Five o’clock in the morning was the perfect time to wake up and hit the gym, at least when I was in LA. When the call time was six o’clock, there wasn’t much I could do besides down a mocha protein shake and explore the set a little.

I left the small hotel that the set had bought out for the shoot, and walked to the first location. On my way I noticed a small Danish flag standing in the ground, but when I got closer it was standing tall in dogshit…

Things only got weirder the more I looked around. There was a costume trailer where background characters were exiting with clothes that looked to be from the sixteenth century. They had corsets, thick fabric, muddy colors but the set decorations seemed to be from ancient rome. 

What time period was this thing supposed to be in?

Most shocking of all was that there were, indeed, elephants. Real, living, breathing, trumpeting elephants, but not a horse in sight.

Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown that script away…

Okay. So, no horses, but hopefully there would be swords, right?

I would have sought out the prop master, but six o’ clock was arriving quickly, and I didn’t want to be late on day one.

The set was shooting in the middle of the town where there were cute little houses and a cobblestone path. They were setting up to roll for one as I popped onto the scene, ready to check out the shot on the monitors. 

Except there were no monitors?

It was only after I looked over at the cinematographer that I saw why. 

My brain couldn’t completely recognize what I saw as fact.

An ARRIFLEX?

This shit was being shot on film?

The moment I had that realization, Cory popped up behind me. Apparently the look on my face gave away my confusion as I stared at the camera.

“Yup. Arri believes that films are only films when shot on film.” He didn’t physically roll his eyes, but I heard it in his voice. 

“Does this thing have the budget for that?” I asked.

A frantic woman with snow white, unkempt curly hair, thick round glasses and at least three clipboards walked by, just said, “Nope,” and kept going. 

The producer, for sure.

As I was about to complain some more, the assistant director called out, “Quiet on set!”

A hush took over the set until nothing could be heard except the running water and rustling of wind through grass.

“Sound?”

“Rolling.”

“Camera?”

“Speeding.”

The second AC held up a clap board to the camera and said into the boom mic, “Scene 1; take 1. Mark.” CLAP.

 Arri, clearly enjoying the moment, held up a finger and waited for the perfect timing, wasting precious film, until he pointed his finger forward and said, “Action!”

A bunch of extras in suits of armor marched down the street, led by—and I couldn’t… wouldn’t… absolutely refused to believe this—one of the elephants.

The various sets of armor were a mish-mash of random styles and time periods, clearly meant to look cool instead of serving any practical purpose.

It took every piece of my soul not to shout, “What bullshit!” in the middle of the take and ruin more dollars of film than I could afford to replace.

I held it in, and allowed the scene to go on as the camera focused in on a young girl with an awful blue wig commenting to her mother about how she wanted to grow up to wear awesome armor someday.

“And, cut!” Arri called enthusiastically at the end of the take and the set roared back to life. Make-up artists ran onto the hot set, while the AD ordered for, “Back to one!”

The extras ran to their position for another take.

I looked at Cory who kept checking his watch every few seconds and asked, “When is it time for the stunt?”

“It’s the first shot of scene two.”

“Are we really going from scene one to scene two? Like, in script order?”

As soon as I asked, Arri walked by to spew his ridiculous answer. “Uh. Yeah. People age. If we don’t shoot in chronological order, people won’t age appropriately. This is how real we are here. This is art.”

I had never wanted to punch what was basically a child in the face so badly before.

Instead I held it in, and offered a snarky comment. “Right. I can’t imagine how obvious twelve weeks of aging would be on your twenty-something lead.”

“Yep. That’s why I’m the director,” he said, clearly not picking up on my sarcasm at all, then walking away with his phone to his nose.

All I had left was a wide-eyed stare for Cory who gave me a thumbs up before the next call for silence washed over the set.

Praise Matty that at least I had a fall stunt soon.

It wasn’t until two hours later that I was sent to the costume department to be fitted for my outfit. The moment the designer pulled out the skimpy mess of fabric and foam metal that could not be called armor, I nearly walked out and never came back.

“Where’s the rest of it?” I asked as I took the pile of fabric and thread from her.

All she said was, “Sorry.”

She knew. And this poor woman’s name would actually matter in the credits.

