My co-star told me this would be a great band name for me. He derived it after we finished filming a scene where we touched each other's faces at least thirty times. I like it, but I doubt I'll start a band.
Day 3:
On Monday we finished filming all our stunt scenes. We began the day inside with me harnessed again. After the disastrous amount of bruises I received from Day 2, Director and Stunt Coordinator came to the decision to get me a new harness that actually fit me. It was wonderful in comparison, and allowed me to wear my real costume + an extra pair of pants.
We spent a good two hours shooting scenes with me hanging from a rooftop inside and being pulled up by the robot. This time my SC harnessed himself to be my counterbalance and we went up and down together. I absolutely adored the stunt team I worked with. They were not only experienced and very talented at their jobs, but they were honestly working to make me wonderful at mine. I learned so much from them.
Since we had an afternoon call, we broke for dinner before moving outside for our night shots. This is when the fun stuff really began.
Parkour: An athletic discipline, in which practitioners traverse any environment in the most efficient way possible using their physical abilities, and which commonly involves running, jumping, vaulting, rolling, and other similar movements.
When we got outside Director told me I would be launching myself off the wall with one foot, onto a makeshift cinder-block wall (7ft high) where I would deftly land before turning and using a pipe on the wall to scale to the roof. How awesome is that?
So I scaled the wall first (only going as high as 14ft, which was limited by the insurance policy). It took a while to get the hang of because if I actually used my feet against the wall like I was supposed to look like I was doing, then I would swing like a pendulum uncontrollably. The pipe I was 'grabbing' couldn't actually bare any of my weight, so I had to use my toes to guide my climb while pretending to grab the pipe while not placing my weight anywhere.
When we finally had that shot down we moved onto me sprinting at the wall and vaulting myself off. This was my favorite part of the night because it was the only time I didn't have to be harnessed all day! It was really fun to do a stunt without the harness because I was physically capable of doing it.
We filmed every part of the sequence separately, then at the end of the night, Director wanted to try and film the whole sequence in one shot. Now, this was a challenge for the stunt team because of my momentum from the first wall to landing on the second. In the end, we weren't able to get the whole shot, but they rigged a system to vault me from the first wall up to the second. Because of the force of my push, they rigged a 'brake' to my harness to stop me once I soared past the second wall (because it was impossible for me to land on it). That brake hurt. More than anything else I'd done previously. It wrenched my waist backwards, but it looked really cool. By the end of the night I had a significant amount of bruising, and I didn't care one bit. I had such a great time, everything was as safe as it could be, and the footage looked fantastic.
Day 4:
I woke up today and discovered that my bruising was worse than I thought. It took us a good fifteen minutes this morning to cover my mid section and legs.
Today we filmed our inside action scenes. I climbed onto the roof (the one that I had supposedly scaled yesterday, but a set version of it) with a heel hook (and secretly a boost from my producer laying on some mats--did I just ruin the movie magic?). Then we took some shots of me running to the edge of the roof before my jump across which was fun because I got to do some sliding stops--for about an hour.
We filmed a lot of closeups today. Because the stunt work had taken so long the last couple days we're behind in our schedule. They're hoping to wrap tomorrow like we're supposed to, but I think there are going to be some pickup shots they'll need in the next couple months to tie everything in. So it's looking like, even if we 'finish' tomorrow, I'll still be working some more in the future with this crew. I'll be very surprised if everything can be fit into the schedule tomorrow for a wrap.
This entire experience has been indescribable. It's been so long since I've felt so invested and inspired by a project. I think it's because it's stretching my creativity and challenging me artistically in ways that I haven't experienced before. It's new and exciting and I'm having a wonderful time. I don't know what the end product will look like, or if it will be completed in the next year, but I do know that I've learned more than I thought possible just from one film. I've learned how important it is to have a director that knows exactly what they want. I've learned that I'm very green when it comes to film acting. And I've learned that I have an extreme passion for stunt work. I've loved every second of physical activity I've been allowed to do on set--as much and sometimes more so than the acting I've gotten to do. It pushes me in new ways, and every bruise has been worth it--except maybe the bruises from that brake (good thing we only did six takes of that).
I'll have photos up as soon as I can. There are so many wonderful moments I've had during this process, and every single second of them is recorded in a photograph. Tomorrow I'll be filming all the acting bits we haven't gotten around to yet in my nice clean bedroom set.
I started Shrew rehearsals tonight. We did a read through and discussed the cutting of the script and the scansion we'll be working on. Tomorrow we're going to start table work, which means line by line deciphering and picking apart the script to derive meaning and intention. I'm stoked.
Audition for my next film: this Saturday! Too excited.
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