(no subject)

This time of day?

Ain't natural.

Unless you're coming at it from the other side.

Okay, off I go.

The Shoot

So, as you all saw, at 6h00 this morning, I was up.

That, alone, is a feat (and probably a testament to how much I like my executive producer, who shall remain unnamed unless she says it's okay to mention her LJ name ;).

It took me two and a half hours to travel from my place to the filming location, which technically meant I was late (8h00 call time), but apparently there was an issue with the tapes, so it was all good!

The project: we're having a beach party! Except, you know, it's winter... so a beach party would suck.

So, I arrive at the Kew Gardens beach just as people are trekking over to the snack bar, since we're going to commandeer the women's changeroom as our "talent area"/stay warm area. The temperature? -4, plus wind chill, plus we're on a fucking BEACH so there's NO protection from the wind PLUS it's about a thousand degrees colder because BEACH. Thank god I'm wearing layers.

Layers: undershirt, t-shirt, overshirt, sweater, jacket. Hat + hood. Mitts. Underwear, nylons, two pairs of socks, jeans. Add snowpants when I get there. Boots (Christmas gift from Patrick).

Still can't feel my face. Or fingers. Dammit.

ANYWAY! So, we drag all the stuff from an open-air location (ugh!) to the women's changeroom. We have breakfast foods! Yay! Donuts and bagels and muffins. We go to plug in the coffee and tea machines...

Which blows the fuse in the changeroom, plunging us (and the women's bathroom) into total darkness.

AWESOME! Time to nap... no! No, it's a shoot. Just five more minutes... zzz...

But, no. It's time to shoot and we're ready to shoot, goddamnit! So Brian (aka Leonard) goes out, chases a beach ball around. I'm inside the dark-ass changeroom, but it's all good. We're chatting it up, having fun. A couple more people get called, I think the failed sexy dancers. Then we are all summoned out to the freezing-ass winds and wait while Brian chases the ball a bit more. Then, it is time for my acting debut!

This consists of standing around chatting/pretending to drink while Brian attempts to toss the ball at Saj, who loses control of it because of massive gusts of wind! (Actual wind.) In trials, this ball hits me every single time. Sadly, it didn't happen for actual footage.

Then Alex C. (Sally in The Leonard Show) does her hulaing magic. Hilarious disappointment ensues.

Then the limbo scene! I am holding the limbo stick, which is a plastic thing that says "LIMBO FUN!" It is going NUTS in the wind. This scene was also hilarious, if just for Missy flailing like an upturned turtle.

Then... uh... I'm thinking maybe there was another scene in here, or this is where break was called. Can't remember. Funny thing is, I think if there was a scene filmed here, that I may have been kind of important to it. But it was early, so the brain-fuzz took it from me. Or maybe it never existed, who knows?

There may also have been a tanning scene, somewhere in here.

BACK TO THE CHANGEROOM OF DARKNESS! Hot pizza never tasted so good, nor did hot chocolate. I can feel fingers again, yay! More laughing and joking around, and Executive Producer-sama introduces me to naturelf, who tells me about making EP-sama a Jayne hat. YAY JAYNE! We talk about sf/f geekery. She is awesome.

More shooting! This time, we are made to stand around a bonfire watching Mike S. try and light it with sticks. We have marshmallows and hot dogs waiting to be cooked, damnit! Those of us with marshmallows have two on a stick, often in V-formation, so there are a LOT of cock-and-balls jokes with them and the hot dog. This only gets more hilarious as Lindz is told to poke Mike in the face with her 'dog impatiently. And then again for the foley (sound). As naturelf said: "The best moment was watching them do the sound-take foley thing to get the sound of the raw hot dog rubbing against the guy's face."

Sheer awesome.

Then we moved on to my ACTUAL debut. You know, me being a central character (because I happened to claim the "real" drink from EP-sama). My poor, frozen drink. I so wanted to drink it, and yet, it was frozen solid. And then I dumped it on the beach. It actually held together enough for us to shoot it twice.

And then the final shooting scene: naturelf and Saj running down the beach to the inner tubes, grabbing them, and trying to pull them apart; alas, they are frozen together, and the poor young women fall on their asses trying to separate them. SO funny. Especially, again, when the foley was being gotten.

We wrapped at about 2, making the whole ordeal only 6 hours (ten if you count my travel time). Plus I got a hat and met a new awesome person! ♥

And that was my day of work.