Justine and I sat by the pool while we waited for the lighting crew to light the room perfectly. I was intrigued by the outdoor flat screen television. It was swathed in a waterproof cover, but I didn’t think a TV worth thousands of dollars would do well in the rain, covered or not. [OK. It seems like now would be as good a time as any to reveal the now explained photographs. Somehow we just knew there would be explanations in here somewhere.]
Audrey, Otto, Justine, and I headed off to the living room where their first scene was today. Since their personal jewelry wasn’t in the script I got to hold Audrey and Otto’s wedding rings. I stuffed them down a small pocket of my overalls and prayed I wouldn’t lose them. I didn’t. (I get nervous when I’m holding someone else’s important stuff!) [… which undoubtedly makes heavy petting a comical event in DM’s house.]
The first order of business, though, was to achieve quiet on the set. Not as easy as it sounds! We could get the folks in the mansion to be quiet, but it wasn’t as simple to silence the outside noises, especially from the construction site next door. Sawing, nailing, and just general talking detracted from our supposedly silent set. Cameraman Miles Long took the matter into his own hands and asked the workers, in Spanish, if they could please be quiet for a few minutes. They took a break long enough for Audrey to finish her dialogue. [It sounds like he took matters into his own “mouth” technically, but we get it.]
Audrey had a tremendous amount of lines and she nailed them perfectly! Her range of emotions was amazing, and her delivery was superb. “I’m smelling ‘best actress,’” Michael Ninn smiled. “Whoo! This mofo can act her ass off!” [Sadly, this is but one small requirement in the quest for the AVN Award. Still, we have a few of them around, and they just sit around and get dusty anyway.]
After capturing “Room Tone” with both cameras, everyone moved upstairs to the next set up. I was fascinated with the glass floor over the wine cellar/pool room. (Maybe it was a glass ceiling, but people were walking on it before the Ram Board was attached.) [In case you’re curious, most of this wine was gone before “the house-sitter” and I even began our exploration. Really. Swear.]
This time Audrey was in the master bathroom and her Doppelganger Justine was haunting her. Two of the bathroom walls were glass. Imagine showering with a 180-degree view of the mountains….
I took photos of the ladies through several panes of glass. Lucky was incredulous that they’d turn out. (And he PhotoShops my pictures for the web.) “Do you know what “Control D” does?” he joked. Yeah, it deletes the pictures, but they look great! [“They” might be stretching it here, but bracketing is your friend in these situations, and if you don’t know what that means as it applies to taking pictures, then you wouldn’t be interested in doing it anyway.]
Audrey and Otto had dialogue on the bed. Then Audrey wandered and then ran through the halls as doors mysteriously closed on her. She was followed by 18th Century Catherine who had to take the hoop out of her costume to fit down the hall. One of the crew suggested she be placed on a dolly to make the walking easier, but Justine glided down the hallway on her own just fine!
Next a frightened “Catherine” yelled at her husband from the top of the stairs – and Audrey made the scene absolutely believable. She was shaking and her voice sounded like she was terrified! I was “smelling Best Actress” too! [You’d be surprised by how many women in our business can act really pissed off and yell believably at their husbands. … OK. Maybe you wouldn’t be all that surprised.]
Just as an aside, the top of the stairs and the bottom of the stairs were two different staircases. The Ninn Worx crew used the more interesting location for each one.
