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Shooting and Waiting
(This is part of the series of articles about shooting “Red Reformatory 2: Old Friends” with Lupus Pictures. Previous posts can be found here: 1 2 3 4 5 6)
While talking about intense experiences, and self-discovery, and all those things you expect from a heavy shoot, it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that a spanking shoot consists mostly of waiting around. The bigger the shoot, the longer the actors spend doing nothing but waiting.
The car was picking up the four of us - Niki and HH, Mr Haze and me - at 7.30 am. I was awake before 5, buzzing with nerves, staring in the mirror, running through my lines. I hadn’t even begun to get worried about the caning which wouldn’t happen until late afternoon; before that there were new people to meet, costumes to try on, proper acting to do. Every time I repeated my lines in front of the mirror, I became ever more painfully aware I wasn’t an actress. Getting caned was the one thing I had particular expertise in, and it felt like that would be the easiest part.
First we waited for our ride to the studio. (”What if they picked up the wrong girls, can you imagine?” asked Mr Haze gleefully. He whipped out his Blackberry and typed in a note about this. He would spend the rest of the weekend taking notes for me on whatever either of us thought blog-worthy.)
Then, there was a brief burst of activity - costumes to try on, a short stretch in the make-up chair, where I had my hair plaited and tied with ribbons - and then, more waiting around for my first scene.
All around me people were busy, in places even quite frantic. They were dragging around heavy lights, hammering together bits of scenery, peering at the shot through two or three different monitors. In the meantime we, the actors, sat in the corridor, giving each other little uncertain smiles, and waited.
Even while shooting my scenes, I had plenty of waiting to do - this time, in full costume, under skin-melting lights. Waiting patiently for the director to talk to each of the actors and the crew. Waiting between takes, while things that needed fixing, were fixed. Waiting for people to get their lines right (and I’m not claiming I got mine right every time, either!) while struggling to hang on to the despair my character had feel when the cameras rolled. Waiting for the sound guys to conceal the portable microphones, while thinking about the saddest movie endings in the world, to keep the tears in my eyes.
I found the waiting relatively easy most of the time. I’m patient, and I can entertain myself even when I can’t chatter to people because everybody is busy and working.
But then there came a different stretch of waiting.
When my arms and thighs were buckled to the legs of the whipping bench, I felt a wide belt tighten around the small of my back. Tied more securely and finally than ever before, I heard Pavel Stastny swish a cane through the air and step back.
I waited for the strokes to fall.
I wanted it; I didn’t want it; I willed him to hurry up; I wished he had several paragraphs of lines; I was scared; I was elated.
I waited.
Less than a minute in all, this was the hardest stretch of waiting for me to endure.
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13 Responses to “Shooting and Waiting”
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Adele:
I can totally feel where you are coming from even though I have never experienced a wait like that for CP but your words really brought it to life for me.
That is a great bit of writing!
Gary
Waiting is an interesting topic. Sometimes, I guess, it can be with eager anticipation, other times frustratingly boring.
I’m awaiting a delivery. The postwoman arrived with a packet this morning, which - lo and behold - featured a humorous depiction of the character ‘Snow White’, amongst other things. ;-) However, it was actually this week’s edition of The Spectator. I thought that was quite funny.
On the subjects of writing and waiting, I was wondering, Adele, if you could have a word with your associates from The North, and see if they have had a chance to sort through their in-tray yet.
Gary - Anticipation is the sweetest part, I promise you :)
Steve - Too right, there’s waiting and waiting. When it’s part of my job - be it hanging around while the tech people fiddle with the lights, or actually waiting for the strokes to fall, I’m your girl. Waiting for deliveries, though - or worse yet, for labourers to show up to fix things… that’s *the* most frustrating type of hanging around, ever. My notes to the NSI folks go to the same inbox as yours, though, so I don’t know that I can be any help. Give them another prod!
(Same goes for anybody I owe an email, too. Give me prods. Not every day, mind, but I do get behind on email, and may forget to write back altogether. It’s very naughty, and I feel really guilty about it, so prodding works.)
Wow, now thats the way to leave everybody waiting in suspense for the rest of the story :-)
My thanks to Mr Haze for keeping a record.
Prefectdt
Lovely description, or rather, *yet another* lovely description from the other side of the camera.
And Mr. Haze’s theoretical question is one to ponder alright. I can just imagine the tabloid headlines…
As a small boy, my mother used to whip me weekly with a leather strap whether I deserved it or not. This was complemented by regular whippings with a cane at Grammar school, so my buttocks were always in technicolor, never pink.
The Schoolmasters didn’t keep you waiting but my mother did.
It was a ritual, “Go to your bedroom and take your pants off and lay across the bed” she would say. She would select a strap out of a collection of four, but then would not come to my room for several minutes. The waiting was mental torture but the strokes burnt like fire.
Too tough in hindsight, but nowadays too soft. The Christian Bible says children should be given the “rod”,as guidance, but I wonder how many times God was whipped as a child?
I think that being forced to wait for what you know is innevitable is just a part of the humiliation that is foisted apon the spankee. Its not bad enough that you are so low on the totem pole that your butt is a mere plaything for the spanker but your time and body are unimportant and you are “…a wiggly worm and a wiggly-worm is the lowest form of whale blubber that lies in the ocean depths.” Of course, I don’t have any expeience with “spanking shoots” but I can remember being forced to wait for a paddling even after being admitted into the principles office after having already waited for more than an hour outside of his office while he filled out some unseen paperwork at his desk.
Grant - Don’t worry too much about what the “Christian Bible” says, there have been so many mistranslations of the ancient fairy tale that it has become merely an implement of psychological crowd control. If you want some good bed time reading, try “Misquoting Jesus (the story behind who changed the bible and why)” by Bart D. Ehrman. The words for “Rod and Staff” might not have made the translation properly according to other sources. For some alternative fairy tales you might try “Norse Gods and Giants” (I can’t remember the author) or “The Sillmarillion” by J.R.R. Tolkien.
For those of you abortion clinic bombers out there who might not like the free advice I’ve given to Grant; Before you come to lynch me at my windmill with your lit torches and thumb-screws, let me warn you of my claymores, mines and moat full of crocodiles!
Tigger - Waiting at a shoot has nothing to do with humiliation, thank goodness. It’s only that shoots are technically complex affairs, and the actors happen to have the most emotionally intense, but least time-consuming jobs.
Well, I was a bit off subject and maybe a bit over the top on that last bit. I don’t know what it is about voka and tonic that makes me want to type on a laptop. Maybe its that little piece of lime!
“Its not bad enough that you are so low on the totem pole that your butt is a mere plaything for the spanker but your time and body are unimportant” Tigerbutt
Sorry Mate, I do a bit of bondage/SM photography and believe me the model is anything but low on the totempole - arguably the most important person there.
Each of your posts makes me more curious to watch that movie & make a review on my blog!
You might as well, Tom :) I’m not exactly qualified to review it myself!
Well, Adele, here it is!
http://www.spreview.net/reviews/oldfriends.html