http://tinyurl.com/6yw5kkm
See? I'm not making it up. That's me eating jerk chicken. Also, with green hood on.
See? I'm not making it up. That's me eating jerk chicken. Also, with green hood on.
Friday 29 April 2011
Wednesday 13 April 2011
Michelle Ryan is a competent driver (AKA Zombies: Day 2)
Day two's Zombie extra experience was kind've like a party.
Unfortunately it was the sort of party you arrive at to realise you've been invited because someone has to hold the coats, and dang if you don't have the longest arms...
I was sat in the green room. It's early, but for some reason I hadn't stormed to the front of the make-up queue this time. Sarah was nowhere to be seen today. Perhaps that threw me; what if the other make-up ladies weren't as competent? What if they weren't even awake? They moved, and spoke, and seemed to be doing rudimentary things, but what does that actually mean at 6 in the morning? Nobody was too chatty this time; for most of us the novelty of rising this early must have worn off. What, I thought, is the point of going in first just to spend two hours in cold, sugary goop waiting for the rest to get done? Nobody was going anywhere before the last of us was ready. Any less than day one's amount of Zombie was no good to anyone.
So I waited. Mistake. (The first.)
Because once again, Ted loomed over me.
Would I like to be the body in the road today? Apparently the stuffed plastic bags had been difficult to work with. The collective had experienced creative differences and gone their separate ways. One wanted to go back to regional theatre, one had landed a recurring role on Hollyoaks. Insert your own joke. They can't be worse than those.
Being a helpful sort, I said yes. Mistake. (The second.)
I try to be a helpful sort, but truth be told, I'm also somewhat insecure, like most writers. I didn't want to be the guy who said no to this crew. Who let them down.
I didn't want them to hate me.
So I spent most of the day on my back. I'm not the first person in the movie biz to experience that. Trouble is, it was on cold concrete, with a tight, green lycra cowl pulled over my head, the same on my left leg and one armed pinned beneath me. Unfortunately this does not constitute a weird sex game.
The instant I pulled the cowl on I started to panic. The sensation was like drowning. All I want was to rip the thing off and breathe. Which I did. Fortunately, we weren't rolling at that point. I had to force myself to relax, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't happening. I was still warmer than last week, thanks to a puffa jacket so large I could almost generate my own gravity.
Around me, my ex-fellow zombies shuffled and moaned. All I could do was listen to them. I couldn't see a damned thing but extremes of light and shade.
But I wasn't in every shot, and this was where my experience differed from the others. Because when you're not in the shot, you have nothing to do. You're behind the camera. You get to watch, and to watch is to learn.
Weapons, props, lighting, A camera, B camera, steadicam harnesses, the video village, rehearsals, blocking out sequences... the list of educations is endless. There is so much going on, such a collective effort behind every single tiny sequence that it boggles the mind. Making good movies is hard, like catching lightning in a bottle, and this is why. It requires such precision, such confluence of random factors with well-honed skill and artistry, that it's a wonder we ever get great ones at all. For that miniscule education I am truly grateful. Those moments alone made it all worth it. I think I earned them.
During the course of the day, some Zombies got up close and personal with "the talent", some got weird blue contact lenses, some got socked around the head with rubber wrenches, expiring in spectacularly-conceived orgies of bloody destruction...
I got to lie on the floor, blind and panicking, while Michelle Ryan drove a clapped-out BMW at me.
To be fair, she did it all rather well and seems a nice lass. She promised not to drive over my head, which was all I could ask for really, and thanked everyone at the end of the day, which I would not have asked for but was very sweet anyway.
I have to give a shout out to my Zombie bollard, whose name I never caught. He stood by my "invisible" green head so that Ms. Ryan couldn't possibly drive over it without having to admit she'd been aiming for me all along. If you're the guy from the University of East London studying film, and reading a book on it at lunch, that's you, that is. Cheers!
Nevertheless, all day I had the nagging feeling I'd done something to be relegated to dead body duty. Not just dead, but headless and dead. And not just headless and dead, but headless and one-armed and one-legged and dead. When you've been a key shuffler in the zombie apocalypse on day one, that kind of demotion is hard to swallow (as are most things when you have no head.)
