Desperate Housewives Update

As suspected, I was seen in frame. Yaaaaaaay!!!!

CSI Miami

I dread “upscale” gigs with my Viper. I absolutely dread them. I may have an upscale car, but I am very far from being an upscale person. I can eek out hip and trendy or business casual, but upscale makes me very nervous.

And apparently, on this particular show, they needed everyone in yellow, green or white… Three colors I just don’t own. The only green I’m inclined to wear on a regular basis is camoflage. The only yellow I have are three car T-shirts and an electric yellow, long skirt suit from 1986–with shoulder pads like a football player. And white…well, I’ve got tons of T-shirts and a few ugly, draping polyester dresses from the late 70s-early 80s. (Think Falcon Crest…Dallas…Dynasty…yeah, eww is right!)  So, when I had to come up with something for this gig, I was utterly terrified and lacked a helluva lot of confidence in what I was wearing let alone what I brought and I just really felt like the gods were conspiring against me.

But the casting director said production was more interested in our cars than in us…so maybe I wouldn’t get yelled at by wardrobe, hair and makeup people for not having what the call required. Good golly, I was hoping so…

I showed up. I parked. We all waited for awhile. We moved our cars. We lined up so the director could pick and choose who was going to walk through frame. (I silently did cartwheels in my head because I knew I wasn’t going to be used. I didn’t look anything like the other people there.) I of course wasn’t chosen, but they loved my car. We moved our cars again and they wanted my Viper right in front. We ate.

After lunch, the Director, AD (Assistant Director) and DP (Director of Photography) were so excited about my car (some of the crew even thought it was a production vehicle, not a background car!) that they had me put it in a different spot so they could do this really great dolly shot along the side of it.

I love it when whatever car I bring inspires the production guys. I absolutely love it. Of course, that means my car can never be seen again because it got a close-up, but whatever. It’s always fun to see the guys get excited. “Can you put your car over here and I’m gonna do this dolly shot and sweep up from here so we can see your car there and be able to get all this other stuff in frame and it’s gonna look really neat and thank you for bringing it because this is gonna be awesome…”

Of course, that’s always the first shot of the day and my car gets to be in deep background the rest of the day. Not that I’m complaining. I just see a pattern and think it’s a blessing and a curse every time it happens.

So, needless to say, after moving my car out of frame for the second shot, all I did was sit in holding and read a great book about Medieval life. I got about half way through it because it was so awesome I didn’t want to put it down.

Next, we were signed out and I went home…taking somewhat of a long way because I’d seen my fair share of traffic this past week and didn’t want to sit in any more even if that meant circumnavigating the globe to get home. Plus, I was in a friggin’ Viper. It doesn’t do 5mph willingly!

G-Force

I just got off of a movie called G-Force. I saw some awesome driving stunts, a simulated hamster and got to spend a few days overlooking the Port of Los Angeles. Not half bad, but it felt very, very long. I mean, like, super long. Sure, 12 hour days are never short, but I think I prefer a day or two rather than four in a row on any show to break up the monotony.

It took an hour to get to the location for a 6AM call time. Going in, I knew it’d make for a long ride home because when I’m on a car call, that means we only work during daylight hours if we’re called in that early. I was working with my ’06 Mustang on this one.

The first day, I spent many hours in holding. Over the course of this gig, I read an entire book about Medieval Seige Warfare. Not half bad, but also a little dry–which makes any book the wrong book to have on set. But it was what I had in my bag, so I did enjoy it between conversations with other extras.

Something odd about this gig was that the set was about 5 blocks long and holding was on one end rather than in the middle. And we were on a rather steep hill…one of the blocks reminded me of a non-crooked version of Lombard St. in San Francisco. It wasn’t quite that steep, but after the third time walking up it…you get the picture. Thankfully, when I did have to walk up and down it during the shot, I didn’t have to go far. The SUVs in were hauling ass, doing stunts in the street, so the most I could travel was about 20-30 feet during any given take.

I got to drive a little on one of the days. That was nice. I always enjoy driving.

