Night of the Night-And-Day Shift

It's 8am. You're sitting on the outdoor patio of a Panda Express, stabbing disinterestedly at your Surf n' Turf panda bowl, minding your own business. You look out to the horizon.

You drop your chopsticks.

For there, silhouetted in black against the smoggy luminescence of the LA sunset, you see the vague shape of a figure coming towards you. You can't see much, only hear the heavy dragging of feet and the slow, growling exhales divided up by shallow inhales.

You squint and lean forward to get a better look. You don't even notice that the homeless man who's been watching you ever since you sat down has inched your styrofoam box of half-eaten chow mein away from you and is now eating it by the dumpsters. The ever-nearing figure draws closer and you can just begin to make out details.

Phew! You wrinkle your nose as the sensory details kick in. First of all: the thing smells. It smells like poop. Like sour, sour horse poop. And undertones of some other chemical odor.

After wiping the welled tears from your eyes, you can see more details. The nature of the thing is hard to make out as it is wearing loose, baggy clothing that renders it biologically neutral. But there's still plenty that you are able to distinguish.

A pair of dead, half-open eyes with deep lines cut below them.
Stringy, stuck-out hair that either avoids or eats hairbrushes.
Pale skin covered in splotches of colors and glue.
And all of this is coated in a conspicuous amount of dirt. Dirt in its fingernails, its ears, its armpits, its nostrils-- not one crevice of cleanliness.

You gasp.

It's...

It's...

JESSICA AFTER A FILM SHOOT.

*DRA*

*MATIC*

*MUSIC*

Howdy y'all, I have all but returned from the dead since the recent wrap of this Chapman film. A little under two weeks of shooting, two weeks of prep before that, and now two weeks of therapy as I gather up the shattered remains of my daily routine. 

First reactions to thinking about the shoot: it was a lot of fun. The cast and crew were all primo individuals and a genuine pleasure to work with. It was nice having our set be in the pleasantly still and unobtrusive rural zones of Chino Hills-- while the hour and a half commute from Santa Monica was a force to be reckoned with, I must say the drive got prettier and prettier the further east I went. Weaving through the hills and little residential bubbles was a nice break from the clusterfuck of Los Angeles. Not to mention the ranch was pretty great, too. I liked it mostly because I never felt spooked when I had to walk around in the dark at 4am. Who got time for a haunted ranch?

THE BEAST CRAVETH ALFALFA.

The ranch was pleasant and made for many "stop and wonder at the world" moments. Which were swiftly interrupted by the sound of my phone snapping artificial memories.

And God said, "Let there be dirt." And there was.

Just envision Judy Garland sitting on that fence.

All in all, I guess you could say it was a
 

Nailed that one.

But for all the good times I had, there was just as much stress and anxiety to handle. We shot on the ranch at all hours of the (everything but) day, call times often starting early evening and ending at 4 in the morning. It was exhausting, but the adrenaline of enjoying being on set kept me awake. Except for when it didn't and I fell asleep on a piece of ram board.

The typical work day on a film set is 12 hours which, thanks to our kick-ass 1st AD, was never breached on this shoot. But no matter if we were working 12 hours or 6 hours, at least 8-10 hours of my weekday were spent working at my job in Santa Monica. So here's how a good two or three weeks of my life went:

Drive to Chino Hills. 
Get on set at like 4am. 
Prep for 3 or 4 hours. 
Drive an hour and a half to Santa Monica. 
Work for 9 hours. 
Go out and gather more props, or else draw diagrams, create schedules, read/write zillions of production e-mails, or go back on set to shoot for another 8 hours.
Maybe sleep for 3 hours. 

Repeat.

My life was utterly consumed by work. Every minute was dedicated to the movie or hanging on to my current job. It was absofruitly nuts. I didn't contact the outside world for days; people thought I was dead or blowing them off. My bed was stacked with last week's clean laundry that there was no time to fold. At one point I was so sleep-deprived driving home from Chino that I pulled over into a residential neighborhood in West Covina and slept in my car for two hours before heading to Santa Monica for work the next day.

Am I crazy? Yes. Did I pull it off? Sort of. Was it worth it? You bet.

While I'm exceedingly happy that I once again have time for the little luxuries in life, like making food and changing my underwear, this was a positive experience. Not necessarily the juggling-two-jobs part, but the fact that the challenge was tackled and I can safely say I did the most that I was able. And honestly, I like being on set a hell of a lot more than printing TV sides and being told on a regular basis that what I do isn't enough. Film production is fun, no matter how hard the work. That's how I know it's the industry I want to spend my life working in. Where else can my work-related duties include:

-Designing an entire kitchen, living room, and bedroom... without using my own money!
-Collecting cool dishes and knick-knacks and arranging them
-Drawing copies of a 10 year old's doodle to have on standby
-Writing multiple fake suicide notes (apologies to the director for the nonsense scribbled on those...had I known we were doing long close-ups I might not have included that stuff about demons)
-Hiding a TV mount with a cow skull 
-Loading hay onto a golf cart and using my body like a human bungee cord to keep it all held on as we transported it from one site to another
-Dressing a fake corpse
-Building a tire swing
-Figuring out how to piece a fake axe together on about 5 separate occasions
-Watching two male cats lezz out with each other

Kitty-9ing

Now that I write them out I realize these things may not necessarily sound like "a blast," but that's exactly what I was having throughout the process. And especially getting to play the part of Production Designer, it's awesome to get to see the products of your work so immediately. If you don't mind me sharing--

Kitchen: for kitchen scene.

Living room: for living room scene.

Tire swing: for zombie pirate hooker scene.

 The only part that really, truly sucked was moving large and heavy furniture around on the world's most scratchable  floor. Have you ever lifted a wood stove before? You shouldn't. Buy a goddamn space heater.

You STAY in the corner, Woodrow.

For anyone who's interested, the film has a very talented team behind it and in front of it. While there's still much time to go before the thing is edited together, you can get updates and info on the project at this lovely little corner of Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/scarlettfilm. 

It's called "Scarlett" by the way, I feel like I've failed to mention that before. Or any other details about it, for that matter. It's a sort of thriller/drama. It's good. So far. Coming this Spring to a Chapman screening room near you-- or, if you don't live in Orange, 45 minutes to an hour away.

SO. In conclusion, I'm walking away from all this with a positive if not completely exhausting experience under my belt. The vacuum of hard work has literally and figuratively paid off, granting me the freedom to tackle the hard work I already deal with day to day.

Just enough time to rest up before this feature-length project begins production in 6 weeks...