A-Z of Acting. J is for...

Jilted Freak Productions!

How handy that this week’s blog is for the letter J!

As I mentioned in a previous post, this week I was in Northampton shooting a film called ‘7 Days’, playing a policewoman. (This was the film I talked about where I had the meeting with the dreaded hot seating, aaaagh!!)

I always get excited when I start a new project, and as I was driving over to Northampton on Monday afternoon, I was positively buzzing! As usual, I was the first person to arrive (punctuality should be my middle name… I don’t have one) and then my nerves took hold.

I’ve said before that I dread most first days as I think that the director will realise what a terrible mistake they have made in hiring me, and I’ll be sent home and replaced by a younger, skinnier, prettier girl with more talent in her little finger than I have in the whole of me! This was no exception. Gulp.

I sat and waited for the other actress and the crew to arrive and slowly my nerves started to disappear. I think this was greatly helped by the directors mum! We were all congregating and filming in her house, and she was lovely, chatting away, not even bothered by the fact that we were taking over her house! She’s the sort of mum that you instantly love, I liked it there! :D

My first scenes consisted of window acting! I was supposed to be looking at a house across the street as part of an undercover operation, but I couldn’t help getting nosy for real! If ever I retire, that’s all I’ll do, spy on the outside world, it’s fascinating!!

We moved on to do some outside stuff that included me walking, and going through a gate. Anyone who knows me well will tell you how much of an issue this causes me! I am rubbish with unfamiliar doors and gates! Regular readers will remember how I broke a door handle off during an eventful Cinderella audition, smooth! :/ Thankfully I only screwed up one take with bad gate acting, and the rest ran quite smoothly, phew!

Later on we were back on the stairs, for some more peeping action, but we had to wait for the sun to fade away. As the clocks had gone back a couple of days before, we had to wait for longer than expected. As it was so dark, a light had to be set up outside, facing in the window that we were peeping from. Lighting is always a test for actors. If you can act while being blinded by a megawatt bulb burning your retinas then you’re bloody good if you ask me! It turned out that I would have to go from blinding light to running down stairs in a matter of seconds which concerned me. Stairs have the same effect on me as doors and gates, but this time there would be microphones and cables and other such equipment to dodge, as well as various crew members, while trying to get my eyes to adjust from white to black. Thankfully no technology was harmed during the making of the scene. I think the crew made it out alive too!

I enjoyed the first day, and the director seemed happy, so I went home feeling chuffed, and consumed a glass of wine. Lovely!

My next day on set was Wednesday. This time I wasn’t alone on the drive. I brought the lovely Georgie along with me. Due to someone dropping out (don’t even get me started), I volunteered Georgie for the role of a Polish girl as she was the most eastern European looking person I could think of! I took great delight in helping to find the most hideous costume I could find for her, mwahaha!

Again, there were more walking shots in the morning, and I was gutted that she was a one take wonder, where it had taken me repeated takes walking in that flipping gate! I’m the trained one! Maybe I should go back to walking school!

Later on in the day, more cast members arrived, and we spent a lot of time telling horror stories about companies that we have worked for, and terrible audition experiences. It’s nice to learn things from other people, there are definitely some I’ll avoid from now!

I wasn’t involved in much that day, but as well as getting to know the other cast members, I also gained some knowledge on how to make fake blood! I need to find a project where I can use this information now! I want to make blood!

At the end of the day, I was quite sad to see people go. It’s always strange when you work with someone for a short amount of time, and then realise that you might never see them again. I get attached to people very easily, and it’s a little bit sad when you think you’ve made a bond with someone and then they just disappear. Or maybe I’m just weird…

The final day of filming was on Friday. I was the first one required to shoot, as I would be doing another first for me, driving acting! Well, I don’t suppose it’s really acting if you’re just driving, but the camera was on me so it counts, right?!? I had made an effort on Thursday to make sure that the car was spick and span, so in the freezing cold, I had hoovered the insides and given the outside a thorough wash. Well, police people never have dirty cars, even if they’re undercover!!

