by Jeff Strand
“No.”
“I could run home really quick.”
“No. There’s no reason why everybody’s hair would be purple.”
“Unless,” Gabe said, “the purple dye is what caused the survivors to be immune to the virus that turned everybody else into zombies. That could be the missing piece of the puzzle.”
“We’re not reworking our mythos now!” said Justin. “Alicia’s hair is fine! Christopher’s hair is fine! Everybody’s hair is fine! We need to get started.”
“You know what?” Alicia said. “I think I just freaked out because I’m nervous about being on my first movie set. I want the Mohawk. I really do.”
Justin gaped at her. “But you…but you just…but you just said…but you just said that—”
“She does this kind of thing all the time,” said Daisy.
“Let’s finish this,” said Alicia. “I’m ready.”
“Wait. No, wait,” said Justin. “I mean, we have a lot to shoot today. We don’t have time for you to get emotional again.”
“Are you calling me emotional because I’m a woman?”
“What? No. You were crying fifteen seconds ago! Your cheeks are still glistening!” Justin couldn’t figure out what was happening. Maybe the reason he’d never had a girlfriend was to protect his sanity.
“I’m sorry,” said Alicia. “I get defensive when I’m emotional. I’ll finish cutting my hair.”
“You know what? I’ll cut my hair too,” said Christopher.
“Your hair is staying exactly the way it is,” Justin told him. “Alicia, whatever you decide about your hair is fine with me, but we’re going to have to stick with that decision for the rest of the shooting schedule. So I need to know that your heart is prepared to accept whatever happens when the razor starts buzzing.”
Alicia nodded. “I’m ready.”
Spork pointed his camera at her. “Do you have any final words?”
“Spork, film but don’t talk,” said Justin.
“Yes, Director.”
Daisy turned on the razor again and resumed the task of shaving most of Alicia’s head. Alicia trembled as she did it, and a single tear trickled down her cheek, but she remained mostly stoic throughout the process.
“I feel terrible about wasting so much dye on hair that I was going to get rid of,” she said.
“There, all done,” said Daisy. “You look awesome.”
“Do I?”
“Actually, no. Not yet. Nobody show her a mirror until we get some product in there.”
Daisy hurried back to her car to retrieve a tube of gel, applied a generous amount to Alicia’s hair, and then spiked it up.
“Oh yeah, that looks sweet,” said Daisy.
“Yeah, it does,” said Justin.
“It sure does,” said Christopher.
“Definitely,” said Spork.
“You’ll be very pleased with the results,” said Gabe.
“There’s still an ant or two in my ear,” said Bobby.
Alicia took out her cell phone, turned on the camera function, and used it to gaze at herself.
Then she burst into tears. She sat there, sobbing for a full minute as everybody tried to pretend that they had something better to watch.
Finally she spoke, “I’m sorry I cried again, but it’s just so beautiful!”
“I’m glad you like it,” said Justin. “Now I hate to be the bad guy, but the shooting schedule didn’t include time for head-shaving and crying, so we really need to get going.”
“Aren’t you supposed to have a chair that says director on it?” Christopher asked.
“On a bigger-budget production, yes.”
“I’ll see if I can find one for you.”
“Not necessary, but I appreciate it. So here’s the scene. Alicia, you’re going to—”
“Could you call me Veronica Chaos?” she asked. “I promise I’m not gonna go full method actor on you, but it would be easier for me if you called me by my character’s name from now on.”
“Oh,” said Justin. “Yeah, sure, sure, that’s no problem. Veronica, you’re going to—”
“Veronica Chaos.”
“Excuse me?”
“I don’t think she’d ever just go by her first name. It’s always Veronica Chaos, never just Veronica.”
“That’s honestly not how I saw the character.”
“Really? I’ve never thought of her as anything but a ‘Veronica Chaos or nothing’ type of person. She’d go around and say, ‘Call me by my full name, or get a machete to the windpipe!’ I’m surprised you didn’t see her that way, because that was the first thing that leaped out at me.”
“Can we get a ruling, Gabe?” Justin asked.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” said Gabe. “We’re on a really tight schedule, but saying Veronica Chaos doesn’t take much longer than saying Veronica, so I think we can spare the extra time.”
Justin was not actually concerned about the time that they might lose by pronouncing two extra syllables, but it was a bit early in the process to allow the cast to start dictating the approach to characters that he’d created. It would start with Alicia insisting that she always be called Veronica Chaos, and it might end with the demand that the character communicate entirely by mooing.
“Can we have a brief conference?” Justin asked.
“Sure,” said Gabe.
The two of them stepped out of earshot, and then Justin shared his theory about the mooing.
“I agree that we need to keep control,” said Gabe. “But in this case I think it’s more important to choose our battles. Give her the Veronica Chaos thing, and then when there’s a disagreement that actually matters, you can say, ‘Do it my way because I bent to your will that other time.’”
“That makes sense.”
“Most things I say do.”