Had I not shuffled to their satisfaction? Was my dribbling not effervescent enough? Perhaps my loosely-twitching arms hadn't met Zombie kite-mark standards? It's a big step up in class from domestic zombieing to the international scene. I convinced myself I was the Matt Le Tissier of Zombies. The Ian Wright of the undead.
Or maybe, just maybe, they had no recollection of who I was, or what I had or hadn't done on day one. Maybe I was just the only average sized male who hadn't been through make-up yet.*
*This is a pragmatist's view. I'll stick with my paranoid conspiracy if you don't mind.
It was lonely inside the cowl. I now know largely how Batman feels, except he has the physique of a gymnast, the mind of a genius and massive personal wealth. I had a sore back, one cold foot and a £13 Primark hoodie.
At some point mid-afternoon I started to feel a touch annoyed. (Not because I'm not Batman, but I'll be honest, it didn't help.) As amazing as the experience was, I was now a bit cold and a bit sore. I'm the sort who takes it on the chin, generally, but the Zombies were being directied. Because, well, they had something to be directed towards. There's not much directing you can do of a headless dead zombie unless you're well-steeped in the metaphysical. I'm not sure Matthias Hoene is that sort of Director yet.
When it came time to get back down, nobody seemed able to decide where I was lying in the previous shot. There was no reference to hand. Matthias moved me, whereupon someone else showed up and complained that I'd moved. Several times I lay down, cowl on, only to realise I was behind the camera. I needed a headless Zombie attache but there seemed to be none on the payroll by this point.
As the day drifted by I seemed to be largely forgotten about, trusted to know where to lie, and when. It was like being the invisible man; you can do pretty much anything you please unless you're doing something obviously wrong, whereupon all hell lets loose. None was, so I assume I was playing dead to a reasonable standard. I wondered if I should try a little leg jerk, but decided that might be a bit "method".
Shot after shot after shot, it went on. I was in, I was out. I was dead, I was alive. My back was sore, my back was slightly less sore. I lay dead, I watched magic created by dozens of dedicated people.
And then, after twelve hours that made day one seem like a breeze, it was over.
The zombies wrapped for the day and proceeded to loop some groaning. I declined, seeing as I technically had no larynx. The truth was, the zombie camaraderie I felt on day one had floated away on the breeze. Everyone was still friendly, but I didn't feel I was one of them anymore. I was neither alive nor undead. Just dead. The fallen.
I gathered my things and went home, glad not to have to rid myself of the make-up again.
At some point in the day a Zombie remarked that for the amount these people are paid, they ought to get things right first time. I couldn't disagree more. For a start, most of them aren't paid that well. Below-the-line folks do it for love, not money, and could probably earn more in an office, in the warm and with shorter hours. After that, we come down to a simple truth of the business, as made famous by William Goldman: Nobody knows anything. It's both art and science, and to expect it to be quantifiable in those terms is ridiculous.
Already, I look back with rose-tinted specs. It's damned hard work, this movie lark, but if you love telling stories, whether if it's through make-up or lighting or writing words or saying those words, if it twists and growls inside you like a monster straining to get out, this is the most fun you can have in the world.
Unfortunately it was the sort of party you arrive at to realise you've been invited because someone has to hold the coats, and dang if you don't have the longest arms...
I was sat in the green room. It's early, but for some reason I hadn't stormed to the front of the make-up queue this time. Sarah was nowhere to be seen today. Perhaps that threw me; what if the other make-up ladies weren't as competent? What if they weren't even awake? They moved, and spoke, and seemed to be doing rudimentary things, but what does that actually mean at 6 in the morning? Nobody was too chatty this time; for most of us the novelty of rising this early must have worn off. What, I thought, is the point of going in first just to spend two hours in cold, sugary goop waiting for the rest to get done? Nobody was going anywhere before the last of us was ready. Any less than day one's amount of Zombie was no good to anyone.
So I waited. Mistake. (The first.)
Because once again, Ted loomed over me.
Would I like to be the body in the road today? Apparently the stuffed plastic bags had been difficult to work with. The collective had experienced creative differences and gone their separate ways. One wanted to go back to regional theatre, one had landed a recurring role on Hollyoaks. Insert your own joke. They can't be worse than those.