I worked out how the threads could cover me—barely—and which small piece of fabric and gold painted foam went where. I got fitted in my wig and went to the set, feeling more like a clown than some kind of knight.

  Cory hooked me up to the harness at the top of the fifty-foot scaffolding. They set it all up by the river, but did, in fact, put a giant greenscreen-Matty for me to land on just before the river bank so I didn’t hit the water like concrete.

Even on wires, that could get messy.

Although this set was chaotic and sketchy as hell, I trusted Cory and Matty to make sure everything was safe for me. 

Because that’s what stunt people did. Safety for ourselves and everyone around us was always our top priority.

While standing on top of the scaffolding, looking down to the black “X” on Matty, I remembered why I suffered through this. My body yearned to leap and let gravity take me again, and again, and again. 

Quiet on set was called. The sound rolled. The camera sped.

Then Arri, once again full of himself, called out the all important, “Action!”

With my head low, I say a prayer to Matty and prepare for the dance.

Arms cross. Snap.

Hip bounce. Hip bounce.

Repeat.

Damn this is stupid. I feel like a fucking moron. The only thing worse than pretending this dance is cool, is having to do it to no music in front of forty-five crew members.

Thank Matty the dance is short, and the jump is next.

I throw up my hands with two, cathartic, middle fingers and throw myself into a backflip. 

In my heart it is for the director and his dumbass dance, but in my head I know it is part of the stunt.

The moment gravity takes me, all my annoyance washes away in the breeze.

Heart pumping.

Blood racing.

I’m finally alive.

I twist once, twice, three times, before keeping my back towards Matty for the end of the drop.

Poof. Matty catches me in his warm embrace without so much as a bruise. 

And just like that, my moment is over.

The crew waits for my  “I am okay”-signal, before they cheer like they usually do—my only moment to shine. I absorb the glory for all of five seconds before Arri breaks through the crowd.

“CUT!” He approached me with his hands swinging wildly. “No. No. No. All wrong. I have to feel this dance. The audience needs to feel this dance.”

“I don’t know what that means,” I said. That was the worst bit of directing I’d ever been given

“You need to feel this dance.”

Nope. That was the worst piece of directing I’d ever been given.

“Feel what?”

“You need to give me the vibes. BACK TO ONE,” He yelled and left.

I crawled back up the scaffolding, got my harness set back up, and went for take two.

“ACTION.”

“CUT. The dance was wrong, again.”

“ACTION.”

“CUT. More hip! More hip! And remember the vibes!”

“ACTION!”

“CUT! You fell too fast. These vibes are slower than that!”

“ACTION!”

“CUT! The sun was in your eyes. I don’t want sun vibes! Back to one!”

Again… and again… and again.

Stunts were my happy place, and I’d often kill to do the same stunt again and again. But this was not the fucking vibe. 

Twenty-four takes this man-child made me do, and he failed my vibe check every. Single. Damn. Fucking. Time.

He eventually gave me a, “That’ll have to do, I guess” as the producer bit through her third pencil from anxiety, and I was released from my harnessed hell.

The AD yelled over the set, “Moving on! Is the elephant war paint ready, yet?”

The what, now?

I had to figure out what was going on with this movie. What the hell had Cory signed me up for.

At least I was free now, and I took off for the craft services table and peered down into the bin where I’d tossed my script the night before.

Nothing but banana peels and half eaten donuts. 

The producer with the messy hair walked up behind me to grab five donuts and started shoving them in her face.

“Excuse me,” I asked her and she jumped out of her skin. “Could I get another copy of the script? I lost mine.”

Her head moved in a hundred small, rapid shakes. “No. No, no. No. We don’t have the budget for that. We don’t have the budget for this,” she said and shoved two more donuts into her mouth before checking an old pocket watch. “Gotta get back. Gotta keep it moving.”

She speed-walked away, but I chased her down.

“Wait. Please, I’d really like to—”

“No time. No time to talk. Gotta move on,” she took another step, then paused and handed me something from atop her stack of clipboards.

“Here, the original,” she held out a book with a torn cover and the pages wrinkled and bent.

The moment I accepted the book, she hopped off to film whatever nonsense was up next.