It was quite bizarre having someone in the back seat filming me drive, whenever I get a new passenger in the car, my driving becomes awful! I don’t know why! (Wow, I really have issues don’t I!!) I managed to hold it together and I was told we got some good stuff, so then it was on to our final location to film in our mock police station!

I was so excited to be finally out of my dirty black hoodie that I had been wearing for all of my previous scenes, and was able to be in my ‘smart’ police lady clothes! Huzzah!

I was strangely calm about my first scene in this location, which involved walking along a corridor and through a door!! Maybe my issues had been resolved with Mondays gate acting. Could I now be a master gate and door operator?!? Score! We moved downstairs for another scene which would be a police board room. I could do that ok, that was just sitting down! :)

My final scene involved me talking on the phone to the owner of the house that I had been peeping from. Simple enough, but the camera was so close to my face that I wanted to cry. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I prefer theatre to film, and that cameras terrify me, so to have a camera inches from my face wasn’t the most pleasant of circumstances to end on, but I sucked it up and got on with it, I had a job to do!

And that was me done. I drove the director back to his house, before he and the crew made their way to the final location of the shoot, but it was all over for me. I was really sad. I said my goodbyes to director Craig, and was just about to leave when the crew boys called me over to say goodbye properly. Hugs were exchanged, and it was a lovely farewell.

I had so much fun for the whole week. Yes, there were issues like any project has, but everyone was so professional, and everything was resolved with the smallest amount of fuss. When you’re part of a small team working on something, and everyone is putting their all into it, you always feel sad when it’s over, and I’m not going to lie, I did have a little cry on the drive home knowing that I wouldn’t be going back to do more the next day. It had been less than three weeks from the hot seating meeting to the final day of filming, and yet it seemed like a lot longer, and I was really attached to it. Heck, I’d even done research into the police for character research! I hardly ever do that!! ( :/ )

I know I’m not the best actor in the world, if I was, I probably wouldn’t be writing this from my bedroom in my parent’s house right now, but I am so grateful for being given the chance to be a part of the film. My role was also considered a lead, and it was so nice to see that too, instead of having another male dominated piece. Women police can kick ass too! It really infuriates me that women aren’t equally represented in most work, and even if they are, they’re written as weaker characters. Not fair! Anyway, I digress…

They may never want to work with me again, and that’s fine, but I really hope that we all stay in touch. Sometimes you just know when you’ve stumbled across a great bunch of people, and these guys really are. And a big shout out goes to the fabulous director, Craig. He worked so hard on this film, and had a fair amount of challenges to overcome and he did it splendidly. There were times when I thought that if it were me I would have given up, and there he was, still working away to make it what he wanted it to be, and still ended each day with a smile on his face and took the time to thank everyone for their work. I reckon he’s one to watch!

Some people think that acting is an easy job. You turn up, say a few lines, and then go home again. Believe me, that’s not the case. You spend a lot of time working on projects, and it becomes your main focus, everything else gets put to one side and the job is your world. Which is why I felt so empty when I woke up on Saturday morning with nothing to do. I had kept the day free in case filming spilled over to the weekend, but everything had been done, so I was faced with a day (well, half a day, I didn’t wake up til 11.30, film making is tiring!) of contemplation.

When you get so attached to a project, it’s hard to let go, and I honestly didn’t know what to do with myself now that it was all over. Today was worse. I had to go back to my normal person job. Despite the fact that I’ve only been working there for less than two weeks, I really didn’t want to go back today. It takes me approximately ten minutes to walk there, and those ten minutes were the longest of my life. My heart was so heavy, all I could do was sigh weary sighs of sadness. People will probably think that I’m being overly dramatic about the whole situation, but it’s hard to explain to people who don’t work in the arts. It’s an amazing feeling working with creative people who all want to create fantastic new work and are so passionate about it, and then to go back to a job where there is no creativity, just rules and regulations is like a kick in the face.

What got me through the day today was the knowledge that I won’t be stuck in that job forever, I know I’m going to carry on with acting for as long as people employ me. Even if it takes me 5 years to get another acting job, I know that there are people out there who feel the same way that I do about performing and creating and hopefully they will employ me! :)

Nxxx