looks around, and then knocks me out with a beer bottle. Thusly, I still have the arrow in my chest, but am not dead yet.

So, let’s take a moment to update the “Wade Pain-O-Meter” for a moment. In the movie, Wade has been: burned by a cross on his crotch, shot with a crossbow arrow, slammed into a wall, thrown over someone’s head onto a table, smashed across the back of the head with a beer bottle, cracked across the face with a pipe, bludgeoned repeatedly with that pipe, and then staked.

I can’t believe I’m so jovial about being subjected to so much abuse.

Sadly we did not get all the filming done that we were hoping to do by the time we had to shut down. Another 2 hours and we would have been done, but alas, we’ll have to reschedule another day to shoot at Stages. I’ll be doing my scene with Ethan then.

However, the parts we did manage to get filmed were spectacular. Two of the deadlier vamps Bailey has to fight were large and mean. One was played by Bob, our resident martial arts instructor. He was jumping down from the second-floor balcony, being thrown across the bar and through cups, kicking, punching and getting staked. It was really cool to watch…even though I was half-blind for that scene, since I was still not-dead-yet-Wade and I couldn’t tell when the camera was on me, and had to still play as the character.

The second vamp was large and burly, played by Dean, one of the Club Abstract bounces. His fight was cool for two reasons. First, the man was able to get metal plates grafted (not permanently) to his forearms. So there are scenes where Bailey is swinging her sword at him, and he is literally stopping her blade with the plates on his arms. Since Dean was also the weapons’ expert for the movie, he got to fight her with some chain-less kusarigama (think of small, handheld sickles, only the blade design is more straight like a scythe’s).

The second reason Dean’s fight scenes were cool was Algernon, called ‘Alge’ for short. Algernon is a large, white rat. He was actually very clean, very tame and very quiet. Algernon was Dean’s pet, so what Dean had was that Algernon is sitting on his shoulder when he first confronts Bailey. Bailey challenges him, and so Dead picks Algernon off his shoulder, kisses the rodent, then sets him out of harm’s way. Whereupon Dean proceeds to eventually get himself staked.

So to update the film’s “Colour Animal Extras” count, we have: Algernon, the large white rat; and Aphrodite, the beautiful 8-foot long albino Burmese python. I took pictures of both of them; I hope they turn out.

*Whew!*

That’s more or less everything that I wanted or felt I needed to comment on. Please do excuse this rather lengthy bit of nowhere, and continue on with your normal lives now.


Today’s Lesson: rutabaga is spelled R-U-T-A-B-A-G-A


posted by Phillip at 3:19 PM

 
I Can Lick 40 Nubile Young Women Today

It’s roughly noonish as I write this, and I am sore. Very, very sore. My fingers are sore. My rotator cuffs are aching. My hips are sore. My legs are sore. My feet feel like lead weights. The left cheek of my butt is sore (though strangely enough the right cheek has somehow managed to survive unscathed). My neck is stiff. My shoulders are sore. My back is sore.

I don’t understand just what exactly could have made me so sore. It might have something to do with getting slammed into a wall by a guy built like a quarterback. Then again, it could also be from me getting flipped over said guy’s head and slammed onto a table repeatedly. Or from me getting shot with a crossbow arrow. Or from getting cracked across the face with a metal pipe. Or from being bludgeoned repeatedly with that same metal pipe. Or it could have been from the staking.

The world may never know.

I have to say if being stiff and sore and aching is the price I have to pay for all the tremendous fun I had during the filming yesterday, I’d gladly pay it again. In fact, I’ll be doing that Tuesday, though I won’t have quite as many scenes to film. Being pre-emptively shot and staked more than likely means I won’t have a lot of shots when the big fight breaks out at the end. Then again, I do hold the distinct honour of being the first of any of the characters to have their death scene shot in this film. A winner is me!

Incidentally, I must correct an error from my previous posts. The name of this movie is: Let Me Go. The first movie was entitled Regrets.

