Leigha Horton :: Greenroom
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Oh man, I just saw more edited footage of The Monster of Phantom Lake, and dang, it looks good.

So why the title of this post? I’ll tell you why. In that same footage I noticed a huge continuity flaw with my hair. “Huge” only because it’s based on vanity; but noticeable nonetheless (and therefore something seemingly worth obsessing over).

The offending issue: by the time we got to shooting the last two scenes on the schedule, my curling iron had jumped off this world’s Functioning-Gadget Coil. Being that I work for an arts non-profit, my hair remained markedly straight for scenes 28 and 30 (the final scene). Big whoop, right? Yes, it IS a big whoop because I HAD FORGOTTEN THAT I WAS IN SCENE 29. The same scene 29 that gave us 89% humidity and a 3 a.m. wrap-up. Oh yes, curly-haired scene 29.

In an ideal world where scene 29 didn’t exist, it could have been accepted that Ms. Stephanie Yates set her hair in curlers before she left University for her study-weekend with Professor Jackson, but after a full day-and-a-half of tromping through the woods the curls naturally fell. BUT since scene 29 DOES exist, it looks like the curls had naturally fallen come scene 28, but upon arrival at the teenagers’ campsite (scene 29) Ms. Yates appears to have been attacked by woodland creatures with curling-irons.

I can’t wait to see the curly-to-straight-again transition from scene 29 to 30.

Storybook Voice: “Yes, children, on the other side of the forest, there are woodland creatures with flattening-irons. These two opposing gangs of style-savvy fauna have turf wars with one another involving jazz choreography and snappy musical numbers. There’s no killing, just some nasty scorch marks and the distinct odor of burning fur.”

And the worst part of it all – the hair looks way better straight (especially considering the humidity during the first few weeks of shooting was making my curls all weird and gross anyway). Gaaah!

I wonder what the director would say if I requested a re-shoot of scenes 1-27, + 29? Kidding, only kidding.

Cue Music: When you’re a bear, you’re a bear!…

Exeunt.

Last weekend we finished filming The Monster of Phantom Lake. The final scenes included the ultimate destruction of the monster costume by having the monster walk into, and then for the sake of the movie, out of, the lake. It looked pretty sweet, and our monster was a total sport. Especially despite the forced re-takes caused by the speed-boat morons in the background trailing a water-skier (it’s illegal to have gas-powered watercraft on that particular lake).

Then there was the kiss. The kiss that we decided not to rehearse for the sake of making it look spontaneous, the same kiss that ended with the cheesy cheek-to-cheek post-kiss bit (where we’re both facing the same direction and looking dreamily off into space) a la Doris Day and Rock Hudson. Or Shirley Jones and Gordon MacRae. Or Judy Garland and Tom Drake. Yes, my father raised me watching musicals, and I couldn’t help but open my big trap to make the suggestion – once spoken, it simply had to be done. I always thought it looked dorky when I watched it happen in those old films, now I can safely report that it feels at least twice as dorky as it looks.

So, now it’s editing time – I can’t wait to see it all finished and shiny with a score and everything. Although I am terrified of the audience response, and wish the Riverview Theater had secret two-way mirrors facing everyone so I could watch their reactions. Alas, no such luck. This is where the lack of immediate feedback just kills me… between on-camera work and voice work, I won’t know until long after the fact if I’ve engaged the audiences or not, and can’t make adjustments based on the energy in the room. We’ll just have to wait and see… wait… and… see…

Five points if you can name the source of that last line – because my memory is terrible.

Oh man – it was HOT this weekend. Temps were in the mid-90’s and the humidity was, I kid you not, 89%. So basically the air consisted of 11% oxygen, and 89% water. Okay, I’ll admit that this is not exactly how humidity percentages are determined, but when it gets to the point that one sweats profusely while sitting and it’s difficult to breathe in and out – WHO CARES ABOUT MATH?! Humidity makes me cranky. For that matter, so does math.

We filmed several scenes for The Monster of Phantom Lake this weekend, and it’s days like these that make me curse a poly/cotton blend. Wrinkle free? Yes. Breathable? Not so much.

FRIDAY
Friday night started at about 9:30 – there were a few scenes to shoot before anything I was in, so I got on camera round 11/11:30 – humidified (frizzy) hair, melting makeup and all. Ahh, to be the engenue in a movie. Comedy. Pure comedy. A few hours outdoors in that weather, and they could easily recast me as The Monster.

My favorite parts of the evening in no particular order:

• At some wee hour, I was officially dubbed the “fire fluffer” since my girl-scouting days qualified me to keep the campfire going. I honored my badges.
• At about 1:30 am, we had an unsettling interaction with some local fauna. During the shoot, we stopped due to some crashing through the woods out of range of the floodlights. Whatever it was kept getting closer and closer, and we all started to get quite nervous – finally, the thing burst through the bushes straight for us. It was worse from my perspective, because I was standing behind the director and couldn’t see what it was (but was thoroughly convinced it was a psycho killer). The director let out a frightened yelp, and grabbed the camera and tripod like a spear – I just froze. It turned out to be a dog-sized raccoon that took a hard right as soon as it came within 15 feet of us. Laugh we did, but I can’t say that did much for our nerves the rest of the evening. There were many suspicious twig breaks over the next hour or so…
• The director accidentally swallowed a bug. While I truly felt for him, I couldn’t stop laughing…that was just too funny. Although frankly, there were far, far more spiders about than I would ever like to truly consider. And I can’t say I really enjoyed the persistent divebombings into the ear by those ginormous moths.

