I'm a little sleepy.
Friday night Lee, Nick and I went along to the pick up point. I made us leave quite early just because I figured rather too early than late. The rule was one person per team, so me and Nick took off before the doors closed and tracked down food in Netown. We found cheeseburgers.
When Lee got to the car at 7 we managed to leave pretty fast, no traffic jamming or panicked crowds this year which was good. Our genre was Fairytale or Superhero.
The brainstorming session was long and involved, we ended up down to four good ideas, the writers figured out what they felt confident they could pull off and we ended up with 'flatmates bickering, one turns out to be a superhero, one a supervillain. There's a third flatmate who is sidekick to at least one and another flatmate who is hilariously oblivious.'
I got cast as the secret hero, Chelle's brother Nick was the secret villain, Chelle was the sidekick and Jen's friend Berghard was the oblivious flatmate.
We had to include a brush, a line 'wait a minute' and Kerry Post, a perfectionist. I was the perfectionist, wavering more towards the clean freak side of things.
Michelle and I got to pitch extra ideas with the writers before they left the house and we got home. I was unable to sleep for ages and ages and I thought and thought and didn't sleep. This made me somewhat grumpy for Saturday morning. Once I'd had a coke I was much perkier for filming. We decided to film everything at Indigo City, so there were no locations to get to or decamping necessary. Nice.
All day we did crazy filming, more or less in the script order, first in civilian clothes and then in my super suit, my Hikaru Angelic Layer bodysuit and leg coverings, plus Giffy's shoulder length red wig and my black heeled boots. Chelle wore Giffy's Suzuka kimono, purple flares and purple wig. The hero names were Zap Girl (me) Dr Discharge (Nick) Buckwhip (good Chelle) Night Queen (bad Chelle).
I did all my own stunts, including:
-> flying backwards through the air
-> hitting a wall and falling down
-> being hit by Nick's sonic blast
-> rolling out of the way of having a couch thrown on me
-> leg sweeping Nick
-> Choking Nick along the floor and up onto the wall
my legs are achey now.
Norm fell asleep on the floor during our lunch break and then spent a full five minutes pissing himself laughing at the fat cat capsizing photo sequence. We made him have a nap after that.
We got some good bloopers. One where I slap my own ass and one where Berghard calls me 'splat girl' instead of Zap Girl. Hilarious. I can't remember the others now.
Other cool things: seeing comic book panels of myself, the evil villain makeup for Nick, the appreciation of my energy cookies, being in nearly every single shot!?).
We got free Nando's for dinner and pushed through to complete the script on Saturday night, minus the opening 'annoying flatmates' montage and a crack smoking 'mind power' scene. I was so shattered by the end and so was Lee, who was the director this year and really through himself into the role. The bath I had promised myself was total bliss at that point, and sufficiently relaxed me that I had a solid sleep through to just before the alarm went off on Sunday morning.
We'd given ourselves a late start on Sunday since we went late on Saturday and I did appreciate it. We filmed the pickups we'd been asked for and the montage stuff then a back up for the crack smoking scene and then the crack smoking scene. It was awesome doing the two last shots.
After that some ADR was recorded, we got Maverick's pizza for lunch and then settled in for the long wait. There were a horde of people in the editing room working furiously and the rest of us sat around and nattered and watched the DVD of last year's finalists. Things always get bad around 5pm I've noticed, and this year was no exception. The news from down below was sparse and unsatisfying. I was biting my nails when the safety cut still hadn't been outputted at 6pm, but it left at 6.25 with Jen and Nick and then I was able to relax. Norm, Steve and Lee worked hard on a better version (with no boom in shot) but none of us thought it would be ready on time.
I was on the phone to Jen at 6.53 keeping her updated and more or less telling her to hand in the safety cut when Lee tore up the stairs and out the door, camera in hand. I told Jen he was in the car and then hung up. We all waited with baited breath for the next couple of minutes, all sure that there was no way the better cut would make it in time.
Then a call came from Jen. Lee had made it in, with four seconds to spare.
Huge props to Chelle for driving so fast, and not killing anyone. The celebrations were loud and ecstatic.
Some of us went out for dinner after that but we mostly went home to rest. It had been a long long weekend.
I had another bath last night for good measure.
So. All in all, quite an awesome weekend. Some of our long time members got to step up into bigger roles, some amazingly fun new people introduced, lots of fun jokes cracked and wonderful memories. As ever, this is a great way to spend a weekend. Even if I do kind of want to crawl into bed now and never again move.
I have volunteered to go to Norm's and watch the footage and find the bloopers which should be fun. I will now go and print some photos from the weekend. Nick P was wandering around with my camera most of the time so there're some good ones.
The title of our film and also the catchphrase for the weekend and likely tshirt slogan? 'Borkhardt hates you.'*
Other notable lines: "Is this weaponised uranium?" and "It's turtles all the way down."
PoF: pjs and robe
CO: hungry actually
*Although I must point out for those who weren't there that this was a script thing. Berghard is actually a lovely person who hated no one.
Post Script. Jackie mentioned to me that filming a 48 hour film brings out the pack rat tendencies, because a lot of the random crap that you have is suddenly useful and important. I have to say I agree, since my desire to create costumes is increased tenfold by the idea that they may come in useful again. Especially shiny superhero outfits, because I am completely okay with being cast as a superhero again in the future.
Posted by jenni at May 19, 2008 10:24 AM