Strawberry Fields Forever

Last weekend was our first real shoot, our Project II. We were given three scripts to choose from to either recreate any way we choose or adapt somehow to our liking, as long as our teachers could tell which script we chose. The gist of each script is summed up by certain lines. For example, script one is known as "I don't have a girlfriend in Prague," script two is known as "Fresh Strawberries," and script three is known as "Would you like to see my doll collection?" They were all pretty vague and thus their interpretations were left up to the filmmakers. No one chose the doll collection one. More or less because it was really weird, but also because no one knew where to find a doll collection. Apparently last semester they changed it to, "would you like to see my vegetable friends?" and had about 10 vegetables on a shelf with drawn on faces. What creative minds I'm surrounded by!

The seven of us (the seven new students this semester) worked together and crewed and acted for each other on each set. We did two films a day, starting on Friday morning and ending on Sunday night. We had to taxi our equipment (which was a van full) across town to different apartments, set up, change lighting for every different angled shot, break down sets, put it in a van, and do it all over again. Waking up each morning at 6:30 am and not ending the day until 6 or 7pm. It was really hard, but I definitely learned a lot.

I also got to act in three of the films, two of which I died in! In the first film, I was a rich coke-head who ate poisoned strawberries. I got to wear fur and pearls and gaudy make-up and snort flour through a rolled up dollar and then die on screen after eating some Visine-poisoned strawberries. In the second film, I was the girl whose boyfriend repeatedly says, "I don't have a girlfriend in Prague, I don't have a girlfriend in Prague, I don't have a girlfriend in Prague," to which I eventually walk out and leave him lonely after catching him in his lies. In the third film, I am a girl who is visited by the Grim Reaper and eventually dies face down on the kitchen table ( I still have a bruise on my head). I don't actually think he used the script at all for that one.

I can only upload a few photos at a time, given the impossibly slow internet. But I'll share more soon.