My Three Favorite Characters – Part 2

Previously, I posted about Captain Malcolm Reynolds. Now, I’d like to stick with the captain theme and write about Captain Jack Harkness from Torchwood.

Once again, yeah, I think John Barrowman is hot, but this time, that characteristic is really important to the character of Captain Jack. They guy is a charmer. His sexuality is very important and not just tossed in for flavor. Every time he sees someone new, he sizes him or her up and since we don’t know if Jack really is human, we don’t know what he’s looking for when he sizes someone up sexually.

Captain Jack is dickheaded at times, yes, just like Mal, but once again warranted. He leads a secret group of alien hunters. He’s got to be a tough guy and all that. Many of his qualities are similar to Malcolm Reynolds, but Jack is slippery in a different sort of way…which adds a different kind of mystery to him.

Malcolm is purely human and when he dodges a personal question, it seems that he’s just not willing to talk about it. Jack, however, there’s a sort of feeling beyond his unwillingness to talk about it. Like, if he were to talk about it, he’s afraid you wouldn’t believe him or worse you’d make his life hell one way or another for having told you.

Plus, he’s somehow immortal and even he doesn’t know how or why. That in itself is intriguing. He doesn’t need to sleep. He, of course, dodges the question of loneliness. The way he’s written leaves the viewer wanting more, more, more. I feel like I only kind of know him. He hasn’t really done anything out of character for me because he’s written to stretch that boundary, to only give you a taste, enough to think you know who he is, but then when it comes down to it, you don’t really know who he is or why he’s there. But you do know that there is definitely a reason. You can only hope you find it out some time.

Even he doesn’t know all the reasons and that’s another reason I love Captain Jack. For all his strength, he’s also vulnerable and afraid of the unknown—not the alien unknown, the where’s, why’s, etc. of himself. He knows an awful lot about aliens! Duh. He seems a little afraid to learn all the reasons he’s immortal and has been sent through time, all that unknown stuff.

Add his being ‘full of life’ and what an intriguing character to me.

Pushing into bisexuality also brings further intrigue and desire to understand him, to know him more thoroughly. He’s got so many facets and either he doesn’t know them himself or he’s unwilling to share them outright, it all makes me want more of him and I enjoy that. It doesn’t make me project traits onto him, it makes me wait in hopes of him showing those traits.

But while he’s immortal, he’s still comparatively young to the last of my favorite characters. In fact, if I had to chose my favorite character of all time, I’d chose the final one. Who is he? Allow me to be like Captain Jack and keep you waiting…

Update for Everybody Hates Chris

I can’t believe it, but I did actually make it onscreen in Everybody Hates Chris. I recall sitting on that bus and thinking my shoulder might make it in frame.

It did…And the back of my head.

Boy was I surprised!

Superhero

This was the second time I was called to Universal Studios for a car call. I’ve driven on the lot before (Desperate Housewives, Serenity), but when I’m booked with a car, for some reason strange things happen. For instance, on Where The Truth Lies, I almost drove through the stretch of road where the Red Sea parts!

On this movie, I was booked with my ’06 Mustang just like on G-Force. Yeah, lots of car calls lately. I dunno why, either. It seems to go in waves.

I ended up following a production truck onto the lot, so I didn’t accidentally drive to the Red Sea again. And to be honest, after parking on New York Street, checking in, going through wardrobe, I was still bummed that I missed the Red Sea! ‘Cause this time, if I’d’ve accidentally landed at that path again, I’d’ve totally driven through. That’s one of the things I wished I’d done. Oh well. Better luck next time. This was only a 1-day call.

I’m honestly not sure how it happened, but I didn’t work the whole day. I missed the first setup because I was in my car. I tried to be in the next one, but the camera guys said not to bother with the foreground crosses because the camera couldn’t see them. After that, I stayed near the AD, but somehow never got used. Yeah, I was sitting in doorways, up steps, but not because I was hiding. I was just trying to stay out of the sun. If I’d’ve been asked to jump in the scene, I’d’ve so totally done it.

Anyway, I ended up finishing Terry Jones’ Medieval Lives and starting another called Medieval Times. Sensing a theme perhaps? Terry Jones is an amazing writer. I love his stuff. It’s the best non-fiction to have on set because I don’t think he could write dryly even if he tried!

The other book is also well done. I got almost half way through! Off the top of my head, though, I can’t remember the author. The book was first printed in 1968 and surprisingly isn’t dry. There’s not much worse than trying to read dry non-fiction while on set. It makes staring off into boredom space preferable to reading the words.