Yesterday, most everyone assembled at 10am at the downtown Kitchener bar, “Howl Sports Bar” (formerly, “Howl At The Moon”), which happened to be right next and directly connected to the empty dance club “Stages”, which was where all the filming was taking place.

We arrived at 10am. The last of us (myself included) left at roughly 2am this morning. That tallies up to about 15 hours spent on the set. Granted the scenes I was in took up maybe 4-5 hours max of the entire time, but that’s still a long day.

It was a day filled with many new surprises and discoveries. Discoveries such as: when I eat a pita from the Pita Pit store across the street at four in the afternoon, I no longer require needing to eat anything else for the rest of the night; fake gel blood tastes oddly sweet and fruity; and that I still do apparently look like an other version of Harry Potter--or alternately, Clay Akerman from American Idol, which in fact gives me all the more reason to prefer embracing my Potteresque appearance.

The whole Potter/Akerman thing began when I was set down for make-up and hair. Make-up was easy (oooh, mascera!), but the young lass doing my hair then asked, “So if you’re a disposable vampire, how do you want your hair to look?” My response was, “I have no qualms with whatever you try. Surprise me.”

The resulting hairstyle resembled me having taken a blowfish and styled my hair after it. Actually, it looked pretty cool, since there weren’t any big spikes or bangs; my hair was just sticking everywhere. Combine this with the fact that for all my on-set scenes as a vampire I was not wearing my glasses, and the comparisons people drew between me and famous people varied from Harry Potter to Clay to Tim Burton to *shudder!* one of those guys from the D- pop group B4-4. (I’d sooner be compared to Clay Akerman than one of those guys.)

My hair would have also been dyed red in some spots, to match my shirt, but since we lacked any red hair dye, that didn’t happen. I’m slightly disappointed by that, but oh well.

As it turned out, the last-minute scene John & I had written was approved, and it was the third scene that was shot. Everyone seemed quite happy with the end result, even though it mean some creative rearranging of continuity (since my character was slated in the script to have been shot with a crossbow arrow earlier).

To give a quick synopsis without any spoilers, the scene involves Father Nicholas (an Irish Catholic priest, played by John) and Max (a cemetery manager, played by John’s good friend Ralf) going down to the basement of the club to plant explosives meant to blow it and the vamps sky-high. In staggers one dying vamp (me), who them proceeds to get the crap beaten out of him by Max--but not before the vamp manages to spray a nice arc of blood across Father Nicholas’ face, courtesy of Max’s pipe.

The only downside to shooting that scene featuring my demise was the dust. It was the first scene we were shooting with my character (ironically enough, this scene will also be the last time we ever see him in the film), so I had to keep my clothes in relatively good condition for all the scenes I need to be in later that day. This is a rather troublesome task when the entire room is covered in dust from the cement, drywall and ceiling spackle. I managed to get most of the dust off afterwards with a damp cloth, but it took a while. A looooong while.

This scene was much-loved by everyone for different reasons. Cecelia, the director, loved it because we barely required more than 1 or 2 takes for each camera angle, and we all apparently acted quite well. Rick, the cameraman, loved it because the only real lighting we had in the room were some flashlights, which made everything look creepier. John loved the scene because it was so damned fun and funny for him to get sprayed in the face. I loved the scene because I got to have a particularly fun fight and death scene. Ralf loved the scene mainly because he got to beat me up and kill me.

(Poor Ralf is easily the biggest and strongest-looking of all the characters in the film, and he originally had no fight scenes. John & I helped rectify that.)

I was also complimented on how well I could contort my face and hiss. I chalk it up to my love of imitating the hiss of any of the Aliens.

I am also apparently now one of the creepiest characters in the movie, if not the creepiest. I honestly don’t know why. It might have something to do with me dribbling blood from a wine glass all over one of the female victims/appetizers in our nest, and then licking it off her shoulder and neck. Or it could be from when I gargled “blood” as it was poured down from above my head as I smeared it across my face. Or it could be from the rude kissy face I made at the movie’s heroine after dragging her into the vampire nest.