They rejoined the others. “Yes, we’ve decided that calling her Veronica Chaos every single time is consistent with the spirit of the character we created ourselves. Thank you for taking the initiative and for understanding our thought process on that issue. Soooooo now let’s get to the first scene. You’re going to start here.” Justin pointed to one side of the park. “And you’re going to walk there.” Justin pointed to the other side of the park. “By this point, you’ve killed about seven hundred and fifty zombies, and you’re feeling pretty confident about your abilities. You know that it’s a world of danger, so you’re being cautious because you’re not stupid, but you’re also pretty sure that this day isn’t going to end with you getting eaten by a zombie. So not quite a strut, but you’re walking with attitude like you know you’re tough. But you also don’t think that anybody else is watching, so there’s no reason to show off in the way you move. That’s how I want you to walk. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” said Alicia.
“Good.” Justin turned to Daisy. “Do you want to run slate?”
“Run what?”
Justin picked up the clapboard and wrote on it with a Magic Marker. “It’s the person who runs the clapboard. You’ll say, ‘Dead Skull, scene 15A, take one,’ and then clap the clapper.”
“Why do you clap the clapper? I’ve always wondered that.”
“When we’re synchronizing the sound to the picture later, the sound of the clapboard gives us an exact point to match them up.”
“Makes sense. I’m learning stuff already.”
Justin didn’t consider himself to be a frequent provider of useful information, so this was nice to hear. “Give me a second to get our sound guy.” He hurried over to the merry-go-round. He checked the side of Bobby’s mouth for foam and found none. “Hey, Bobby?”
“Monkey?”
“What?”
“Daddy?”
“It’s Justin.”
“Oh, hell
o, Justin. I think I’m a little delirious. You’re not wearing a hat, right?”
“I am wearing a hat.”
“A monkey hat?”
“No.”
“Then I’m seeing a different hat.”
“We’re ready to do the first shot.”
“Oh. Okay. I guess I should stop hallucinating and get up then, huh?”
“Yeah.”
Bobby sat up. “Whoa! Dizzy spell! Dizzy spell!” He rubbed his forehead. “Aw, jeez, I feel like I’ve got an ice cream headache without the reward of getting to eat ice cream first.”
“Are you going to be able to do this, or should I get an ambulance?”
“Can you keep an ambulance on standby?”
Justin shook his head. “Not in the budget.”
“Give me a moment.” Bobby glanced around the park. “Alicia’s hair looks that way in reality, right?”
“Yes.”
“My mind is on the right track then. Let’s go make a movie.”
Justin and Bobby walked back to join the others. Justin wished that Bobby was wobbling a little less, but at least he was upright.
“Does everybody understand what we’re doing?” Justin asked.
Everybody nodded.
Justin felt a sudden tingle of excitement. This was it. The first shot of his first feature film. What could be more historic?
Alicia got in her starting position. Gabe turned on the camera and framed the shot. Bobby held up the boom mic.
“Why do we need a boom mic if I don’t have any lines?” Alicia asked.
“I want to capture the natural sound of your footsteps, so we don’t have to recreate it later.”
“But won’t you three be walking right next to me?”
“You can lie down for a while longer, Bobby.”
Bobby thanked Justin and returned to the merry-go-round.
“Okay, this is it,” said Justin. “Camera ready?”
“Ready.”
“Slate.”
Daisy stepped in front of the camera. “Scene 15A, take one.” She clapped the clapboard without pinching her nose in it and stepped out of the shot.
“Action!”
Alicia began to walk across the park. She was walking exactly how Veronica Chaos would walk. It was perfect! She couldn’t have walked more perfectly if her character was entirely computer generated!
Please don’t trip. Please don’t trip. Please don’t trip, Justin thought.
Alicia did not trip. She walked beautifully across the park, walking with attitude but caution until she reached the other side.
“Cut!” said Justin. He was so elated that he almost wanted to cry, though he didn’t because there had already been more than enough crying on his set. “That was exactly what I wanted! Gabe, was it in focus?”
“Completely.”
“Yes! Then we have our first shot of the movie!” This was what filmmaking was all about! Justin felt invincible. He felt as if he could film a million shots of a million actresses walking across a million parks.
15
“Do you want another take?” Alicia asked.
“Nope, we’re good.” Justin understood the value of doing multiple takes during the moviemaking process, but they were trying to shoot an entire feature film very, very quickly. So in a best-case scenario, he’d only have to do a second take if a sinkhole swallowed the entire crew on the first.
“Next is your close-up,” Justin told Alicia. “You’re going to stop, listen, and then say, ‘Hello?’ If another word feels more natural than hello, go ahead and say it. Just say something that’s along the same lines as hello. We’re not locking anybody into the written page here.”
“Hello will be fine,” said Alicia.
Justin took the clapboard from Daisy, rubbed out 15A with his thumb, and wrote 15B in its place. He supposed that he could have just rubbed out the “A” and replaced it with a “B,” but he’d remember that for the next shot. He retrieved Bobby, who put on his headphones and picked up his boom mic, and then everybody got in their places for the next shot.
“Action!”
Alicia stopped. She stopped exactly the way Veronica Chaos would stop.
She listened. Again, if you hooked Justin’s brain to a video monitor and played the mental footage of how Veronica Chaos would walk, this was it.
