Shooting Range

Today's post comes to you from a gloomy Miss L who finds herself tired, achy and on the bus at 8.30 on a grey Sunday morning. Few people are up and about and this time and those who are all have the look that suggests there are a trillion better things they could be doing right now. I've spoken to two loved ones already this morning. One gets to go back to sleep before having breakfast and the other is walking my gorgeous dog on my favourite walk in the sun. If you look out your window right now, you might see a green envious glow emanating from the top of the 43 bus.

But enough of my whining about today. What moans do I have about yesterday? Well, let's start with the insane lack of food. We were told that there would be no official lunch break as they had too much to get done and we'd therefore need to eat when weren't needed. No problem. I'll just go get something from the kitch...what? Where's all the food? Oh, that's it. You haven't bought any. After much foraging, we found a solitary bag of crisps but after one crisp each, we were told to stop eating them as the noise was interfering with the sound equipment. To be fair, I'm pretty sure the sound coming from our stomachs was far worse but we'll let that go. Finally, 7 hours after we'd first arrived on set, lunch was collected. We huddled round the shopping bags to find most of the film's budget had been spent on sugar free cherryade and a handful of sad sandwiches. These were hoovered up in seconds. Bellies still grumbling, we wondered if that's all we'd be getting. A few hours later and a rumour starting kicking about that pizzas were being ordered! Hooray! That'd keep us going for days. Or at least it would if they'd bought enough so that we could have more than two slices each. I should add that Actor 1 from yesterday claimed to have every allergy under the sun so he got a pizza all of his own. While he devoured tasty looking, exclusive meal, we picked away at our meagre nibblings.

I don't want to sound like food is the most important thing on the shoot because it's not. It's the most important thing in the world. But seriously, if you're going to ask people to work for free then at least let them eat decently at regular intervals. It's bloody hard keeping concentration during a scene when most of your attention is going into stopping you from desperately knawing on the boom.

Complaint number two is about Actor 1. He'd already annoyed me by turning up obscenely late which he made even worse by charging in to apologise during one of my scenes. It was an important scene where I, Miss L, the High Priestess of Clumsy, has to throw heavy tools at people. It was nerve wracking enough worrying about how many lawsuits I'd face after maiming the whole crew without this irritating buffoon barging in midway. He then made matters worse by spending the whole day talking to my chest and making horribly inappropriate comments. I'm as open minded as an open window in Mensa but I draw the line at someone constantly needling me to find out what my favourite position is.

I'm aware I've made this sound like the worst shoot in the world. It's really not. It's damn fun and everyone else apart from Actor 1 is working so hard to make this work. Even the downtime which is normally brain crushingly dull has been made fun after discovering that the guy who owns the flat loves the exact same books that I do and we spent a good chunk of the evening excitedly recommending new reads to each other. Unsurprisingly we all share a love of film and we regularly have to be told to keep it down as we all rush to explain films we think the others would enjoy.

Today's the last day of shooting for a couple of weeks so although we've got the funnest stuff planned, stress levels are going to be high as we need to make sure everything is covered before we leave this location. Check back tomorrow for another moany blog where I complain about the lack of bottled water on set. This will be overshadowed though by my triumphant retaliation against Actor 1 where, in one swift move, I shove everything he's allergic to down his neck and nail his genitals to a particularly rattly door. Too much? Nah....