Watching the stunts was fun, too. One had an SUV coming down the hill, going around a car, as another SUV came around a corner, cutting off the car and following the first SUV as it swerved around another SUV while yet another SUV came around another corner and joined the fray. Lots of squealing tires and good, fun automotive mayhem. I heard the drivers came within inches of a few of the vehicles…cool! I dig that shit.

I missed the big stunt on one of the other days because I was forgotten in holding. I heard it didn’t go off as planned, though. A little too much ramp and the SUV exchanged the intended target for an unintended target. There wasn’t any massive carnage or anything and it looked great on camera, but it wasn’t what the script required so they had to do it again.

That one I got to see. The SUV went up the ramps and landed on an old RV, shattering it. Awesome shit for me. I’ve seen a few other similar stunts, but it had been quite awhile. I’m always amazed at the prep time before and after a shot like that, too. It seemed to take forever, but was, of course warranted. I mean, if I was anywhere involved in the action, I’d want to make sure everything was right, wouldn’t you?

I just realized that I mentioned the hamster in the beginning and never got back to it. Well, I’d snuck a peek at the story board on the first day. Apparently, we were filming some sort of car chase between a CG hamster in a giant motor-propelled (I think…it was hard to tell how it was propelled because it looked like the hamster was driving it, not running in it) ball. It looked really bitchin’ on the story board. I definitely want to see this movie when it comes out just so I can put together all the pieces of the shots I was part of and see what we were actually doing. I had my back to the action on several occasions.

Sometimes, to simulate the hamster, they used this weird home-made-looking car-like contraption that I can’t even begin to describe and do it justice. It was kinda like a go-cart, kinda like a dirt track car, kinda like a “hey guys, I got some metal and an engine, let’s build a kickass-fast race-buggy” sort of thing. It was really nifty and I’ve never seen anything like it.

I’ve never worked in a scene where heavy CG stuff was going to be added later. (I didn’t work with Doc Oc when I was on Spiderman II.) So, when they brought out the sort of camera tester balls of various materials plus the ones with various furs on them, at first I didn’t make the connection. That was what made me try to steal a glance at the story board. The weird car, the groups of balls, just what the hell kind of show was I on? Then, everything made sense and I started really diggin’ it and wondering what it’d be like from the CG animators point of view when the footage landed in the queue. I’ve never been on that side of it, nor had I thought about it before. Fascinatin’ shit to me…

The weather was odd. The first two days had hot sun (thank goodness for the sunblock in my generic survival kit in my gig bag) with icy cold sea breeze. The next day was miserable hot sun with no breeze…and then rain. We went home “early”–about an hour earlier than the previous days–and it took me two-and-a-half hours to crawl home because it was Friday night, too. That sucked. The last day was perfect. Warm, but not hot. The breeze was cool, but not freezing. I wish more shoots could be like that.

I doubt I made it into the movie. Us extras were mostly just little blurs of movement on the sidewalks. When I rent the DVD, I’ll have to freeze-frame it to maybe see myself. There’s a pretty good chance of seeing my car, though. The camera was right next to it in one of the shots, so maybe they were using the row of cars parked there. That’d be good enough for me.

More on The Swordswoman and its book report

I like to think, somewhere underneath it all, there’s a little bit of The Swordswoman in Otherness: Rift. Granted, I like to add in more characters and have many points of view and I tend to stay in this world, but add lots of magic and mysterious phenomena, but underneath it all, it was that book that got me fascinated by fantasy and parallel worlds and thinking outside of the reality of this world. The usual sword and sorcery, dragon books were too far from where I wanted to be.

As an added bonus, when I found the Swordswoman book report, I also found the very first book I’d ever written. It was for school, bound in a cardboard and shelf paper cover (probably an arts and crafts component in combination with the creative writing one), and I got a resounding A on it, but what’s more fascinating is that tucked away with it was a complete character and world outline…and a sequel I’d written just for the fun of it.

Seeing those extra pages reminded me of a time when I first started thinking that maybe someday I’d like be a writer. It also reminded me that since that first book, I really did keep writing for pleasure one way or another. Sometimes fiction, sometimes more like memoir in my journals, but never letting longer than a month pass between entries or stories…even to this day.

