fluffy sheep productions

If you've ever worked in the entertainment industry in any sort of capacity, whether it be in theatre, television, film and live striptease, you'll probably know about Second-Show-Syndrome, or in the case of a film/sitcom, Second-Day-Of-Shooting-Syndrome.

It's this phenomena where, after the first show/day of shooting, where all those involved are finally over the nervousness of starting something new and worrying about anything going wrong because, chances are, nothing has gone wrong (despite the fact you always think that everything can and will go wrong).

If you aren't confused by that last paragraph, I'd like to continue. What then happens is the second show/shoot is an absolute shambles, or one single thing goes terribly wrong causing the event to seem subpar. This has happened to every single production I've ever worked on which has had the chance to happen a second time (in some cases, it?s been held off until the fourth or fifth show).

Unfortunately, On Campus wasn't the exception to the rule. The first hour of our schedule consisted of myself and Carlos waiting for everyone else to arrive. Their reasons for not getting there were highly plausible, however. Stewart had to try and find a place to park his car, and Steve "I say 'twot' not twat" Ward and Daniel "Got my Facebook account hijacked and subsequently want a cock-sandwich" Jones had to wait for Michael to get ready before they left the house.

Yeah, that's right, Michael, I'm basically blaming our late start on you, and don't bring up the fact that I played pool during our shoot. I just had to show Stewart I could kick his ass at a game of pool, and that I did. By the way, Steve, you owe me a dollar. And Dan, you owe me a game of pool.

Ok, and now back to business. Our second day of filming subsequently seemed to resemble our first day of filming, but instead of finishing ridiculously early, we started ridiculously late. Despite the slow start, to everyone's credit, we had a very productive day, filming much more than I thought we could.

We started with the opening scene of the pilot which also happened to be my first chance to be in front of camera, and I managed to cock it up at least twice. First I bumped into a couple of friends during the shoot, and spoke to them while we were doing a take (thinking I was out of "earshot" of the microphone) but unfortunately I totally ruined that take. I then messed up my very first entry, totally fucking up my cue.

But from then, I like to think it was just peachy.

We also had to film a couple of scenes which I was very nervous about shooting, especially considering we didn't have proper permission for one of the locations. My location "permit" stated we had access to the corridor (which we needed) but said nothing about holding up elevators or using a whole toilet block.

If you've seen the photos (www.facebook.com/fluffysheepproductions) then you'll have a general idea of what I'm talking about. A couple of our scenes take place in a toilet block, because our material is of a high-fallutin' nature and extremely high-brow.

Thank goodness the toilet block was on a level of the building which was lacking in any sort of activity, so no one entered the toilet at all while we were filming. There was also a scene involving a whole bunch of us exiting a lift and then entering another (riveting television). This created quite an amusing situation involving Steve clapping his hands like a seal with down-syndrome shouting "WOW, A LIFT OPENED" and Dan looking like a complete idiot. It?d be too complicated to explain why Steve didn't look stupid.

Despite the fun and games of these 3-4 different scenes, it was nothing in comparison to the last scene we shot. It is a pivotal scene, showing how blindly ambitious Dan can be (hmm, recurring theme with the man?) and giving an example of the brotherly love that Michael and Dan share (or lack thereof). It also was an example of the sort of improvisational skills some of us wield, which I must say impressed me and left our second crew member gob smacked (I think James has been scarred by Michael's thoughts).

So, I think it'll be one of the funniest scenes of the episode, but as the saying goes, "no pain, no gain" and filming this scene did err on the side of "painful to the point that self-mutilation is more comforting". Or maybe just hurting Dan, he was the main culprit for the pain. Basically, Michael had to bag Dan for not having a girlfriend, and he did a fantastic job coming up with multiple lines playing on the same theme, mostly to do with Dan playing with himself, alone, in a bathroom, involving a certain type of lubricant and some very disturbing fetishes.

Every one of these lines caused most of us to crack up with laughter (and keel over in disgust), but Dan had the worst job of having to stare Michael directly in the eyes and be straight faced about the whole thing while on camera. Dan couldn't contain his smirk, despite knowing what was coming after the 12th take, and had to be removed from the shot after what I would guess as the 23rd take and estimate was almost 12 minutes of tape being used.

All because of two lines of dialogue. As you can imagine, this has created some great behind the scenes footage which we were going to release on Thursday night, but decided against it because it would reveal far too much about that scene, spoiling it when the whole episode is released. I would also like to give Michael credit for his creativity (or maybe I shouldn't, because some of that shit was just ridiculous).

At this juncture, we look toward filming all the scenes that involve pool tables, which is going to be extremely difficult. Much of the direction in the script indicates people sinking balls in specific ways, so I imagine this is going to cost us all a fair amount of money and a fair amount of strife. Being the purists that we are, Carlos and I wanted to veer away from using clever editing to make some of these shots work, much to the chagrin (I imagine) of Stewart and possibly even Steve.

You'll hopefully next hear from me in the middle of next week, and I recently saw Transformers 2, so expect a review coming soon. Until then, go to youporn.com and type in "hot lesbians" to try and find Dan's video. Michael told me it's there, but I haven't found it as yet.

The revolution is going really well, but we don't want to spoil it,

Antonio