Being a helpful sort, I said yes. Mistake. (The second.)
I try to be a helpful sort, but truth be told, I'm also somewhat insecure, like most writers. I didn't want to be the guy who said no to this crew. Who let them down.
I didn't want them to hate me.
So I spent most of the day on my back. I'm not the first person in the movie biz to experience that. Trouble is, it was on cold concrete, with a tight, green lycra cowl pulled over my head, the same on my left leg and one armed pinned beneath me. Unfortunately this does not constitute a weird sex game.
The instant I pulled the cowl on I started to panic. The sensation was like drowning. All I want was to rip the thing off and breathe. Which I did. Fortunately, we weren't rolling at that point. I had to force myself to relax, close my eyes and pretend it wasn't happening. I was still warmer than last week, thanks to a puffa jacket so large I could almost generate my own gravity.
Around me, my ex-fellow zombies shuffled and moaned. All I could do was listen to them. I couldn't see a damned thing but extremes of light and shade.
But I wasn't in every shot, and this was where my experience differed from the others. Because when you're not in the shot, you have nothing to do. You're behind the camera. You get to watch, and to watch is to learn.
Weapons, props, lighting, A camera, B camera, steadicam harnesses, the video village, rehearsals, blocking out sequences... the list of educations is endless. There is so much going on, such a collective effort behind every single tiny sequence that it boggles the mind. Making good movies is hard, like catching lightning in a bottle, and this is why. It requires such precision, such confluence of random factors with well-honed skill and artistry, that it's a wonder we ever get great ones at all. For that miniscule education I am truly grateful. Those moments alone made it all worth it. I think I earned them.
During the course of the day, some Zombies got up close and personal with "the talent", some got weird blue contact lenses, some got socked around the head with rubber wrenches, expiring in spectacularly-conceived orgies of bloody destruction...
I got to lie on the floor, blind and panicking, while Michelle Ryan drove a clapped-out BMW at me.
To be fair, she did it all rather well and seems a nice lass. She promised not to drive over my head, which was all I could ask for really, and thanked everyone at the end of the day, which I would not have asked for but was very sweet anyway.
I have to give a shout out to my Zombie bollard, whose name I never caught. He stood by my "invisible" green head so that Ms. Ryan couldn't possibly drive over it without having to admit she'd been aiming for me all along. If you're the guy from the University of East London studying film, and reading a book on it at lunch, that's you, that is. Cheers!
Nevertheless, all day I had the nagging feeling I'd done something to be relegated to dead body duty. Not just dead, but headless and dead. And not just headless and dead, but headless and one-armed and one-legged and dead. When you've been a key shuffler in the zombie apocalypse on day one, that kind of demotion is hard to swallow (as are most things when you have no head.)
Had I not shuffled to their satisfaction? Was my dribbling not effervescent enough? Perhaps my loosely-twitching arms hadn't met Zombie kite-mark standards? It's a big step up in class from domestic zombieing to the international scene. I convinced myself I was the Matt Le Tissier of Zombies. The Ian Wright of the undead.
Or maybe, just maybe, they had no recollection of who I was, or what I had or hadn't done on day one. Maybe I was just the only average sized male who hadn't been through make-up yet.*
*This is a pragmatist's view. I'll stick with my paranoid conspiracy if you don't mind.
It was lonely inside the cowl. I now know largely how Batman feels, except he has the physique of a gymnast, the mind of a genius and massive personal wealth. I had a sore back, one cold foot and a £13 Primark hoodie.
At some point mid-afternoon I started to feel a touch annoyed. (Not because I'm not Batman, but I'll be honest, it didn't help.) As amazing as the experience was, I was now a bit cold and a bit sore. I'm the sort who takes it on the chin, generally, but the Zombies were being directied. Because, well, they had something to be directed towards. There's not much directing you can do of a headless dead zombie unless you're well-steeped in the metaphysical. I'm not sure Matthias Hoene is that sort of Director yet.
