For a good time, call . . .

Yesterday I assisted in filming a short. It was a pretty new experience for me, I really only do live theater. At first I thought this would be my first acting (non-extra) film, but my brother reminded me later that it's not: in undergrad a friend of mine named Tony was in the film department here at the UI. As a favor, I agreed to do a scene in a judge's robe pronouncing sentence on men who'd screwed over women, generally involving creative forms of castration. I never knew what the rest of the plot was, and I'd forgotten all about it, but apparently it's been shown on some public channel.



Recently.



Yikes.







Moving on . . .



So I get this email about yesterday's shoot, and it includes notes on costuming:

For costuming tomorrow, I need you to wear something nice, prefferably a red dress. Your hair should like like it's supposed to be up/nice but isn't because you just found out your husband was cheating on you. Make-up should reflect the same as well. If you have a ring, please bring it as well as a purse.

I acquire the appropriate items, then go forging my way through the early morning tailgaters to find this guy's apartment. I can't find it, my right stocking won't stay up, and I'm getting really frustrated. Then I realize people keep staring at me.



Then it hits me: mussed hair, ruined makeup, bright red filmy dress, strappy heels with stocking, swearing to myself . . . everyone thinks I'm a hooker.



I ended up twenty minutes late, but I couldn't stop laughing most of the way there.



The shoot was quite interesting, it was done with real film not VHS, and about everything was one take. I guess film is expensive. It was challenging, given I'd not seen the script before showing up that morning. It was loosely based on the song Taxi by Harry Chapin, me playing Sue.



There are a hundred things I'd like a second chance at: the nuance wasn't right when I asked him whether he'd flown, I walked away too quickly when the taxi pulled off, I was too upset at the beginning - I'd need to see it myself, but my instincts say it needed more subtlety.



It's difficult to guage, because film is shot in a disjointed manner. It's hard to dredge up the emotion from two scenes back, and try to match it. Much less remembering where your hand was, how your head was tilted, etc. That said, I look forward to branching out a bit into more film projects if the opportunity presents. It's a lot of fun and involves an entirely different skill set.



But I want to memorize the script first, and flesh out my character. Please!