Tick Tock

After a wonderous day on Thursday, I strapped myself in and prepared myself for an almighty crash back down to earth. If I could be bothered, I'd go back and check where I left things on Friday but I know I can safely say that I was complaining about the lack of food. I'm sure there were numerous other complaints which were my parents to look at, they'd probably disown me and wonder how on earth their incredible parenting skills had resulted in such a whiny, ungrateful child.

Anyway, I have to admit that this weekend, on the whole, was pretty bloody fun. Much of it was spent running away from pretend monsters and if I wasn't doing that then I was either attacking them or screaming at them. Time in front of the camera, as always, was great. A monster-fighting heroine is not a role that comes my way very often so I've enjoyed it immensely. As the ravages of time take their hold, these parts are going to land at my increasingly achy feet less and less so I figure I need to make the most of them while people still foolishly let me have a go at them.

As usual, it was the time away from the camera that was tough. And it was namely to do with when I was due to finish. On Saturday, I'd been told that I'd be finishing by 5pm. Out of everyone on the shoot, I've probably been on set the most and after a 12 hour shoot on Friday, I was looking forward to a much shorter day. However, when I tell you that my lift to the location on Saturday morning was late by 45 minutes, you already know that my wrap time was becoming more unlikely than Scorsese coming up to me in Sainsburys, telling me how he loved my extensive work in student films and that he'd love to secure me a job in every shoot he's involved with between now and the end of time. Finally at the location, we were then subjected to another hour wait while the crew set up the first shot. Finally in front of the camera, everything went swimmingly and we started racing through the shots needed.

As we approached my wrap time, everything started to take longer. Everyone started messing about and the director suddenly decided that each shot needed at least 18 takes, regardless of how well the first one went. My 5pm home time started to become a distant memory and I was then promised I'd be done by 8pm. That time came and went and I was then told I'd be out by 9pm. 9pm struck and I was still waiting to shoot my final scene. Finally at 10pm I was done and was told that I could leave. With a spring in my step, I got my stuff together only to find that there was no one available to get me back to the station. Normally I'm fine getting myself to these places but time + darkness + south London on a Saturday night meant that my desperation to get home was overriden by my desperation to keep hold of my belongings and my face. Another half an hour passed before I was finally released back into the wild, kicking and screaming and wondering why my job has become putting up with these things.

Thankfully I've already seen some of the rushes and I'm confident that at the end of it all, I'm going to have a piece of work that I'm actually proud of. I mean, when I say proud, I actually mean a piece of work that doesn't make me want to hack off my own face the second someone mentions it. It's far from perfect and I'm sure my accent travels around so much that it's almost solely responsible for global warming but it's made by people who know what they're doing and care about these things so that's got to count for something, right? All they need to do is buy a massive clock and hire Dervla Kirwin to dub everything I say and it might just work out...

Limprovisation

Improvisation. Get it right and there's a high chance they'll put you in line for the throne but get it wrong and you deserve to be sent straight to Hell. Don't bother stopping by 'Go' and collecting your £200, you won't be needing that where you're going.

I've spoken before about improvising for castings but the difficulty there lied in the fact that I really had no idea what I was talking about. Blagging can only get so far and once you add the fact that you're spouting utter nonsense to the awful realisation that you're making up names of haircuts to try and earn a living, you might as well give up the game there and then. But for today's casting I really had no excuse. Today I found myself desperately grappling for the role of an office worker in an advert for a certain tinned goods company. This should've been a breeze - I spent the last two years almost exclusively being an office slave and I bloody love food that has previously been encased in metal. To be honest, I'm pretty upset they felt the need to audition me. My canned food eating skills are second to none. During a Shakespeare festival, I became so poor that my diet for a whole week was almost entirely made up of Sainsburys value tomato soup and Tesco value gin (please note the two different supermarkets - I like to keep a varied diet.)

So the job should've been mine. Or it should've been if the casting just consisted of them feeding me soup. But it didn't. Instead someone with too much time and too little imagination thought it would be fun to make some poor unsuspecting actors enter into a long form improvised scene.

'You're just colleagues at work talking about daily office life. Just make sure you drop in how tasty and nourishing the metallic imprisoned food is too.'

Cue the most unnatural chat that has ever graced an underground casting studio. I should be good at office chat. I spent almost 24 months chatting inanely in an office. But never at work was I chatting to two people who also wanted my job while we a sipped at thin air in front of a camera. Add these into the equation and casual chat becomes stilted mumblings and awkward utterances. Not once while at work did I ever mention the need to get figures together quickly due to a tight deadline set by 'Michael.' Why is one actor, desperate for real-sounding words, telling me I should be so proud of the expert team I've created while another is berating me for pulling the new ginger guy in Accounts at last night's office party? Because we all panicked and realised that it's impossible to not run, head-first, into every stereotype that was ever created. Then, amidst this cacophony of made-up drivel, we then had to crowbar even more cringe-filled lines about how good the oxygen we're currently sipping is.

Sadly the only thing I left with was an incredible craving for the product that was being sold. Have I just been part of the most elaborate and soul-destroying marketing campaign of the modern age? Or maybe I'm just a hungry, starving actress? Cliched answers on a make believe postcard please.