Close Ups and Mess Ups

by Natasha West

  ‘I fight with my sister all the time and my advice is not to wait for an apology. Take the high road because if you don’t, you’ll only hurt yourself’ Ashley told me.

  It was good advice, undoubtedly. But the source of it was strange. I couldn’t imagine why Ashley would care either way.

  ‘I’ve been wondering something’ I began. ‘Why did you say yes to working with me?’

  She smiled with only half of her mouth. ‘You mean, because of our… History?’

  ‘Yep’ I said, determined to hold her gaze. I’d started this, feeling bolstered by the personal advice, and I wanted to see it through. I’d wanted to ask this from the start and this kind of opportunity might never come up again.

  She shrugged. ‘Because I can separate work and personal stuff’ she said and then her face darkened. ‘Unlike other people.’

  I frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  She shook her head. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  I was about to press her further when Cameron appeared with Victor. I instantly changed my face, trying to hide how intense things had gotten with Ashley. But looking at Cameron, it hadn’t worked. She had a deep furrow in her brow.

  The meeting went on for two hours and everyone gave their initial thoughts on the project, how they saw their contribution. It was a good meeting, energy and enthusiasm in the air. The way it began was easy to forget.

  But once the meeting was over and everyone dispersed, I remembered Ashley’s words quite clearly. I wanted to know what she meant. Was she implying that I was making a mistake by working with Cameron while we were involved? If she was, it was surely a simple comment spawned out of bitterness.

  Anyway, Cameron wasn’t really involved much at this point, the script was done. She might advise me here and there but what could honestly go wrong at this point? Now was the time to turn my attention to what happened beyond film school, for my career, yes, but also with Cameron. I was desperate to know how she felt about me and so far, she was keeping quiet about the long-term stuff. But that was Cameron. She was a shy person and I wanted to be sensitive to that. She wouldn’t show her cards before I did, most likely. I knew she liked me and that she seemed to like having sex with me. A lot. But did she want us to be official? I’d started to ask on the first day of term, before Janey had shown up and broken the moment. But maybe I should wait a little longer to raise the subject.

  We graduated in a few months, after the film was done. There would be a big screening of all the films and once again, they’d drag in the industry types to check us out. This time it was a bigger deal because they’d see the full range of our abilities to make a finished product. I was lucky because I had a job lined up with Rose Perry. Until then, I needed to keep my head down, focus on the film.

  But once it was over, I would bring it up again. It was an exciting thought. I could be leaving the school with my first job in the industry and a serious girlfriend. The future looked brighter than it ever had.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  ‘Victor, this is bad.’

  ‘It’s really not that bad’ Victor told me.

  ‘We’ve lost our main actor and we shoot the day after tomorrow. Explain to me slowly how that’s not bad. Use one syllable words so I can understand.’

  Victor sighed. We were sitting on the school’s small patio, on the roof of the building. It was empty because it was cold, but I didn’t care that it was sub-zero up there, my freak out kept me warm. I looked out of the safety railing, wondering if I could delay shooting if I jumped. It wasn’t high enough to kill me, probably. I’d just break both my legs. Kim couldn’t shout at me if I had two broken legs, could she?

  ‘Look, it’s not ideal but we’ve got two days to find someone.’

  ‘And get them completely rehearsed and up to speed. We picked Alice carefully. It took weeks to find her.’

  ‘Which is the very reason she’s just gotten her break. She’s good. Your instincts were right on that. You should congratulate yourself for picking out a star on the rise.’

  ‘Victor, are you telling me I should feel good about the fact she’s dropped out this close to the shoot?’

  Victor smiled. ‘Worth a go.’

  I looked up at the sky and yelled out, releasing my annoyance at the universe.

  ‘Feel better?’ Victor asked.

  ‘Yes. So what do we do now? Go back to the casting sites or…’

  ‘I… I actually do have someone that might work’ Victor said unhappily.

  ‘Right…’ I pressed. I could hear the catch coming.

  ‘She’s… She’s a great actress and she’s right for this, I reckon.’

  ‘But?’ I prompted.

  His mouth slipped into a grimace, rare for Victor, a peppy cheerleader trapped in a producer’s body. ‘She’s a pain to work with. I had a two-day shoot with her last term. The writers were doing a directing workshop, and the producers were assigned to get their actors for them. I was helping Tate out and I found her on Showreel.com. She had a really great audition tape. I did wonder why she didn’t have a bigger credit list, but I took a chance on her. I soon found out why she doesn’t get much work.’

  ‘What’s the actual problem?’

  ‘She’s demanding, she questions everything, she’s rude to other actors, rude to crew-’

  ‘You can stop there’ I cut him off. ‘She sounds like a nightmare.’

  ‘But the thing is, she’s good. I wouldn’t suggest her otherwise. And I’m guessing she’ll be free to do the shoot.’

  I weighed it up. But I didn’t have many options here. This was the way it always seemed to go. Compromise, compromise, compromise.