If I can muster some nerve, I’ll post that first book here… I’d even illustrated it! It’s called The Fighting Four, it’s sequel, The Engaging Eight. (Yes, even back then, I was good at bad alliteration [see Orgasm Fairy by Ashleigh Raine. I wrote all of the bad erotic poetry in the opening scene…one of my many hidden, brilliant, useless talents.])

According to the title page of The Fighting Four, it was written in 1986. I was in 6th grade. About 12 years old.

That was the same year I wrote The Three Witches From The Planet Zebtron. I am still trying to find Zebtron again, but in the mean time, I’m enjoying the other treasures I’ve unearthed while in my quest for my first story… See, even back then I was mixing genres. No romance yet, though. But I hadn’t really discovered boys yet, either. That’d come a few years later.

…And include my best friend Jennifer, a troll, a flying sword, a now cult classic movie, a whole lot of imagination, determination and a bunch of miscellaneous scribblings that to this day I continue to find folded amid other unimportant schoolwork. Yeah, The Swordswoman happened for me in 1986, followed by The Fighting Four and various little stories until the genesis of Talisman Bay with Jennifer in 1989.

From then on, everything was somehow connected either to Talisman Bay or used elements of it. Read Otherness: Rift. and then Lover’s Talisman (being re-released from Samhain Publishing in January, 2008) and tell me about the similarities…

Boomtown Tale update!

After hunting frame after frame through Boomtown, I collected three where I’m clearly visible. There may have been a few others, but I blinked and missed them…

About a month ago, I went on a rampage, searching through all of my DVDs to find the ones I’d worked on, but had yet to hunt for screen captures. I pulled out Lords of Dogtown, Smokin’ Aces, 13 Going on 30 and Serenity (for goodness sake!), and put them in a pile next to the collection so that all I had to do was pop them in my computer, go to the scene(s) I was in and snap some captures.

Of course, that pile is still collecting dust.

However, also around this time, I updated my Netflix cue with all the shows I was on but didn’t have captures for. Let me just say that it’s a damn good thing I can’t get another DVD until I send back the ones I have! That is how I was forced (yeah, my arm was twisted, it was so horrible to have to find some time to watch some entertainment rather than building in Second Life or answering email or writing another scene…just horrible) to gather up these captures.

So horrible, I’ll likely blow the dust off that stack of DVDs real soon so I can post some new screen captures (of course, only if there’s a frame or two of me that isn’t on the cutting room floor).

More Cancan Leeloo!

I found some more pics of me and the rest of us Cancan girls from the Lux After Dark halftime show of the 2006 WorldCon Costume Masquerade.

The following pics were on a website with Danny Low‘s photography of all the costumes. Thanks a million, Danny!!!!

This was definitely an experience I will never, ever forget. First, just being in the room with so much talent. I learned a lot about sewing and costuming throughout the whole adventure.

Gotta have a shot of the girls with the legs, of course. We’re wearing cancan dresses for goodness sake! It’s virtually impossible to resist holding them up.

This was the final tableau of our big dance number recreated backstage for the photographers. You can’t really see, but yeah, I stretched out so much that I could sit with my chin on my hands, elbows on the floor between my outstretched legs. This took months. Granted, I was pretty heavily into yoga by this time, so it was an extension of something I was already working toward. However, yoga is not done in a corset, but Cancan dancing is and it was a whole new ballgame to get that flexible despite my innards being compressed.

Once again, yes, I know I look nothing like Mila Jovovich and this pic is proof! But I did have a wonderful time and I did keep my costume. Leeloo will be returning someday. I don’t know if she’ll be doing another Cancan, but she’ll definitely cruise through a few conventions over the years. So much time and effort went into that costume, I’d hate to let it languish in my closet.

Revisiting my childhood…well, pre-young adulthood

Revisiting my childhood…well, young adulthood

My dad had been collecting and reading science fiction books since he was a kid. He still blasts through them at an alarming rate. He never wanted to write them, though, just read and read and read and read.

