Thursday, March 24, 2011

Flaming Lack Of It

Writing these blogs in the evening is going to have to stop... by this end of the night I have said everything that's occurred to me within the day and now I just quite simply have nothing left... It's things like this that make it genuinely baffling to me that I don't have a boyfriend - who doesn't want a girl who becomes incredibly vacant and prone to good naturedly nodding along to anything after 11pm?

The reason for the late night blogging this week is that I've been filming. I'm currently "starring" in a small student film being made over in Twickenham. I've discovered Twickenham is near an airport. Planes are loud. This results in every shot having to be done 4-5 times to make sure the sound recording is right for it. Frustrating to say the least.

I'm not sure I'm that enamoured with being on camera if I'm honest... it's obviously still better than the day job - everything is, but, it's not theatre... there's less of the magic involved in the acting on camera. To be quite honest, most of the time you feel like the actors literally could be anyone and that the shot angle and the lighting are doing most of the work for you. Perhaps I'm actually awful and they simply blame the planes and lighting and angles on the reason we have to film everything repeatedly - if so they're terribly tactful about it.

The crew we're working with at the moment are very friendly - there's lots of laughing on set and certainly less ego than I've encountered in my experiences in theatre. I suppose there's potentially less pressure on a film when you're shooting digitally and you have plenty of time. The crew frequently ask if I'm alright and if I need anything as though they're confused as to why I haven't thrown a strop yet. I could tell them I'm biding my time for when I think it'll really surprise them but so far the supply of biscuits hasn't run out so I'm keeping quiet.

Every 5 minutes I'm asked if I would like a drink and then I get a puzzled expression back if I say I'm fine. I could explain that were I to take up every drink I'm offered we'd be struggling with continuity on the level of bloating I'm experiencing but I don't want to frighten them into thinking I'm insane. They already think I'm a queer specimen being a comedian. Everything vaguely amusing that's happened on set so far has been offered up to me as 'something you can use on stage' should I want to. The concept of an in-joke hasn't really settled in our motley team yet so I've just accepted all the titbits and I'll attempt to weave them into a bin somewhere along the line. Maybe tomorrow I'll start outlining narratives for films and ask if they'd like help getting the storyboard ready.

I must away to bed now, another day in front of the lens tomorrow in a pair of joke spectacles that make me look like the live child of Eric Morecambe and a cheap Harry Potter. Glamour-ous.

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