  ‘What’s her name?’ I asked Victor.

  ‘Lyla Martin.’

  I inhaled deeply. ‘Call her.’

  ‘Quiet on set, actors take your positions’ I said, and a hush fell on the room, broken only by the rustle of our two main actors placing themselves on their marks. ‘Roll sound?’ I requested, and the sound guy replied, ‘Rolling.’ ‘Roll Camera’ I said to Zara and she glanced over from the camera and nodded. ‘Slate’ I said next and the runner came in with the clapper and announced, ‘Scene one, take one.’

  I looked around the room, taking in the moment. It was a lot bigger than the first term project. There was three times the crew and five main cast members, not including extras. We even had catering, although it was really just a pot of chicken stew and a load of cakes and fruit. But it was sitting at the edge of the set, ready for lunch, like any real set would have.

  This was it, my last chance to make a good movie, something I could possibly enter for film festivals, something to hang my name on. It was a real short, not just something slapped together on my phone using friends and favours. And it would begin on my next word. I just had to say it.

  ‘Action’ I called, and the actors began the scene, including Lyla Martin. Victor was right, she was a real pro. She’d come from a very fancy drama school, the kind that was all Shakespeare and Russian literature adaptations. You could tell because her annunciation was as crisp as a ripe apple. She’d turned up this morning and the first thing she’d said was ‘Thank you for casting me, I hope to do a good job for you’ polite as you please. I wondered if Victor’s warnings had been a bit over the top.

  The scene was this: Lyla’s character, Jenny, is trying to find out from the doctor why she is supposed to stay in bed. He’s being evasive, and he simply keeps insisting that she stay still and wait for the results of some mysterious test. We got five lines into the scene when Lyla Martin called, ‘Cut!’

  Victor gave a nervous laugh and looked from me to Lyla, saying, ‘Err, Lyla, I think it’s the director’s job to say that.’

  ‘If there’s a problem, better not to waste time’ Lyla breathed, apparently already worn out from the day that had barely started. ‘Look, I’m really not sure my character would say any of this.’

  ‘And why is that?’ I asked, trying to be patient. She’d go
tten the script yesterday and she was already an expert. I too knew the character. But I had to hear Lyla out. Part of the job.

  ‘It’s just… why doesn’t she just walk out? No one’s stopping her.’

  ‘That’s exactly what the movie’s about’ I explained. ‘The human willingness to defer to authority, even when it doesn’t make any sense.’

  Lyla raised an eyebrow. ‘So you’re saying that if this happened to you, if you woke up in some strange bed and people told you to stay in it, that you would?’

  ‘I might’ I told her, feeling an anger pushing its way up from my stomach. She was questioning the entire conceit of the film. If I took her advice, there would be no film and nothing for her to do. Did she not understand that? ‘Look, why don’t we try running through the scene and maybe you’ll start to feel it more?’

  ‘It’s just…’ she huffed, ‘I don’t think I’d be so bloody polite about it.’

  Yeah, no shit I thought. But I didn’t say that. ‘She’s a person that’s spent her entire life concerned with propriety. She fears offending people and doing the wrong thing more than anything else.’

  Lyla said nothing, and I wondered if my words were sticking. Obviously, she needed to understand the character in order to play her. That’s what I would have wanted, and what I’m certain the original actress, Alice, would have given me, plain old empathy. But if Lyla couldn’t do it, if she wouldn’t, then I needed her to simply do her bloody job and perform the lines.

  ‘Alright, let’s take it from the top’ Lyla said, and I smiled at her as though I were grateful for her infinite wisdom and professionalism.

  ‘Action!’ I yelled.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  I listened through a pair of large headphones while everyone else ate lunch, hearing a beautiful piano score, an early draft emailed by Mike. It was soothing, like a cold cloth on my forehead. Later, as tension ratcheted, violins jumped in, setting my nerves on edge. Of course, my nerves didn’t have far to travel.

  It was day two of the shoot, four days in total and I was already exhausted. Lyla had burnt me out in one day. She’d questioned everything, from lines to lighting choices to costumes to other actor’s performance choices. I wasn’t the only one who was sick to the back teeth of her. I’d seen just about everyone gritting their teeth through some rude remark.

  But damn if she wasn’t good. Every time I was able to get her to perform her lines, I looked down the monitor to watch her making this look like more than a student film. She was elevating it. It was too bad that she was a fucking arsehole who alienated everyone around her, because if she’d been halfway agreeable she’d have been going places. But Lyla was her own worst enemy. I couldn’t figure it out, why did she feel the need to wind people up like this? What did she get beside a career that relied on offers from a film school that paid the bare minimum scale? She should have had her name in lights on the West End. If she could just shut her damn mouth and let her talent do the talking.

  But that wasn’t my problem. My problem was getting us to the finish line with full script coverage on a strict amount of shoot days. It was part of the rules. Four days only. And we were half a day behind. Victor had told me at the end of the yesterday’s shoot. I couldn’t believe it.