When it came time to get back down, nobody seemed able to decide where I was lying in the previous shot. There was no reference to hand. Matthias moved me, whereupon someone else showed up and complained that I'd moved. Several times I lay down, cowl on, only to realise I was behind the camera. I needed a headless Zombie attache but there seemed to be none on the payroll by this point.
As the day drifted by I seemed to be largely forgotten about, trusted to know where to lie, and when. It was like being the invisible man; you can do pretty much anything you please unless you're doing something obviously wrong, whereupon all hell lets loose. None was, so I assume I was playing dead to a reasonable standard. I wondered if I should try a little leg jerk, but decided that might be a bit "method".
Shot after shot after shot, it went on. I was in, I was out. I was dead, I was alive. My back was sore, my back was slightly less sore. I lay dead, I watched magic created by dozens of dedicated people.
And then, after twelve hours that made day one seem like a breeze, it was over.
The zombies wrapped for the day and proceeded to loop some groaning. I declined, seeing as I technically had no larynx. The truth was, the zombie camaraderie I felt on day one had floated away on the breeze. Everyone was still friendly, but I didn't feel I was one of them anymore. I was neither alive nor undead. Just dead. The fallen.
I gathered my things and went home, glad not to have to rid myself of the make-up again.
At some point in the day a Zombie remarked that for the amount these people are paid, they ought to get things right first time. I couldn't disagree more. For a start, most of them aren't paid that well. Below-the-line folks do it for love, not money, and could probably earn more in an office, in the warm and with shorter hours. After that, we come down to a simple truth of the business, as made famous by William Goldman: Nobody knows anything. It's both art and science, and to expect it to be quantifiable in those terms is ridiculous.
Already, I look back with rose-tinted specs. It's damned hard work, this movie lark, but if you love telling stories, whether if it's through make-up or lighting or writing words or saying those words, if it twists and growls inside you like a monster straining to get out, this is the most fun you can have in the world.
Friday 8 April 2011
Zombies - Day one, Part two
So there we were. Finally at the gate. Leaning on it, straining with all our undead weight...
The gate broke open. The gate's supposed to break open, but not that easily. As far as I know the script didn't call for us to think "that was a bit easy. Can't really be bothered now", and shuffle huffily off into the dawn. So we did it again.
Another reality of the movie biz. The underlying profession is the creation of illusion. They're paid liars, if you want to be blunt. Space contracts and expands, ordinary people become ubermenschen, and sturdy-looking metal gates turn out to be secured by something you wouldn't trust to keep a packet of frozen veg secure.
The sheer scale, even of a movie this small, is pretty amazing. Watching them work out solutions to these kinds of problems (because there's sod all else to do while you wait) is fascinating. The solution in this case was some poor guy with his feet on the gate below the level of the shot, holding up 15 people with more piling in. Who needs the gym?
Hours 2-4 basically ran like hours 0-2. Act like a zombie, rinse, repeat until everyone gets it right. That is, everyone gets it right at the same time, on camera. It's like herding kittens but with less mewing.
This time there was more blood, squirted into mouths just before every take. We were encouraged to drool; not hard because after the 4th application this stuff tastes like toothpaste.
We spent hours at that (literally) bloody gate. Spilling through, starting again, spilling through, ad nauseum. By lunch (jerk chicken, since you ask, and quite nice too) everyone was sick of the thing.
We brightened up during lunch. A few brave souls stole out to the local corner shop, while I developed my soon to be patented method for meeting members of the opposite (or same) sex (for, well, sex):
After lunch, we were back on the gate, spilling through again from a different angle, then for a steadicam shot, then for a dolly shot, slouching up and down on the spot to create the illusion of movement where there was none. I see that gate in my dreams. Terrible dreams...
It's hard to describe the fatigue that set in about this point. I'm pretty sure we were all having a blast, but walking like a zombie does nothing for the knees. No wonder the bloody shamblers break down so quickly. At one point I actually lay down on the gravel and nearly drifted off while the tech guys set up the last tracking shot. At which point my destiny breifly flashed before me.
"Excuse me."
My eyes snapped open, like the hero in a movie when he's having a rough dream. Fortunately I didn't slam bolt upright, because looming above me was Ted.
