by Natasha West
‘Well, I guess I’ll follow your lead for the moment’ I told the group. ‘I’ll hopefully get a handle on things as we go forward. But for now, you guys seem to know what you’re doing so I won’t interfere.’
Everyone seemed pretty happy to hear that and I felt like I’d made the right choice. I wasn’t here to pretend I already knew everything anyway. I’d come for precisely the opposite reason.
‘Great’ Victor said, speaking for the group. ‘Then that leaves only one thing on the agenda. Beer!’
In the bar, I saw people from the day. I saw Jonny, skulking at the edge of a group of people, looking like he was listening to the most awful stupidity. I saw Janey in another corner, making some guy laugh. I couldn’t help but note that the guy she was talking to actually did happen to have a man-bun and seem ripped from Janey’s boyfriend’s paranoid fantasy. I wondered if maybe he wasn’t so paranoid after all. I saw Zara and Mike stood at the bar, looking like they were mid row about something.
And I saw Cameron, listening avidly as Victor told her something. I wasn’t sure who to join, but in the end, I went to Victor and Cameron. They were still fresh to me and I knew that if I ran out of stuff to say, I’d be able to ask about the project.
‘Allie, glad you’re here, I just had an email to say we’ve been assigned a production designer’ he said, excitedly and then turned to beckon someone over. ‘Ashley Douglas, this is Allie Parker’ Victor told me and over she came, in all her paint spattered glory. ‘Oh, you’re the new director?’ she said. ‘Glad to see they’ve bumped the female numbers up in that department. I think we just had the one before, didn’t we?’ she asked of the group.
‘Yep, Janey. Now there’s two of us’ I said, trying to contain a flourish of nerves.
‘It’s funny how some of the jobs still have that crazy imbalance. In design, it’s an equal split.’
I nodded, desperately trying to think of an intelligent reply. Instead, I just passed the ball. ‘How about the writers?’ I asked Cameron. She looked uncertain about the sudden spotlight, but she said, ‘Three guys, five women.’
‘The producers are even’ Victor added.
We all nodded, sitting with that information. And then Victor began to tell me about some location he wanted me to take a look at in a few days, along with Ashley and Jonas, as set designer and director of photography.
In that moment, I became aware of something. I was working with both Cameron and Ashley, who in their deeply different ways, were attractive to me.
What could go wrong?
Later that night, I crawled into bed, semi drunk, having spent hours talking to roughly a thousand people, introduced by Victor, who’d made it his business to know just about everybody. I was tired, putting it lightly. The day had held a lot to digest, more than my intoxicated brain was prepared to even begin sorting through. And tomorrow, it would start all over again.
Chapter Five
A few days in and I was starting to feel less shell-shocked. Not comfortable or confident, exactly. Just less scared. I now had everyone’s names fixed in my mind and I had a few basic facts about everyone, like The Terminator might have come up in his little screen. Janey: Funny, doesn’t take herself too seriously. Jonny: Takes himself very seriously, likes to intimidate by staying silent in conversations. Victor: A sweetie pie with a way about him when it comes to people. Mike and Zara: A sex explosion waiting to go off that will hopefully not kill me in the process. Cameron: Sensitive, talented, skittish. Ashley: Still a sexy mystery.
I wasn’t sure I’d closed the gap of those missing weeks, but I’d probably shortened it. There were seminars in the morning and lectures in the afternoon. We’d been doing exercises in the seminars with actors who came in to take direction from us. A couple of pages of a famous movie monologue, an actor and a camera. Once we were done, we’d take them in to be seen by Kim or Pete, whoever was teaching. Pete was always helpful and gave me some great pointers, in the kindest way possible. But Kim…
Kim still seemed to have something stuck up her arse about me, even though I was doing my best to give her what she wanted. The problem was, I didn’t know what that was. I was going for humble, taking every note and every criticism without arguing, even when I desperately wanted to. But the thing was, Kim was teaching me things I didn’t know. If it hadn’t been for the fact that I was hated and feared her, it would have been awesome.
With regard to the movie I was making, I’d now read the script, six times over, and I knew what Jonas wanted the movie to look like. I had started to think there were a few things I might want to talk through with him on his storyboard, but I’d yet to broach it with him. He was a cocky fucker and I’ll be honest, I was a bit scared to get into it with him. I felt that he’d probably expose the gaps in my knowledge at a moment’s notice. I did know a thing or two about cinematography, I’d filmed all my own shorts on borrowed equipment and I’d read numerous books before I got here, but still, I’d only done that because I’d had to, not because cameras were my passion. I was in no doubt that I was nowhere near Jonas’s level.
But I still had a little time to prepare for that conversation. In the meantime, I had a script discussion with Cameron today, along with Victor. I waited in the café, the place most people came to have their meetings. Five minutes to the official start of the meeting and I got a text from Victor.
‘Sorry, can’t make it to meeting today, been held up. Can I catch up with you later and find out how it went?’
