I need to start this post with an unrelated topic. The Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 premiere. I went to the red carpet after work to check it all out, and it was packed! they had the premiere in a little square at the Odeon theater in Leicester Square. The actual red carpet was more like a circle and was enclosed, but they had a big screen up that followed people arriving and shots of the red carpet. They also showed the interviews of all the stars, the producer, the director, and J.K. Rowling as they made their way into the theater. It was a cool experience, and hopefully one day I'll have my own premieres to attend on the red carpet!
The next week, I went to a musical in the West End called "Blood Brothers." It was very well done and the actors' performances were amazing, but the story and the script were odd. The premise of the play is a poor woman having twins and giving one of them to a rich woman she worked for, while keeping the other. The rich woman then says: "if twins are separated and then meet and discover they are twins, then they will die." Yeah, so from the start the believableness factor was lacking. It centered around many British superstitions and had a message saying that the class system is horrible, which probably contributed to the fact that I didn't appreciate the play as much, me not being British.
That week, the office where I intern was preparing for a commercial they were producing. I spent the week helping out with putting everything together. I wrote the call sheet for the shoot, which I enjoyed, and I even got to be on the call sheet listed as a runner. On Thursday (the day before the shoot) my duties as a runner started. I spend from 11am to 6:30pm running around London picking up things the art director needed for the shoot. I was not a pleasant experience. I didn't even have time to eat lunch, so I ate my PB&J sandwich while sitting on one of the many trains I took that day. I was exhausted when I finally got back to my dorm, and passed out only to wake up at 5:30am the next morning for the shoot.
Friday's shoot was a great experience overall, despite the annoyingness and exhaustiveness of the process. The first location was in a park by a little lake. We carried everything we needed up the hill and set everything up and finally started shooting. Once shooting began, I was in charge of holding a light reflector to make sure it didn't fall. I didn't mind because it meant that I got to be close to the scene as they were shooting and the other runner was guarding the cars down the hill. We switched places after a while and I was in charge of guarding the cars. I mean, really? Guarding the cars to make sure nothing is taken. Isn't that what a lock is for? I'm just saying...
So it was freezing and there were no bathrooms, so when the art director said she needed one of the runners to go with her and help set up the second location, both of us wanted to go. We flipped a coin and, thank god, I won. We got to the second location, which was a loft in an old warehouse-type building, and started taking everything we needed upstairs. There was a lot of stuff to carry upstairs and the loft was up four flights of stairs (of course there was no elevator). I got a lot of exercise that day, lifting and doing stairs for hours on end. Finally the rest of the crew got to the second location and the real set-up began. Everything took forever and had to be set up and re-set up and shooting didn't start for hours after it was supposed to start. Somehow I ended up being in charge of the money for the day and I went to the convenience store next door about 30 times that day for snacks, supplies, and change for the parking meters, which I also filled a couple times. I was even asked to move someone's car. Are they serious? I am clearly American, and therefore do not drive on the left side of the road. That would have been a disaster. I didn't do it, but had to go with the person who did move the cars so she wouldn't be alone and so I could feed the meters.
Near the end of the shoot, we finally got to eat some real food, which I had been denied all day, running on snacks and candy, and we ordered pizza. This was around 8:30pm. Finally, my boss told me and the other runner to call cabs for the actors and for ourselves and that once we had some things cleaned up, we could go. I had tickets to go see Harry Potter at 10:30pm, which is of course very important, and so the cab took me straight to the theatre and I got there just in time. That was the longest and busiest day of my life. I worked from 7:15am to almost 10pm. It wasn't that bad, and was a cool experience, but it left me exhausted. Since I want to be a producer, I know I have many more shoots like this to look forward to, which is exciting and dreadful all at once.
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