Sometime around fifth or sixth grade, I asked my dad what to read. I’d been introduced to Madeline L’Engle, Anne McCaffrey and of course J.R.R. Tolkein by this point in school, but I didn’t know of any others I might like.

Dad’s book collection was monstrous although most were stored in boxes rather than on shelves. We’d had a basement in our old house, but after moving, my dad had to give up the bookshelves in favor of boxes in the garage because very few houses in California have basements. At least not where we’d moved.

Anyhow, “I want to read something science fiction, Dad.” I interrupted him from one of his Ace Doubles. “What should I read?”

“Well, there’s a lot of books out there. What do you really want to read?”

“I dunno. That’s why I’m asking you.” I figured if I had the same taste in books as my dad, I’d probably never have to buy a book ever because I’d just work my way through his library. (Yes, I have always been cheap, but I like to think of it more as ‘making the best of what’s around’.)

“Hmmm… Well…” He thought on it for awhile. And then awhile longer. “Let me see what I’ve got that you might like.”

It took him a while of hunting, but he produced The Swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. “I think you might like this. You seem to be more into fantasy and I just don’t have a whole lot of that, but this one, I think you’d like.”

“Thanks Dad!” I took the beat-up paperback (I don’t think Dad ever bought brand new books, in fact, I think he still gets all of his books at thrift stores and flea markets!) and shut myself up in my room.

I read The Swordswoman in about a week.

And then was assigned a book report for school, so I read it again.

After that, the book was stored with my growing collection in my closet for a few years before being swallowed up and overtaken with romance novels a few years later when I discovered Jude Devereaux and the used book store that had moved in about six blocks from home. I don’t know what eventually happened to that copy of The Swordswoman, but I do recall the cover falling off and the book breaking in two halves at the spine. It’d been thrashed when I got it and continued to decay as I grew up.

I’ve looked to replace my copy a few times since then because I remember that book being, like, the best book I’d ever read, but I couldn’t remember who’d written it.

Until last week. While sifting through boxes of some old stuff of mine (hunting for an old story I’d written), I found that book report! And jumped with glee because now, the next time I was in a bookstore, I could look for it.

Well, that time came while I happened to be at Powell’s Book City in Portland, OR. I was in town (dragged by Jason) for a few days and was staying a couple blocks away. Even though I wasn’t going to the convention with him, he figured he’d offer to bring me along so that I could get some writing done.

I did.

And I got to start reading The Swordswoman by Jessica Amanda Salmonson and it is every bit as good as I remember. Complete with a little romance in it, too. And the copy I found at Powell’s is in way better shape than the one I’d read years ago.

Yay!

Blue Root, technology and change

There’s a peculiar thing about writing a near future novel… If you’re not careful, technology might change before the book gets published.

I wrote Blue Root in early 2004. At the time, I didn’t know about Teledildonics yet. The ultimate in sex toy geekery. In fact, Jason found it somehow and sent me a link. I was beside myself just to see that I wasn’t the only one thinking about remote controlled sex toys. Just the other day, I found slashdong.org and was awe-inspired. I mean, I could totally write a sequel to Blue Root now. So many great new ideas!

Also, back in 2004, I didn’t know what a blog was. I barely knew what a forum was. Yeah, so I was a little behind the times, but still, I wrote variations of them into Blue Root. Well, that’s not entirely true…I had to go back and put in correct terminology for the nebulous ideas I’d sorta written about. Still, it was another thing that I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one thinking about and could see how it was supposed to be done. I know, I know, sometimes it really looks like I’m living in a box. Well, I’m a writer…I live in my own little world(s).

I wrote Blue Root for fun. It was kind of a joke that I took pretty far and had a whole lot of fun with to the point where my friends were amazed and astounded at times that an idea that seemed so small could be so big.

As the last few years have gone by, I’ve watched as Second Life got bigger. At the time I wrote Blue Root, I didn’t know about Second Life or any other virtual world for that matter. If I had…well, I really could’ve had a field day! Much of the book would’ve still been the same…but different. There would’ve been more possibilities to play with and that would’ve been awesome. In fact, it was through Second Life that slashdong.org found me. There’s even programming now for toys hooked up through SL. How freakin’ amazingly cool is that?!?!?!