I texted him back in the affirmative, but I wasn’t happy. If Victor was held up, he was held up, that wasn’t the source of my peeve. The problem was that I would have to have this meeting alone with Cameron. That was nerve wracking on two points. Firstly, Victor was always at crew meetings and he was kind of like the dad of the group, always smoothing things over, keeping things ticking along. So this was my first crew meeting without his calming presence. Secondly, the scriptwriter element of this script meeting. We’d never spent time alone before, me and Cameron. I was concerned I might say something silly. I don’t know why that was a worry. I should have a handle on my own mouth. But pretty girls, as I’ve said before, they have an effect on me.
I was still looking at my phone, casually wondering if it was too late to cancel with Cameron when she came up behind me with a soft, ‘Hi.’ It was the most unobtrusive entry and there was no reason it should have made me jump in my seat but damned if it didn’t. ‘Hi’ I said, too loudly, trying to pretend I wasn’t a cat on a hot tin roof. But she smiled and said, ‘Sorry, I was trying not to do that.’
I laughed, and it sounded fake. ‘No, no, no, I’ve just had way too much coffee today, need to switch, I think.’
She nodded and sat down, getting out a pad and a pen, which settled me. She was here to work and I didn’t need to act like some idiot. I could put my director face on. It was probably still the face of an idiot, but a passionate idiot, an idiot who wanted to make the best movie she could.
‘So, how did you find it?’ Cameron asked.
For a split second, I didn’t have a clue what she meant. I’d been too caught up in my own head. But she could only mean the script.
‘Oh, I think it’s very fucking cool’ I exclaimed and I really did think so. I’d always had to write my own movies because I hadn’t exactly been drowning in writers back home. But I wasn’t adept at it. Having someone else come in with something for me to make, someone whose focus was solely on that job, it was a relief.
‘Oh, OK. Good, I wasn’t sure…’ Cameron started and then seemed to change her mind about whatever the end of her sentence was. ‘Good, anyway.’
I wasn’t having it.
‘What weren’t you sure about?’
Cameron shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
I suddenly had an idea of what the problem could be. ‘Did… Did Jack not like it?’
Cameron looked up in surprise. ‘Who told you?’
I laughed lightly. ‘No one. It’s just tha
t guy, he’s been haunting me from the second I got here.’
Cameron nodded. ‘Well, he… He wasn’t…’ She stopped and sighed. ‘He seemed to really fucking hate it’ Cameron eventually said and I laughed. It’s always funny to hear someone a little timid suddenly throw out an expletive like that.
‘Not a fan of the genre, was that it?’
‘I have no idea but he just about kicked the thing to death from the start. He wanted me to throw it all out, write something totally different.’
I was agog. ‘The rude bastard!’
Cameron smiled and I could tell she was starting to lower her defences with me, just the tiniest bit. It felt good, like some kind of progress. It might sound silly, but I’d been on my backfoot from day one and any achievement, even getting Cameron to smile, it was something.
‘Well, I think he was barmy anyway because it’s a great story. I do have a few little thoughts, if that’s OK?’ I started, and Cameron smiled in a way that I thought wasn’t from happiness, but a way of bracing herself. She was about to be criticised and she clearly wasn’t that strong yet, her rhino skin had not kicked in. I could relate. But Victor had told me that I shouldn’t be afraid to say what I thought to Cameron. I didn’t want to have to tell him that I’d simply kissed Cameron’s arse and sent her on her way.
That was a bad phrase to pop into my head. Because Cameron’s arse was very perky, I’d noticed. I would have gladly kissed it given half the chance.
No, stop it, Allie! Just give her the notes and stop being a horn dog!
‘I think there’s a little moment on the second page’ I began, feeling safer as I moved through my thoughts, giving Cameron small suggestions here and there, ideas I’d had as I’d looked through. Cameron nodded and said things like, ‘Yes, I see’ and, ‘That’s an interesting idea’ and, ‘That could work.’ I started to worry that she thought I was talking a load of crap. If she did, I’d have rather she said so. So when I finished, I said, ‘If you disagree with any of that, I’m happy to talk about it?’
Cameron licked her lips and shook her head. ‘Nope. Nothing to say right now.’
‘Right now?’
‘No, I mean, I’m perfectly happy with your notes.’
‘Cameron… Look, I’m not a script expert. I’m giving you my thoughts, but I don’t know if they’re right. If they’re not, I need you to tell me’ I told her.
Cameron licked her lips again and said, ‘No, I don’t think you’re wrong.’
‘Alright’ I acquiesced. ‘Let me know how you get on with those notes then’ I said and that was it, a natural break had been reached. The meeting was over, my first without the safety net of Victor. On the one hand, I couldn’t get Cameron to argue with me, but on the other, I hadn’t said anything awkwardly flirtatious. I was calling it a win.
Chapter Six
‘Stop. Stop right there!’ Kim said, loudly, across the studio floor, in front of every single member of my class and the actor I was working with.
