Lost in Reality Set Diary: Day 14 (My Last Day)

As my blogger profile says, I am a teacher, writer, and an actress. My BFA is majoring in Performing Arts and while I haven't done paid work since leaving the Boston area, I am currently involved in an exciting local Birmingham film project, Lost in Reality. LIR follows Angelo, a struggling actor who gets himself roped into a drama-centered reality TV show where he has to play the part of "The Animal." Unsatisfied with his life, Angelo decides to change directions when he meets Maggie, a down-to-earth girl with a great family.

I play Maggie.

We've been filming on weekends since March and today was my last day. I should really have kept a set diary the whole time, but it's never too late to give you a glimpse of the experience.

I was on set for 6 long days (Day 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 14) With the exception of Day 1, I was on set each day for 10-12 hours. While it was easy to pour myself into bed after those long days, I have to say that even 12 hours working on a project I'm passionate about is easier than working 4 hours in retail.

Last night I made the horrible mistake of touching up my hair color at the very last second. After going to see Thor I decided to pull out the dye I had bought 4 days ago to make sure that my sun-blonde highlights were back to a fiery copper. The bottle on the shelf had been mislabeled and I ended up staying up late trying to come up with strategies to hide my hair and worrying myself sick about continuity.

The photo to the left shows my hair wet because after wearing a hat until 1p, I had to wet it to tame it for my last on-camera appearance in the film.

Today was Day 14, the Duck Pond day and also time to pick up a few shots we didn't get when we filmed at the Maggie's house location. I headed to Mountain Brook for 9:30a and was, as always, way early. I'm chronically early. It's a good thing unless you're the one who has to explain to the guard at the gated community what you're doing there.

For those not familiar with the greater Birmingham Metropolitan area, houses in Mountain Brook have a reputation for being grand like this (see right). That's not the house we filmed at, that was the neighbor across the street.

The Mazer family has been kind enough to let Bernadette Chapman's cast and crew invade their back yard and their picturesque little lake that they share with a few other neighbors. The cast and crew were there last weekend to film some shady bedroom business and made friends with a duck we've named Jett (more on that later).

This pond was the setting for our picnic date and also for a scene at the end of the film where Maggie comes to meet Angelo. There is a running joke about the ducks at this pond.

Angelo feeds the ducks in this scene and believe me, they loved it. Our ducky friends were named after members of the reality TV show cast after we realized that one adorable duck had a poof of feathers on his head that mirrored the haircut of the character Jett, Angelo's friend on set. Jett duck was greedy, hogged the crackers, and was always trying to waddle into the shot. He actually walked right up onto our picnic blanket in the middle of the scene. I'm hoping this is in the blooper reel.

We put our PA on the task of duck wrangling. Thad's a real trooper.

You can sort of see Jett's poof in this cell phone shot. He's the white duck. The Mallard next to him is named Memphis after another character in the film.

The other excitement of this scene, aside from the ducks and the inconspicuous hat (which was at least a way to sneak a very subtle Harry Potter reference into the flick as it was my special July 16, 2005 hat from volunteering at Barnes & Noble), we had to deal with a beautiful but territorial swan.

I'm not sure if it's a he or a she, but we named it Natalie Portman for the obvious Black Swan reference. As long as we kept Natalie Portman fed, he/she seemed alright but there were a couple of times that Natalie Portman challenged Corey Merrida with a display of impressive wing span and Natalie Portman hissed at me because I didn't throw a cracker fast enough.

After the shoot at the duck pond we headed over to the other side of town to Lee Green's house to pick up some outside shots from last month. Between shots we had to wait for nightfall so we played a game of touch football. I admit that I got a little dehydrated and was boiling by the time I quit. Moody (sound) and Kyle (camera, not my Kyle) showed us some game and I caught a touch down pass that knocked me over.

We finished off the shots and said goodbye. I'll be looking forward to seeing those guys at the wrap party!

Follow our progress on the Lost in Reality Facebook page.