mind control

previously published by me elsewhere:


A blackbox theater has been used as one of the locations for the last three film productions I have worked on, which is one of the reasons I spent the better part of six hours this evening in the dark.

I have to suspect there is a certain monetary minimalism making the decision to shoot there more appealing. That's the only reason I can come up with, because I've never written a scene that I thought could be best executed in a dark void. In fact I think all of these productions could have benefited from a different location for their respective scenes.

Whatever the case I got to the community college blackbox at five, and was expecting to soon gather up our host of scheduled extras. Instead two people showed up. They were in costume, and ready to go, and turned out to be pretty damn patient as well, but they didn't fill a room.

This was about the time desperation started to develop, and it became a matter of getting a hold of warm bodies. So, like the creative vampires that we are, we set out to recruit people from the campus. There were no takers, unfortunately. What's with that?

I remember a particular evening on a far less organized production when the same rounding up of last minute extras proved very successful. Many of them were revved to be involved in a movie. I recall one side of a cell phone conversation one of them was having about how cool they were being in a movie. Where was that interest tonight?

I think in many ways interest is really waning on the project. It's completely an uphill battle to get to the finish at this point, which was well represented by the non-vocalized communicating one of our actors was doing all evening.

He's one of a small collective of local well-respected talents, and for good reason. Unfortunately he's cast in our movie in a slight role that demands little more of him than breathing, and at some points not even that. All of this after several hours of waiting and some extensive time in the make-up chair.

Although I see him as more of a theater actor than a film actor, I still admire him and think if there's anyone we need to impress it's him. I think we fell flat in that regard tonight.

Though there are many more to come before we wrap, these evening shoots are really killing us. Tonight everything seemed to be running in slow motion, except the clock, and it's becoming harder and harder to hide my ambivalence with how things are corroding.