My car might’ve actually made it in frame. At the top of the day, they had me pull it out because that was where they wanted the camera. It wasn’t until after lunch that they wanted my car back on the street.

Speaking of lunch… I dunno why, but it was really, really good! Herbed potatoes, breadsticks with baked-on cheese and my favorite rare steak with chimichuri. I think mostly, it was just that everything was cooked how I like it, using ingredients I like over most others, etc. that kind of thing. Everything was food I’d already had, just not on set. I didn’t even touch the salad bar or the dessert bar because I was enjoying the steak and potatoes so much. There was also fish and chicken available, but I wanted steak. The chimichuri was so good I looked up a recipe on my iPhone so I can make some at home.

Strange little day I had… From the not hardly working, to so much reading, to the awesome lunch…

What? You say I mentioned having an odd driving experience at the beginning of this and then never got back to it?

Well… The whole day, I was bummed that I’d missed the Red Sea, but it wasn’t like I was going to go try and drive through it at the end of the day. The trams were running and plus, there was still a lot of light and I didn’t want to get in trouble.

In fact, I was parked on a small block that the trams passed right by as they went in and out of the King Kong stage. After studying the map, I planned out the best way to get off the lot.

And at the first intersection screwed up which right turn I was supposed to take.

I drove past more stages…offices…shops…through the golf cart depot tunnel thingie…and eventually, the asphalt became reddish cement. And there was a trashcan–the kind you push the swinging door open and then put your tray on top of. And there was a maze of metal pipes.

Like the kind for standing in line for a ride!

OH SHIT! I was about to drive into the theme park itself! Gah!

I threw the car into reverse and backed outta there so fast! I didn’t get in trouble because only one preoccupied guy in a golf cart saw me, but I was terrified.

I did, finally, find the road I was supposed to’ve taken and then got myself off the lot. Whew!

There’s just something about the Universal Lot and me having car calls on it. I can’t even begin to imagine what’s gonnna happen next time…

My Three Favorite Characters – Part 1

I’m not sure why, but my three most favorite characters of all time come from visual experiences rather than text. It might be because there’s the written component plus the actor plus the director all the way out through the costumers, lighting people and even props and set who flesh out the characters beyond what my imagination conjures while reading, but I doubt I’ll ever know for sure.

I’ll start with Captain Malcolm Reynolds from Firefly (TV) and Serenity (movie).

Yeah, it helps that I find Nathan Fillion incredibly hot, but there really is a lot to the character of Mal. I did not see Firefly on television. I saw it on DVD and therefore had the luxury of seeing the episodes in order.

And I hated the Captain! To me, in that first episode, the pilot, he was too much of a dickhead and I was kind of disappointed. I wanted to like him. I really, really did. He’s the captain for goodness sake, he needs to be likable to me in one way or another. However, I just wasn’t feelin’ him. I wasn’t understanding him enough to know why he was the way he was and why he said or did the things he did.

Thankfully, that first episode did not keep me from watching the rest of them. I was willing to give Mal and his gang more chances and I ended up absolutely loving his character beyond so many other characters I’ve witnessed.

Yeah, he’s a dick at times, but that comes with the territory of being the commander of a ship—especially one that dallies in illegal activities. He’s got to be shrewd, smart and strong.

But he’s also got a softer side. It’s sometimes hidden, sometimes heroically worn on his sleeve, but always enough to make him human, not some kind of superhero. Often, captains, leaders, and the like are written as human superheroes able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, able to dodge every bullet shot (except of course at the big climactic moment when the script, not his character, dictates it.)

But not Mal. He gets his ass kicked sometimes, ends up humiliated at others, even fails a time or two. And he handles them all true to his roughness around the edges, with either grace or further mishap…sometimes both.

Those are all qualities I absolutely love in a character. Sometimes it’s all in the writing, sometimes in the acting and directing and sometimes it’s in the choice of the less-sung production heroes. In any or all of those cases, it’s what makes the character who he is and how he appears to me on the screen.

For me, though, there’s one thing missing: He’s not immortal, magically inclined or capable of any other paranormal oddity. In fact, it’s amazing he’s even on my list of favorite characters because he’s a pure, un-enhanced human.

The other two fellows…well…I guess you’ll just have to wait to read who they are and why they’re so awesome for me.