Around 2:15 am, we all started getting a bit punchy and couldn’t get our lines out correctly to save our lives. We finally wrapped it all up, and I got home at 3:15 am. I’m pretty sure I’m getting too old for this.

SATURDAY
Thankfully, I had Saturday off to recuperate.

SUNDAY
Sunday’s call was a very early, very unappreciated 8 am. That meant getting up at 6 am to shower, get in costume, do makeup and hair, and drive the 45 minutes to the producer’s house (near the shooting location). It was raining, so upon arrival we had to wait an hour and a half for the storm to clear. An hour and a half of cherished weekend-sleep, wasted. *sigh*

The day turned out rather pleasant – we filmed in a beautiful bay that looked remarkably untouched (well done, location scouts!). We were shooting a scene where the professor and I are taking samples from the water, and running them through various pieces of ridiculous equipment. At one point, I got up from the blanket too fast and just barely spared myself from landing in the lake head-first. Grace and I aren’t the best of acquaintances… And yes, that lovely stork dance was captured on camera – I feel kind of proud making it into the “outtakes” section of the DVD special features! Ah, the sacrifices I make for comedy…

To finish out the day, I rewarded myself with a head-dunking in the lake. On purpose, thankyouverymuch.

The first day of shooting for The Monster of Phantom Lake was yesterday, and thank god for digital cameras – they let one see how awful one is right away, so one has time to fix it. Yesterday’s shoot is in the can, but fortunately the rest of the scenes I can still salvage. The source of my dread?: the director did an overnight rough-edit of yesterday’s footage, and I look like a Janeane Garofalo bobblehead doll. Active listening, while generally appreciated in the real world, on camera makes me look like I have a bit of the Parkinson’s.

The highlight of the shoot was at 7:30, when the gorgeous 1955 cherry red Chevy convertible came rolling down the road in all its diesel glory. Hot damn, that was a fine machine – it was so clean and shiny and big and wonderful – and it was there for us to use. Just sitting in it had me all giddy and stupid and numb to the 96-degree weather and 86% humidity and the fact that my makeup was sliding off my face. That high quickly faded to horror, since the opening scene required me to get out of the car and lean against it, and the re-takes required me to get back into the car – with each re-take I proceeded to track tree seedpods and dogwood fuzzies and dirt and all sorts of nature garbage into the car, all over the light-tan floor mat. I tried kicking my shoes to get the junk off before climbing back in, but those evil little $3 keds are the stuff of housewives’ nightmares. I felt like such a chump when apologizing to the owner couple – they were cool, though.

So far, I have to say that the best part of this experience is getting to try things out – seeing what works and what doesn’t on film (as a character – usually I’m just an announcer-type in industrials) is a learning process, and I’m honored that these guys have faith in me to make it work. I hope to make them proud.

cosa numero uno: my first foray into audioville, Fringe Podcast #1, is officially available to the masses. One could download it from the Minnesota Fringe Festival website, and one could also download it directly from iTunes. Yes, we’ve hit The Big Time. Heck, on iTunes you can even subscribe to the Fringe Podcast via RSS feed (I’m writing like I know what this is) and get automatic updates when we post new ones. So fancy!

cosa numero dos: must. memorize. lines.

Filming for The Monster of Phantom Lake starts this weekend – a week earlier than anticipated – due to the oh-so-lucky securing of a 1955 Chevy convertible. Yes, the leading man gets to drive a snazzy car. Lucky.

Tonight was to be my night of hunkering-down and memorizing my lines before the weekend. But no, I’ve brushed-up on my procrastination ability instead – ‘tis a learn-ed skill that I have mastered well. So far tonight, I’ve sold some embarrassing CDs to the Electric Fetus, pampered my soon-to-be oft-used bicycle with chrome polish/rust remover, ate some turkey and crackers hoping it’d pass as dinner, talked to The Bean on the phone, actually managed to highlight my lines and make a scene breakdown before writing to the director to see if the shoot schedule is set in stone (so I can memorize the appropriate scenes each week before the shoots instead of all in one sitting), and wrote this entry. Alas, the hunkering is not going so well.

I can’t believe it – I got the part! You are looking at the new female lead, Stephanie Yates, scientific graduate student extraordinaire and love interest of WWII Veteran (don’t be grossed out, it’s set in 1956) and all around sexy mofo, Professor Daniel Jackson, in the Saint Euphoria Pictures film The Monster of Phantom Lake.

Oh, and by the way, I finished reading the script Saturday morning and realized that it’s definitely a throw-back to The Creature from the Black Lagoon. Not Swamp Thing. Well, maybe Swamp Thing, but I just remembered that I’ve never seen Swamp Thing. Anyway, it’s going to be a blast. The script is funny and well written, and the director and producer are smart and geeky-nice – so it’ll be just like working with MoCW or the old Scrimshaw Brothers/Look Ma, No Pants crew. I’m so excited, I’ve been doing the Horton Happy Dance. If you’ve never seen it, that’s probably a good thing because it’s ridiculous. Ask Reid Knuttila, he’ll show you.