I woke up today (at 5:20) feeling better than yesterday but I'll be going to sleep today with a massive headache.
I was the first to be picked up for the shoot. Why I was even picked up at that hour is beyond me. There must've been some miscommunication somewhere.
We drove around the city in the dark of a holiday weekend Sunday, picking up three others on the way to the shoot. The shoot was for Ceska sporitelna - a bank here in the Czech Republic. I was to be one of four principle actors in the non-speaking commercial.
The other three in the van were not actors. They were part of the crew. The van was Mercedes and gave directions to the driver in Czech, although the menu for the direction program was in English.
We arrived at the set around 6:30 a.m.
I had eaten a small, Mueslix-only breakfast before hopping in the van, so the free breakfast they provided was unnecessary. I ate some fruit nonetheless and drank some orange juice and coffee.
Shortly after breakfast, I was sent to costuming to get into my banker outfit, aka a suit (sans jacket).
I was in costume at 7:15. I was told not to cross my arms or do anything that might wrinkle the outfit. Sure thing. No problem. I'll film and be free by 3 p.m. and free to cross my arms. Oh, not to mention, from that moment on the only way I had to judge the time was to either look outside or ask somebody, because I was given a watch with the incorrect time. Of course, it was raining for most of the day so I couldn't judge by the sunlight either... So it was really left to asking people the time.
I did some of my Czech class homework out in the food tent before being invited into the bank where we were filming. The director, Graham, was English and so was the cinematographer, Dave. The main main main actor who figures in every shot almost is named Andrej and he's from Ukraine.
Due to the nature of the shoot, they started by filming the first few shots and then jumped to the very final shots - none of which involved me - and the total time it took to film those shots brought it to 2:00 p.m., which was the first time I asked the time.
I did some work for my work during the morning hours before my hand got cramped from taking notes. I also read some of my book and did other Czech homework.
As we finally started in on my scenes, the generator that powered the massive amounts of lights and other accessories started to crap out. It went down, they got it up again... Only to have it go down after they got two takes in. The generator was overheating, which was causing it to blow out. So they brought in another generator shortly thereafter, which shut down filming for another 15 minutes.
Eventually, we got to my first close-ups. This is where confidence is key and having not been in front of a film camera on a fictional basis in over 5 years, I was more than a little nervous. It didn't help that the production was full of people, whereas all my previous filming experience was guerilla filmmaking with very few people around. Suffice it to say, I was nervous and as my mania got its vices into me, I begin to mess up more. I was tense and unrelaxed.
We did maybe 4 or 5 takes of my close-up before moving onto another shot. Something happened after that though and I loosened up. I just said to myself "screw it", if I screw up, I screw up and there's nothing I can do.
Around this time, the sun came out outside, which was nice considering that it had been raining all frickin' day until then. It turned into a beautiful day but I had no alternative other than to bask in the sun in between takes and/or shots for a brief few minutes.
By the final shot of the day (around 6:45 p.m.) I had found my groove and was back to being my usual camera-friendly self. The director complimented me afterward on the final take saying that it was remarkably well underplayed. I'll post the commercial or a link to it as soon as I have it!
I then changed back into my civilian clothes, gave myself a rash on the chin taking my make-up off and made the stupid mistake of not knowing what I was gonna do immediately afterwards. I didn't have enough food in my flat for dinner, so that was out of the question, but simulatneously, I was too exhausted to go out. I contemplated going shopping and settled on that idea. By settling on that idea, I passed on a production-sponsored ride back to my flat.
Once I was actually in the metro system, I decided that maybe I would just go home after all. I have some cheese and crackers and maybe a piece of fruit or two and the good ol' fall back of cereal.
And so here I am. I still haven't eaten anything. I'm more exhausted than I've been in a long time and really don't wanna bother even slicing a few pieces of cheese for myself.
Posted by iain at October 1, 2006 08:28 PM