Rolling

I know I just posted, but today (Wednesday, even though technically it's Thursday now) was such an artistically successful and personally satisfying day for me. I'm on the right track again, I can feel it.

I had my first experience acting for film today, and it was delightfully new and exciting. It was a short scene for a communications class studying filmmaking and their project involved having to create a short film for their class, so they recruited acting students to help out. I played the wife of a wonderful friend of mine, Billy, who is just a darling and very good at what he does, so we had some very fun chemistry in front of the camera. We were in someone's house a town over from the school, set up in the kitchen with a few lights and a boom mic and a camera and other equipment that was just really really cool looking. The scene itself was only about 8 or 10 lines long, total, very short, but we shot it over 20 times to get the right sound levels and the right overlapping sound cues and different angles, and it was absolutely fascinating. I had always written myself off as a stage girl, film wasn't for me, but this was a very interesting taste and I liked it. It's much more personal, very intimate, and getting the reactions from the crew was lots of fun. I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

I'll hopefully end up with a copy of it so I can take my scene and start a film reel, like an audition selection to send in for if I ever want to do film work. A sampling of my prior experience sort of thing. I'm dying to see how it turns out, too - it certainly isn't Oscar worthy or anything, but it was so much fun.

Later in the afternoon I got to brush up my modelling skills as well - my friend Alisha is a photography student and has a "mockumentary" project to do, which she has chosen to do on abused women. Guess who was Abused Woman #1?

She painted a black eye onto me with blue, purple and black eyeshadows and eyeliner, and we created a bruised and puffed up lip with some really cheap spirit gum knock off stuff that was basically wax with cotton fibers in it, so it was disgusting but ended up serving its purpose. The film was black and white, and, in a moment of genius (and a tribute to old Hollywood), we made some badass fake blood with Hershey's chocolate syrup. It has better consistency than store-bought fake blood, and for the purpose of photographing it, it stays put and drips slower, but makes really pretty smears and drips. We made an absolute mess of her bathroom in the process, but when we were done I looked rather battered. (Though it is very, very difficult to look miserable and in pain when you have chocolate syrup in your mouth and up your nose. I did a bloody nose myself for an extra touch of pain.) She also hijacked a Parcan from the theatre, so we had some intense lighting as well. It's on film, so they haven't developed yet, (I saw some of the negatives this evening, however, and some of them look quite delightful) but when they are, I will certainly get myself a copy of at least one, because everybody needs a photo of themselves being beaten up by friends. (Poor Dean - I started to cry when Alisha had him grab my hair and raise his hand to hit me, and he couldn't even look at me he felt so bad. The make up was disturbing, and he's such a nice guy, haha.)

Now I'm up at 1 am doing homework for my theatre classes in the morning. Tomorrow is going to be a busy day - Class, class, painfully frustrating practice with professor for class, voice lesson, homework, Vagina Monologues. And Respect For Acting at every spare moment. :)