“Hello?” she said. Perfect. Absolutely perfect. And Justin was glad she’d stuck with the word hello instead of ad-libbing a replacement.
Justin glanced at Gabe. Through the viewfinder, Justin could see that the boom mic was now in the shot.
Actually the boom mic was in motion.
He looked over at Bobby, whose eyes had rolled up in his head. Not all the way like he was possessed by a demon, but enough, and the boom mic slipped out of his hands.
It struck Alicia in the upper left temple, which was exactly where her infected eyebrow piercing was located. The microphone thumped off it and fell to the ground.
If you were to imagine the quietest scream in the world, this would be the opposite.
It was a scream that in the middle of a real zombie apocalypse, would send every zombie for fifty miles scurrying away, deciding that no amount of human flesh was worth the risk. It was a scream that old sailors might discuss in hushed tones on the night of the full moon when they were sharing tales of times they’d experienced genuine fear.
Alicia’s immediate shocked response was to clutch her eyebrow in her hand, which even she would have to admit was not the best possible reaction. So she quickly followed her “boom mic smacked into my infected eyebrow” scream with a “my hand smacked into my infected eyebrow” scream, which wasn’t quite as loud but certainly wasn’t muted.
Bobby, it should be noted, was wearing headphones for the purpose of hearing sounds that were amplified through the microphone, which was on its most sensitive setting. Though Alicia did not scream directly into the boom mic, the noise was louder for him than it was for everybody else, and it was pretty darn loud for everybody else.
Justin rushed forward to try to help his lead actress, but she waved him away. “Leave me alone! Don’t touch me! Ow! Ow! Ow!”
Justin tried to remember if aspirin had been included on the checklist. He didn’t think it had.
Alicia closed her eyes and took some long, slow, deep breaths.
“I’m sorry,” said Bobby.
She charged at Bobby like a wild animal, knocking him to the ground. She picked up the boom mic and began to smack him with it over and over. “How do you like that? Huh? How does that feel?”
Bobby screamed in pain both from the impact of the microphone and from the fact that he was still wearing the headphones.
“Does that feel good? Does it?” Whack! Whack! Whack!
“Somebody should pull her off of him,” Daisy suggested.
“I’m not comfortable doing that,” said Justin.
Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack!
“I surrender!” Bobby shouted. “I surrender!”
With one last boom mic smack between the eyes, Alicia got up. She paced around, breathing deeply, with her hand placed very gently over her eyebrow.
Spork, who had filmed everything, moved his camera back and forth between Alicia pacing and Bobby lying stunned on the ground.
Justin felt like now was probably a good time to do something, though he was a bit nervous about meeting Bobby’s fate. “So, uh, Alicia—”
“Veronica Chaos!”
“So, uh, Veronica, uh, Chaos, is it okay if we help our sound guy up, or was the plan to knock him down again?”
“You can help him up.”
Gabe and Christopher helped Bobby to his feet. Surprisingly he was not crying, although he had the wide-eyed, shocked look of somebody who’d just survived a plane crash.
> “Do you need to go to the hospital?” Justin asked Alicia.
She shook her head. “I just need a few minutes to calm down.”
“I wouldn’t mind going to the hospital,” said Bobby.
Spork pointed the camera at Justin. “So Justin Hollow, director of Dead Skull, now that you’ve had your first on-set battle, how do you feel?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“You have to talk about it. I’m recording you.”
Justin looked at the camera. “I regret that Bobby didn’t have a better grip on the boom mic. As the director, I’m responsible for every element of what happens on the movie set, so I have to shoulder my share of the blame for the incident. I also regret Veronica Chaos’s reaction, which I’m sure was not intended to be quite as violent as it ultimately ended up being and which I’m sure was done because of the pain and not because of any sort of personal dispute with Bobby.”
“You should put it in the movie,” said Spork.
“I’m not going to put it in the movie.”
“For what it’s worth,” said Gabe, “I think we got the shot we needed before Bobby dropped the boom mic on her infected eyebrow, so we won’t have to redo it.”
Alicia continued to pace, muttering unsettling things under her breath.
“You know,” said Bobby, rubbing one of the eighteen places where he’d been hit, “I actually feel better now. I think she knocked the flu out of me.”
“I’m pretty sure that isn’t medically possible,” said Justin.
“My head is clear. It hurts from all the bruises, but I can think straight again. You don’t look like Snoopy anymore. I’m ready to make this movie.”
“I want him fired,” said Alicia.
Justin blinked. “Excuse me?”
“Fire him. Right now.”
“I’m not firing him.”
“Do it. Be a man.”
“Since we all just watched Bobby get beat up by a girl, I’m not sure that ‘be a man’ is appropriate.”
“Fire him, or I will.”
Justin glanced over at Gabe as if he was trying to figure out if Alicia had the authority to fire a member of their crew. Then he glanced away from Gabe. Of course she didn’t. He was the director. He made all decisions regarding hiring and/or firing. Yes, some sort of disciplinary action was appropriate, but he wasn’t going to fire one of his two best friends.