It was a lighting class. I wasn’t a lighting student, but all directors had to learn something about every technical aspect of the job so that they’re informed enough to know how to ask for something from the real pro on the subject. So I was lighting a young actor who was sitting like a statue under the hot lights I kept plopping around him. I felt bad for the guy. I could see beads of sweat forming on his temple. But there was only so much water I could offer him, so in the end I accepted that the best way to be kind to him was to finish up as quickly as I could. I’d done the basic three-point lighting rig (key, back, fill) as fast as possible and taken a snap of my work on an SLR camera, ready to be placed on a big screen later with everyone else’s examples, for critique.
And then that bloody yell had come, reaching me from across the large space, filled floor to ceiling with Kim’s indignation. As usual, I’d done something incorrect and as usual, Kim seemed personally offended by my stupidity. I turned to her and I was about say, ‘OK, sorry, tell me what I’ve done wrong’ like the meek little creature I always was around her. But this was yet another session spent fearing public humiliation and I was starting to get fed up with it. Scratch that, I was sick to the back teeth of it. She was embarrassing me, yet a-bloody-gain and I heard myself say, ‘For fuck’s sakes, what now?’
I heard a little intake of breath and I turned to see Janey’s eyes, wide with horror. Jonny was also looking on, but there was something else altogether in his face. Anticipation. You know how you see a clip of a terrible accident crop up on the sidebar on YouTube to suggest you might be interested and it already has a million views and you don’t know if you want to see it or not, but you know people had to go looking for it in the first place in order for the algorithm to suggest it? Jonny had just given himself away as that guy. Or a variation on him, at least.
I looked back to see Kim, still storming over, apparently not halted by my explosion of emotion. And why should she be? This sort of thing had to happen to her all the time. Someone as confrontational as Kim could probably start a knock-down-drag-out with a nun. So I battened down my hatches and waited for the inevitable.
‘Look at the state of that cable!’ Kim cried. ‘How the hell did the equipment crew miss that! You could have electrocuted yourself to death!’ she said. I looked down and there it was, a power cable with exposed innards, frayed to shit and sparking. I’d thought she was simply unhappy with my technique and she was actually letting me know that I might have been about to fry myself like an egg. Of all the moments to stand up for myself…
‘Oh… I’m…’ I began, trying to apologise.
But Kim wasn’t interested in me. She was ringing up the guy in charge of maintaining the equipment. I pitied the poor bastard, despite the chances he’d apparently taken with my life. He was about to get such a talking to, his face would be red for a week. As Kim’s phone rang, she turned to the room and said, ‘Everyone out until this gets sorted. This is a bloody lawsuit waiting to happen.’
We all filed out, waiting at the large barn doors around the back. Janey walked over. ‘That didn’t go the way I thought it would’ she said.
‘Me neither’ I admitted. ‘Do you think she’ll remember that I swore at her?’
Janey shrugged. ‘I don’t know. But you’re not the first so I wouldn’t worry.’
Was that a reference to Jack Jarvis? I still didn’t have any real detail on that incident and I was wildly curious. A week in Jack’s shoes and I’d gotten the impression he was kind of an arrogant dickhead. But then again, I knew what it was like to have Kim on your back so I wasn’t completely ready to write him off.
‘Hey’ I said, trying to be super casual, ‘What exactly happened there?’
Janey looked around, checking for open ears. Finding none, she said, ‘No one said?’
I shook my head, trying not to seem too excited to finally get the details.
Janet took a deep breath. ‘He smashed up a set.’
‘He…’ I started, unable to comprehend.
‘They have this pre-made set thing, a living room, they use it for exercises, it’s never struck, just stays up. Well, stayed up’ she corrected. ‘We were two weeks in and like I said, Kim had been riding Jack pretty hard. And then we went into the set to do an exercise, direct a two hander. Everyone got a turn with the same script, same two actors. It was romantic, I think. Had a snog at the end and everything’ Janey added. ‘We all went in one at a time to direct the actors under Kim’s supervision so I don’t know precisely what happened. But I was due to go next so I was just outside. And I heard it. It started with a row, I couldn’t really make it out but it was definitely Kim and Jack. And then the two actors and Kim came running out and Kim was calling the police while Jack went nuts on the set. Smashed a camera worth twenty grand apparently, as well as a bunch of furniture and props, a few lights.’
My mouth had never hung so wide. I was shocked into pure silence. Janey simply nodded and said, ‘Yeah. It was fucking intense. He was off th
e school grounds before the cops got here so they didn’t take him in or anything. I heard he ran home and let his dad sort it out. I think he covered the costs, so the school decided not to press charges in the end.’
Well. Here was me concerned for dropping an f-bomb on Kim and my predecessor had destroyed property and scared the shit out of people. What on earth could have led him to lose it like that? Had he been unbalanced before he came to BSF? Or had something happened once he got here? Something more than harsh criticism from a teacher? I wanted to know more. But who could I ask? Janey had been there for the denouement of drama but she still didn’t have all the information. I’d probably never know what had happened and I wasn’t about to go full Scooby Gang on it.