Now, I couldn't recall what Ted does. I could probably find him on IMDB, but I can't be bothered. If you're that bothered, you do it. All you need to know about Ted is that he was everywhere. He was important in a below the line way. One of those guys who has a hand in most on-set stuff but doesn't get the red carpet treatment when it's time to traipse down to Leicester Square. Ted was Antipodeian. He probably still is.
I'm in trouble. That was my first thought. I'd fallen asleep and tripped the 2nd unit Director up. Or called out something ridiculous in the throes of a nightmare. Or snored.
He wanted to know if I'd been featured.
That's right. Featured. A close up, or gesture, something to define me from the massed horde. I'd done one earlier take where I spun towards the camera in profile, drooling. One take. That meant either:
A) I'd got it spot on first time.
B) I had buggered it so spectacularly they believed there was no hope for me.
My mind wasn't leaning towards A. So in essence, I hadn't been featured. And yes, I WAS ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille... (It's amazing what being on a movie set can do to the ego. Even when you're so low on the totem they couldn't give your Zombie a number to distinguish him from the next.)
But I'm getting off the point. Ted wanted to know if I'd like to be the dead body lying in the road 20 feet beyond the gate. Clearly, trying to catch 40 winks I'd inadvertantly auditioned for the role. But this was progress! This was a role... beyond the gate. Zombie nirvana, baby.
Of course I said yes.
He took me over to some prop/make-up people. They conferred intensely for a few minutes and decided they would use a dummy mock-up instead. This mock-up seemed to consist of plastic bags stuffed inside empty clothes. That's right. I was being upstaged by a mass of plastic bags.
"So you won't be needing me then?"
They would not be needing me. Back to bed it was until the last shot was set up. After jam baguette sandwiches (strangest mid-afternoon nibbles ever), we did the tracking shot from the side, lumbering towards the dolly rig. Then we changed clothes so that we all looked like different zombies. Then we did it again with yet more clothes, so that in the final shots we would look like 300+ flesh-hungry super fiends, and not 30-odd cold, bored plebs with nothing better to do than hang out playing undead all day in clothes we only wear around the house.
The last job for day one was a quick half hour in twos in front of green screens practicing our zombie walks for a high-angle shot. More composite stuff, basically, for the CGI guys to construct a heaving mass of flesh-eaters.
"Remember the walk!" Our Zombie-trainer descended into his trademark shuffle. I did remember the walk, but my left knee was now physically incapable of performing it. I had a feeling I was shuffling in circles. Our two minutes in front of the screen was briefer than everyone else's, and I wondered if this was the cause. Had my left knee sabotaged a potentially glorious career in cinematic shuffling?
The last pair spun and veered in front of the green screen. A saturday night closing-time vignette...
"Zombies are wrapped."
That was it. An involuntary cheer went up. I've never been so knackered by a day's work in my life. It was by turns boring, cold, and repetitious. But I loved it. It sounds like proper work but it's much, much more fun, and much, much less paid. Nevertheless I was really looking forward to day two...
Poor fool.
*Unless of course, they're driving, and sometimes even then.
The gate broke open. The gate's supposed to break open, but not that easily. As far as I know the script didn't call for us to think "that was a bit easy. Can't really be bothered now", and shuffle huffily off into the dawn. So we did it again.
Another reality of the movie biz. The underlying profession is the creation of illusion. They're paid liars, if you want to be blunt. Space contracts and expands, ordinary people become ubermenschen, and sturdy-looking metal gates turn out to be secured by something you wouldn't trust to keep a packet of frozen veg secure.
The sheer scale, even of a movie this small, is pretty amazing. Watching them work out solutions to these kinds of problems (because there's sod all else to do while you wait) is fascinating. The solution in this case was some poor guy with his feet on the gate below the level of the shot, holding up 15 people with more piling in. Who needs the gym?
Hours 2-4 basically ran like hours 0-2. Act like a zombie, rinse, repeat until everyone gets it right. That is, everyone gets it right at the same time, on camera. It's like herding kittens but with less mewing.
This time there was more blood, squirted into mouths just before every take. We were encouraged to drool; not hard because after the 4th application this stuff tastes like toothpaste.