I dunno. I just find myself blogging right now, thinking about all the cool shit that’s happening that I never could’ve imagined. I suppose this is why Jason likes science fiction so much. Me, I just happened to like the idea of an upgradeable, programmable sex toy that could almost take over the world. That idea is what I explored and found it funny at the same time. Blue Root is the product of that fascination…and a whole lot more than I bargained for!

Booth 59 on Publisher Island

In Second Life, I go by the name Twyla Briggs. I’m still learning the ropes, but I just set up a booth on Publisher Island. #59 to be exact. It’s in view of Book Island, too. I put a phantom castle on the front. You can’t miss it.

Beyond the castle is Tayna’s Chronicle Room from Otherness: Rift. How nifty is it that anyone can write a book and then create its world in Second Life? And, like, walk around in that world? Good golly, the possibilities are endless and I look forward to doing Ashleigh Raine books there, too.

I had tons of fun scouring SL for props and scanning various things in my Real Life repertoire (aka stashes of precious junk) for correct textures. The castle image on the front of my booth is actually 3 photos from various vacations in England. Yay! For re-purposing vacation pictures!

My favorites from the whole experience were seeing the big ol’ book laying on Tayna’s table, Tayna’s tea cup and Twyla’s crystal ball.

In Otherness: Rift, the book is called the Rede. Right now, in SL, the Rede is just a simple object. I have much planned for it in the future. Much more than what’s in the novel I wrote…because, well, I can play with it more in Second Life!

While Tayna’s tea cup isn’t exactly like any of the ones she drinks out of in Otherness: Rift, it’s close. Plus, it was the first thing that was given to me (thank you, Weasel Gough), so to modify it was also kind of special. It started as a very simple, white cup of black tea. I transformed it into a celtic-patterned cup of green tea. Feel free to stop by my booth and copy one for yourself. I left the drinking script in it, so your avatar can enjoy!

And finally, Twyla’s crystal ball. Well, that’s a sort of funny thing. I’d gotten a box of miscellaneous lights that included some particle balls. None of them were quite right for my idea of the ball Tayna was using to scry in Otherness: Rift, so I opened up the script to see if I could figure out how to modify it. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I kept changing numbers until I got the right colors, the right movement and the right speed. My husband was so shocked, he helped me build a base for it from scratch. What a fantastic learning experience.

I look forward to many more builds and such in Second Life. Say hi if you see Twyla Briggs!!!!

Virtually Living

I enjoy exploring Second Life as Twyla Briggs, but for some reason I hadn’t considered having a presence there until recently. Sure, I always figured I’d collaborate with some of my friends (they’ve already got a lot going on), but I hadn’t dreamed of doing something on my own…y’know, like figuring out how to build stuff.

Well, the time has come. I have booth #59 on Publisher Island and I gotta do something really cool with it. I mean, like, really, really cool. ‘Cause with the quality of what my friends do and have done, I gotta present something at least respectable. I’m married to Fallon Winnfield, for goodness sake. Visit Manoa. You’ll see why I’m feelin’ pressure!

And I don’t want his help, either. Advice, yes, but I wanna learn this myself. My goal is to have him come to me asking how to do stuff, not always the other way around. I want my friends to be surprised that I did so well first time out.

When physical light is introduced in Second Life, well, I’ll be even more motivated than I am now. Once upon a time, I was a theatrical lighting designer. I still read books on the history of stage lighting just for the fun of it even though I haven’t done a real stage show in several years. I miss lighting. A lot. So, to have the opportunity to do it in Second Life without renting fixtures, dimmers, miles of cable, a light board and then having to load, hang and focus it all myself using a ladder that’s probably too wobbly and short…well, you get the picture.

Right now, SL lighting isn’t physical. There are no shadows unless you manufacture them yourself. I’m too lazy. I wanna point a light at something and have the shadows happen naturally like they’re supposed to. To me, that’s one of the things that makes light so beautiful: the give and take between what is seen in the light and what is unseen in the shadows.

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