None of these things were actually scripted. They were ad lib and improvised in the middle of shooting a scene. It’s a little unnerving to be such a pleasant, amicable guy, joking with everyone on the set between takes, and then suddenly become some twisted, little amoral beast without really having to try at it. At the very least, I can look at this character I played and state with no uncertainty that I never want to be this person, ever. And for the record, I did in fact ask permission first with the female victim if I could lick blood off her shoulder.

Besides, I spent more time annoying everyone off-set with all my flowery prose and descriptions of my beautiful and saucy fiancée, Mel. Note to self: find cute picture of even cuter fiancée to show off to everyone today.

On a tangent, the “blood” everyone was drinking in these scenes was actually some form of strawberry syrup. Everyone’s glasses were at least 3/4ths full when we began shooting these scenes. By the time we were done, I barely had any left in my glass (what with all the smearing and drinking and dipping); that may turn out to be a continuity glitch, or else it explains why I was so wired for the rest of the night….

Though the star who stole the show was Aphrodite, the 8-foot long albino Burmese python who was used in one of the scenes. Sophia/Elizabeth Bathory, the big bad vampiress in the movie, got to wear Aphrodite around her shoulders and arms. Aphrodite was simply beautiful and so incredibly tame that we more had to worry about her trying to slither off and explore the club than anything else.

Other highlights of the shoot included John the priest standing outside of the bar, smoking a cigarette. He actually got more funny looks thrown his way than our two female victims who walked across the street to Pita Pit to get some lunch, complete with dirty, torn clothes and bloody faces & arms.

I also got horribly addicted to eating dry Frost Lucky Charms cereal. Excuse me a moment as I angrily wave my fist at the sky and cry out, “Damn you, Lucky Charms!!”

The more curious thing of all was that I never did get to see what the scenes being shot looked like through the camera. I wanted to have the chance to watch on the monitor some of the scenes being acted out, but the chance never came up. I was either nowhere near the shooting, or else I was on the set and couldn’t stare at the camera, or I was on the set and didn’t have my glasses so I couldn’t see the monitor unless I was nose-to-screen with it. I waited for John & Ralf to do the last scene of the night, and was hoping then to check out the filming through the monitor. But go figure, that’s the one scene they do where they didn’t rely on the monitor.

Ah well, today I’m showing up for all the outdoor scenes, even though I’m not in any of them. I’m there for moral support, and just wanting to hang out with everyone again. And probably to help John run lines; poor guy has to chant Latin tonight. I’m not about to stay out as long as everyone else, since this may go to 4-5am, but I’ll probably be there until around midnight.

So yesterday was a fun, new and interesting experience I honestly doubt I’ll ever have the chance at trying out again. I’m glad John thought of me well enough to volunteer me as a dancer (those scenes get shot in late August, I’m told). I’m glad I accepted the offer. I’m glad I was willing and had the time to volunteer my services for whatever else they needed. For as unfortunate as it is for the other guy, I’m glad I got called in at the last minute to play the vampire “Wade” (now known as the scary, perverted vamp).

For as worried as she is about how creepy I’ll look on the big screen, I’m glad that Mel has been encouraging me to get out there and do my best on the set. And I’m glad that at the end of last night, despite coming home late, who should be curled up at the front door waiting for me, but my little Sih-tzu, Shady. (I took her out for a run and gave her an extra-long tummy rub after she greeted me. Such a furry little cutie!)

I’m glad I had the fortune and opportunity to see what it’s like to be in and shoot a feature film. Sometimes life makes you fight for the things you want. And sometimes it just hands you the things you never even asked for. I may be tired right now, but I’m loving every minute of it.


Today’s Lesson: at 2am, the planet Mars is particularly bright and red this time of year.


posted by Phillip at 10:26 AM