We spent hours at that (literally) bloody gate. Spilling through, starting again, spilling through, ad nauseum. By lunch (jerk chicken, since you ask, and quite nice too) everyone was sick of the thing.
We brightened up during lunch. A few brave souls stole out to the local corner shop, while I developed my soon to be patented method for meeting members of the opposite (or same) sex (for, well, sex):
- Stand at gate dressed as a Zombie.
- Wave.
After lunch, we were back on the gate, spilling through again from a different angle, then for a steadicam shot, then for a dolly shot, slouching up and down on the spot to create the illusion of movement where there was none. I see that gate in my dreams. Terrible dreams...
It's hard to describe the fatigue that set in about this point. I'm pretty sure we were all having a blast, but walking like a zombie does nothing for the knees. No wonder the bloody shamblers break down so quickly. At one point I actually lay down on the gravel and nearly drifted off while the tech guys set up the last tracking shot. At which point my destiny breifly flashed before me.
"Excuse me."
My eyes snapped open, like the hero in a movie when he's having a rough dream. Fortunately I didn't slam bolt upright, because looming above me was Ted.
Now, I couldn't recall what Ted does. I could probably find him on IMDB, but I can't be bothered. If you're that bothered, you do it. All you need to know about Ted is that he was everywhere. He was important in a below the line way. One of those guys who has a hand in most on-set stuff but doesn't get the red carpet treatment when it's time to traipse down to Leicester Square. Ted was Antipodeian. He probably still is.
I'm in trouble. That was my first thought. I'd fallen asleep and tripped the 2nd unit Director up. Or called out something ridiculous in the throes of a nightmare. Or snored.
He wanted to know if I'd been featured.
That's right. Featured. A close up, or gesture, something to define me from the massed horde. I'd done one earlier take where I spun towards the camera in profile, drooling. One take. That meant either:
A) I'd got it spot on first time.
B) I had buggered it so spectacularly they believed there was no hope for me.
My mind wasn't leaning towards A. So in essence, I hadn't been featured. And yes, I WAS ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille... (It's amazing what being on a movie set can do to the ego. Even when you're so low on the totem they couldn't give your Zombie a number to distinguish him from the next.)
But I'm getting off the point. Ted wanted to know if I'd like to be the dead body lying in the road 20 feet beyond the gate. Clearly, trying to catch 40 winks I'd inadvertantly auditioned for the role. But this was progress! This was a role... beyond the gate. Zombie nirvana, baby.
Of course I said yes.
He took me over to some prop/make-up people. They conferred intensely for a few minutes and decided they would use a dummy mock-up instead. This mock-up seemed to consist of plastic bags stuffed inside empty clothes. That's right. I was being upstaged by a mass of plastic bags.
"So you won't be needing me then?"
They would not be needing me. Back to bed it was until the last shot was set up. After jam baguette sandwiches (strangest mid-afternoon nibbles ever), we did the tracking shot from the side, lumbering towards the dolly rig. Then we changed clothes so that we all looked like different zombies. Then we did it again with yet more clothes, so that in the final shots we would look like 300+ flesh-hungry super fiends, and not 30-odd cold, bored plebs with nothing better to do than hang out playing undead all day in clothes we only wear around the house.
The last job for day one was a quick half hour in twos in front of green screens practicing our zombie walks for a high-angle shot. More composite stuff, basically, for the CGI guys to construct a heaving mass of flesh-eaters.
"Remember the walk!" Our Zombie-trainer descended into his trademark shuffle. I did remember the walk, but my left knee was now physically incapable of performing it. I had a feeling I was shuffling in circles. Our two minutes in front of the screen was briefer than everyone else's, and I wondered if this was the cause. Had my left knee sabotaged a potentially glorious career in cinematic shuffling?
The last pair spun and veered in front of the green screen. A saturday night closing-time vignette...
"Zombies are wrapped."
That was it. An involuntary cheer went up. I've never been so knackered by a day's work in my life. It was by turns boring, cold, and repetitious. But I loved it. It sounds like proper work but it's much, much more fun, and much, much less paid. Nevertheless I was really looking forward to day two...
Poor fool.
*Unless of course, they're driving, and sometimes even then.
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