Oh! And… More Leeloo

I’ve noticed that there are many people coming here to see my Leeloo costume. Perhaps its creation as well as me wearing it and dancing the Cancan in it, I dunno.

Well, I’ve decided to make a series of posts about it. I didn’t take pictures when I built it. In retrospect, I should’ve. I had no idea it’d be such an ambitious undertaking. One I’d do again, but not so enthusiastically because that dress practically owned me for a month and a half. It was totally worth it, but it was also a lot of work.

From design to finished product, it wasn’t a picnic. First came the screen shots to see what Leeloo was actually wearing and what her hair looked like with those long, weird, gummed-up, not-traffic-cone-orange, just-bright-orange twists. The hardest part was seeing what her shoes looked like. The only times her shoes were onscreen where when she was kicking ass and most of the freeze frames were too blurry to make out the detail on her shoes. Granted, I was doing a different rendition of her costume, so I could vary a little, but I wanted a good base to start with.

It was a combined effort between me and Shawn Crosby. He did a wonderful drawing of the design. I have it somewhere. I’ll post it if I can find it.

In the end, the costume cost me hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours. I really stepped up to the plate on this one and I’m amazed that it turned out like it did. I’d never worked with vinyl or stretch netting or even some simpler things like snaps and interfacing and decorative elastic and iron-on bonding. Okay, so some of those things aren’t as common, but you get the picture. This wasn’t an easy job, but I did learn a lot. Not only did I learn how to physically do stuff, I learned something more important: That I could do just about anything I set my mind to…yes, just about anything.

Off The Cuff Today…’Cause it’s Friday!

My parents were down this week. We went to some fun places, did some fun things that I wouldn’t’ve done had they not visited. That’s always nice.

But I think the best part was up in my home theater, on a 127″ screen, I logged in to Second Life to show my parents what the hell I was talking about. My hubby and I had tried to describe it to them, even showed them last Christmas on a laptop, but they still didn’t understand its usefulness, it’s mystique, none of that.

Then, larger than life, I showed my dad the Sistine Chapel on the Vassar sim. The first thing he said was, “Wow! The floor! I don’t think I’ve ever seen the floor! I’ve seen hundreds, even thousands of pictures of the Sistine Chapel, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen the floor! Wow!”

To which I replied, “Watch this!” and flew my camera up to the ceiling and along the walls.

Needless to say, he was hooked and is likely ordering either a new computer or necessary upgrades for the machine he has now as I write this…

We also walked around the Dresden for a little bit. That was cool, too.

He says Second Life is like an internet that you can walk around in and experience rather than just look at or read. I like to think he’s absolutely right.

That’s why if you go to Book Island and Publisher Island, you’ll see a lot of booths set up, but only one is more like an experience. It’s got a big castle on the front and hides a room from Otherness: Rift. Seeing it in Second Life made it real for me…a real experience rather than a written one. But, it’s also meaningless unless you’ve read the book. It’s neat and all to look at, but it doesn’t resonate unless you know that this room had been sealed up, untouched, for over a century and once reopened, had so much more to discover.

But I’m just getting started in Second Life. One of these days, I’ll get advanced enough that I put Talisman Bay (still nothing I can link to on the Ashleigh Raine site, but there will be very, very soon!)  in world. Now that would truly kick ass!!!! (I’ll have to figure out how to get all of the Shadow Walkers on patrol every day. But good golly, that’d be soooooooo worth the effort!!!!!)

Yes, I really did dance the Cancan on a stage while dressed as Leeloo!

Okay, so you saw my previous posts about my adventures as Cancan Leeloo for the Lux After Dark halftime show of the 2006 WorldCon Costume Masquerade. (dress rehearsal, before the show, in the audience, backstage) But did you notice that one kind of picture is absent from the line-up? The kind of picture that proves I did what I said I did:

I danced the Cancan on a stage in front of people. I believe thousands were in the audience.

Well, thanks to Essentialsaltes posting these pics on Flickr, I have visual proof of my escapade.

Notice how I’m leaning over further than the rest of the girls? My wig was falling off and I was frantically trying to get the bobby pins back in order to keep the darn thing on! It already cut off my peripheral vision, so I never knew whether I was on step with the rest of the girls. The last thing I needed was for the darn thing to launch off my head. It didn’t, thank goodness!

There you have it. My complete Cancan adventure complete with photographic proof…
Even a year later, I still look back fondly at this experience. It was definitely one of my more odd ones, but what’s life for if not to live it and love it?

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.

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