  ‘But we’re only on day one’ I cried on the car journey back to drop equipment off at the school for the night.

  ‘Yeah. But I wouldn’t worry about it’ Victor assured me. ‘We’ll catch up.’

  I knew he was telling me a beautiful lie. Because Lyla’s behaviour was having a knock-on affect. She’d start arguing with me and then everyone would stop. While I’d be dealing with her, people started chatting and then it was a fucker to get everyone to focus themselves again, adding yet more time.

  And then there was Zara. Every time I had to ask for a minute to speak to Lyla (which was often) she ran off to make phone calls. I knew who she was calling. Mike.

  I’d asked Mike if he wanted to visit the set but he wouldn’t. He said it would be too difficult, being that he was in the midst of a monumental war with Zara. He didn’t want to create drama. It hadn’t worked. Because instead of arguing on the set, Zara was doing it via phone. Hence the constant calls. No one should have even had their phones switched on, but Zara could be heard at the edge of the set, saying things like, ‘That’s not fair, I just forgot.’ Or ‘I don’t know why you want me to meet your parents anyway, what have they got to do with us’. And on one memorable occasion, she was heard to mutter, ‘I just said it might look nicer if you shaved around it. I never said bigger!’

  Once Zara got into it, it was hard to get her to put the phone down and come back to set. And nothing could happen without the director of photography. But if I said anything, Zara would only say, ‘I’m not the one costing you time.’

  I was stuck. Because I wasn’t getting tough with Lyla, Zara seemed to think she had carte blanche to do as she pleased. Lyla was making it all but impossible to run an efficient set. The movie was going down the shitter.

  ‘How are we gonna catch up?’ I asked Victor. ‘Lyla won’t let us! She’s slowing us down at every bloody moment.’

  ‘Maybe it’s time for you to have a word with her?’ Victor shrugged.

  ‘And what word would that be? I’ve been patient with her, I’ve answered every question without screaming at her, which is the only thing I’ve wanted to do all day. I don’t know what else I can do at this point.’

  ‘You’ll work it out. I have every faith’ Victor told me. Easy for him to say.

  So here we were, day two and it was now lunch. The morning had dragged, for the same reasons as yesterday. I was still trying the method of patience. It still wasn’t working.

  I stood at the food table, watching as Ashley moved things around on the set that she’d built on our soundstage, a detailed piece of work in colours designed to set your teeth on edge. I was glad to have her around, despite the issues. She was about the only person who knew how to behave herself, it seemed.

  Lyla was standing nearby, also watching her. After a moment, she stepped closer Ashley and asked her something I couldn’t hear. But I didn’t need to. Ashley’s usual easy countenance seemed to dribble out of her shoes with every word Lyla spoke her. I stepped closer to hear Ashley say, ‘Yes, it does require a lot of training and no, it’s not just about slapping together a few outfits and putting a coat of paint on some walls.’

  ‘Hey, Lyla - why don’t you go eat? You must be starving’ I suggested. It was heavy-handed, but I didn’t know how else to stop this before it went further. Lyla sniffed and said, ‘Alright.’ As she walked away, she added quietly, ‘People are so sensitive.’

  I saw Ashley’s mouth drop open. I leaned in quickly and said, ‘I know, I know. Just keep your cool.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry about me’ Ashley murmured.

  I wondered if I should say anything else, but Ashley looked like she just wanted to be left alone as she went back to what she’d been doing, so I stood and walked back to the food, picking up a muffin, my second of the day. I was eating terribly at the moment, worse than usual. It was the stress of working with Lyla, it was driving me into the sweet arms of the sugar high.

  I heard Victor talking to someone and I turned to see it was Kim. She was due a visit to the set, it was part of the exercise, but she wouldn’t tell us when. Apparently, my visit was now. I went over to greet her.

  ‘Victor tells me you’re running behind’ were the first words out of her mouth. I looked at Victor but he wouldn’t look back at me. I wasn’t angry with him. Kim would never accept people’s assurances that everything was great and wonderful. She’d turn the screws until you confessed, so I wasn’t surprised that Victor had buckled. He wasn’t the first and he wouldn’t be the last.

  ‘Yep’ I said quietly, stepping closer to her. She leaned in to meet me and I muttered, ‘The actress is giving me trouble. She’s the one slowing us down.’

  ‘How so?’

  �
��She questions every direction I give her and she keeps stopping takes.’

  Kim raised an eyebrow. ‘I see. So what are you going to do about it?’

  I’d been hoping she might sympathise with me, offer me condolence and warm advice. I don’t know what fantasy I’d been living in to imagine that, but Kim was dragging me out of it, feet first, as ever.

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve tried being patient-’

  ‘And that hasn’t worked’ Kim said flatly. ‘So what are you going to do about it?’

  I looked over at Lyla, eating a banana. And I knew what I had to do. I turned back to Kim, nodding. ‘I think I’ve got it.’