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Thursday, September 06, 2007
Pre-zombie mode
Tuesday I was just leaving work to learn that on Wednesday I was booked for a new film called Insanitarium. I was given the hotline recording number to call after 7pm, at which time I learned it was to be a night shoot.
I had planned that once I had my information, to call my temp-job work to leave a voice mail that I would be in on Thursday.
But as my calltime wasn't until 7pm, I just let one of my supervisors know I could be delayed coming in, but that I'd be in, and she was fine with that.
The location sounded suspiciously familiar, and sure enough it was the same hospital in which I worked on the feature film
Chasing 3000.
I bused down and arrived around 6:25pm.
I had forgotten there was a McDonald's a block away; I'd stopped at the one on La Brea and Santa Monica, as it was stressed we were to have eaten dinner first.
As I expected, it was a very low budget horror film
(hence their not wanting to feed us upon our arrival...
and the title).
I had looked it up and seen its being helmed by first-time director
Jeff Buhler,
who'd adapted a Clive Barker short story for the thriller
Midnight Meat Train
on which I'd also worked.
While I was surprised there was no IMDB entry for it yet, I did find a blurb on it (and on Midnight Meat Train), so I was aware Jeff Buhler was involved.
Upon arrival I noticed my friend Carlos, with whom I've worked a couple or three projects, most notably on The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, where we had five nice (and fun) day's work.
Most of us were institutional psych patients, a few of whom had worked a day or two previously, and some were fitted with contact lenses to give them more of a transitional look, rather than looking like they have Meg Foster's corpse-blue eyes...
As anyone reading my report/s know, I don't reveal spoilers, though I sometimes provide a bit less than a movie poster tagline might indicate.
And sometimes the film makers provide the spoilers themselves.
Apparently (I was told on set and later confirmed with the article above to which I've linked), one of the patients fakes his condition to gain admittance, to find out about his sister, already committed.
Meanwhile, one of the most likely institute-head doctors (clearly a fan of Herbert West), has been using on various patients a new experimental drug, and predictably...
its side effects aren't pleasant [bg].
The cafeteria scene merely has one woman confront the (sane) patient, and his talking with an actor (who I've seen on numerous commercials), and a large orderly briefly intimidates them.
Eventually we were brought to the cafeteria set, and with Carlos and a woman named Randy (who was one of those with contact lenses), we waited for the scene to be lit and blocked.
As the girl Heather yells at the guy, Randy quietly pointed out to me that the previous day she had been topless.
Dammit [bg]...! Previous days' shooting in which Randy was involved a bit of standard horror-movie carnage; a shame I only had this one day.
Carlos was given a cross to do, so I sat where he'd been.
Having been given no direction other than my knowledge I was a psych patient, and I'm sitting there with a tray of cold leftovers of the crew's catered dinner, my acting was simple.
I curled my left hand up to my chest in an arthritic posture, and just slowly moved my spoon in the food while the scene was going on.
One of the ADs asked me to move more vibrantly (as I was playing it sedatedly, as it were), which on the one hand would have utterly ruined any sense of matching shots and/or continuity, but by that time they were shooting coverage and the camera never faced me again.
We were wrapped as the short scene was finished.
It was just prior to midnight.
Despite the production offices being way up on Wilshire and the shoot being was down in Hawthorn, we were not given mileage (though as it was a cheap shot not to pay us mileage, SAG had it handled and we did get our mileage pay, plus a penalty bump for the production trying not to pay us for mileage in th'first place...), but barely five hours for eight hours pay is not a bad deal as it is.
With the last subways done for the night (the Green Line was a block or three away), Carlos graciously offered to drive me home.
At first I found it strange he took the highways, considering my domicile is straight on north from our location.
But he demonstrated his correctness in that it took about fifteen minutes rather than how long it would have taken with traffic lights on the surface streets.
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