fluffy sheep productions

Okay then, I will (in my own "oh, woe is me, feel sorry for how busy I am"-type way).

The past week and a half has supposed to have been my mid year break for university, but it's felt like anything but (except for the odd part-ay). I've been stupid enough to try and produce two television pilots at the same time (not by myself, but I bear a reasonable amount of responsibility for both) and this, along with the shock that my employer has decided to start giving me shifts again, has caused this period of time to lose any semblance of a "break".

I've even been insane enough to miss a friend's house party because I decided I had to get some work done for the show (including my last blog entry) and make sure I got a decent night's sleep so I'd get to the shoot on tim in the morning. Oh why must my perfect plans be thwarted again?

After my little rant about people turning up late to the last shoot, I knew that I couldn't let this happen to me. But of course, it did happen. I woke up late, missed my train and rocked up to see Michael and Carlos smiling at me. In conclusion, yes, this first part of my blog entry was to justify my tardiness on Monday, despite still getting there before Stewart, Dan and Steve.

As I said in my last entry, we worked on the pool table scenes on Monday, and that proved a more difficult task than any of us expected. These two pool table scenes involve (funnily enough!) a fair bit of us playing pool and require certain actions, such as Michael sinking the 8-ball. In writing the script, Carlos felt that these shots should be real, so no funny cutting showing Michael taking a shot and then another angle of the ball sinking (next time you watch a television show involving basketball, take a close look, does that ball really go in the hoop?)

So, if it all went to Carlos' (and to a certain extent my) plan then there was one of two ways this could turn out: 1) it could cost a fair amount of money or 2) the pool table people could be real nice and unlock a table for us. So we brought our gear into the pool table area of the cafeteria and set down our gear, just as the pool table minder-person (who, for all intents and purposes shall be named Phil from here on in) arrived. And that's when it all went wrong, about as wrong as Hitler deciding to attend a bar mitzvah... Well, it just went very wrong, but I don't mean in a disgusting fetish kind of- well, just keep reading.

Phil started talking to us and, although having a bit of a northern-suburban WOG accent, seemed alright. He had seen us last week filming and commented on Carlos being punched over and over. He also spoke to us about getting a Certificate II in Acting (I wonder why that came up...). Phil didn't seem to mind that we were filming in the room.

He then called his boss (who will be called The Boss). Phil told me he wasn't informed by the university that there'd be people filming in that area so he wanted to check it out with The Boss. He had no problem with us filming there, he just wanted to take some things into consideration. I told The Boss (over the phone) that we just wanted to use a table for our shoots and had no intention of obstructing his area in any way.

The Boss was kind enough to suggest unlocking a table for us, which I was extremely delighted to hear and I mentioned the possibility of us compensating him for using his space and that we would credit his business at the end of the show. He thought it'd be a great idea and wanted to talk about it later.

So, it seemed like all was good and we could start shooting. I gave Phil his phone back (which I'd been speaking to The Boss on) and he continued to talk to The Boss. We started to set up our shots, and then Phil got off the phone.

It's at this point that everyone's opinion of Phil changed, but I was too blind by my feeling of power after negotiating with The Boss to see. We were told it was going to cost us $40 an hour to have the table unlocked while we were filming. I was later told by Phil that he could bring it down to $25 an hour.

I was shocked to say the least. Here was my good friend Phil, who only moments ago was sharing a story with me about the talent agency he was a member of, but now he was asking me to empty my pockets! I knew it was fair enough that we should pay them, but $40 (even the $25) was just too much. I asked Phil to leave us to discuss the matter for a little.

Everyone else's reaction was well... less than favourable. Dan and Carlos almost punched Phil's lights out, convinced he was trying to cheat us out of our money. I thought he was just doing what he was told (this situation reminds me of the stupidity that made me open the car window that night on King St... now that's another story for another time).

We discussed our options as a group, but before we could finish, Phil approaches me again, asking me if we'd made a decision. It was here that I realised he was trying to screw us over. As Stewart said, "If you pay him, make sure you get a receipt". It dawned on me (finally), how the hell do I know where this money would be going? And how the hell can he tell me it's $40 an hour and then bring it down to $25 (without any haggling I might add).

This bastard was trying to take advantage of a desperate student film crew to make some quick cash. This pisses me off to no end. Only minutes before I was told by The Boss that payment would be discussed later, but now I was being hassled about what we were willing to pay this schumck.

We managed to get out of this without paying any sort of exorbitant fees, just by promising we wouldn't get in the way and that we'd just pay for the "games" we played. Now we were finally able to start filming...

Over the next three hours we got through the pool table scene in the script, with some added bonuses. Carlos in his comedic genius had written in a part where he gets slapped by a girl he tries to chat up and this was an extremely entertaining part of the shoot, especially when it was my girlfriend who got to slap Carlos.

I'm so proud of Anne-Marie, she did a fantastic job considering I'd never seen her act before, or slap anyone for that matter (yeah, I'm a faultless boyfriend). Now I know to watch what I do, because she ended up hitting Carlos so hard that his earring popped out! And yes, the outtakes will be uploaded for your viewing pleasure.

We continued with the second pool table scene, moving through the script surprisingly quickly. In this scene we decided to (despite it being extremely unadvisable) block one of the pockets with Steve's gloves so that we could keep sinking the ball in the pocket and retrieving it. I'm not even sure I should write about this considering it will probably invite another torrent of abuse my way, but what the hell, it's a funny story.

We had to do quite a few takes of this one shot, with Michael sinking a certain ball on purpose and blaming it on me. We had to keep retrieving the ball after each take and being the intelligent one that I am, when I retrieved the ball, I reached from the other side of the table, and my grip caused the ball, and the gloves, to drop into the pocket.

The First Casuality of On Campus: Steve's gloves. May they forever rest inside the pool table, until some lucky pool table minder-person decides to open it up and find a free pair of gloves. I just hope that they don't go back over the camera footage to try and find out who the hell put them there.

And here endeth my lesson: When you're on set, just sit tight, shut up and do your lines. As I've said many times already, "anything can and will go wrong" and Monday was a perfect example.

Despite some hiccups we are now ever closer to finishing principal photography (God, I love that term) and the end of the road smells sweet. Thursday will hopefully be our last day and then it'll be the long road of post-production! I'm hoping to get little tidbits of stuff online while we're getting it all together, and hopefully some new stuff if we feel creative.

The revolution is kinda engaged at the moment, it's stuck in between the 4 and the 12, waiting for the next game,

Antonio