Alright so Saturday I was due in Bumfuck, Loudon County again, which is like an hour from my house at 7am. This was hell day. The high temperature was probably 40 with the low at like 12, or at least that's what it felt like because we were outside filming ALL DAY. Which means 17 hours. Not that I'm complaining :)

Most of the day we were at a barn in Waterford, I think. At this point the lack of sleep was getting to me, and I lost track of space, time and logic. Unfortunately the ability to feel my nose, feet and hands was also lost.

So we filmed the scenes that were necessary which included the main character (Thomas Hobbes), a peasant girl, and some wacko random dude sitting around a fire watching a cock fight. Hells yeah, a cock fight. This is where things start to get assbackwards. For the sake of legality, the rest of this entry is 'alleged'.

So of course the 'responsible' people in charge of getting the roosters waited to the last minute to get them. He had to drive all the way to Winchester to get them. They arrive hours later with one rooster and one half chicken/half turkey. Oh yeah, I said HALF ROOSTER/HALF TURKEY. Now you are probably thinking, 'that is impossible Beth, God wouldn't allow such a thing'. Well he did, I saw it with my own frozen, delirious eyes. Apparently the 'bird farm' the DP got the cocks from was insane. It was some random dude with all kinds of birds, he even said there were emus there, AND teratacyles. Apparently Satan runs that farm. He paid $2 for each rooster-turkey/rooster. My question was immediately, 'what does a rooster/turkey taste like? Not that I was going to eat it, but seriously, it's a good question.

While I was contemplating this mystery, I was told that since the 'peasant girl' actress had to bolt, I was to take her place.

"WHAT??" Oh yeah, this Chickie Leg was to act among her fellow fowls. So not only was I the Script Supervisor, the Second AC, but now I was 'peasant girl'. And keeping in mind that this was a 'period piece' I had to adorn myself with the corset, dress, and obligatory gay hat. Needless to say I was a little cold.

So there I am holding my notebook, my slate and wearing an embarrassed smirk, I was ready to make my film debut. But since, I was just standing in for the real peasant girl, I had to try and hide my face as much as possible. So I had to keep my head away from the camera, my hat down, but yet still act believeable that I was watching a cockfight. Which of course had to be faked.

So they managed to get the birds out of the cage, tie a tiny rope to their leg, and put them in front of us 'actors'. (and I use the term loosely, and not just referring to myself either). But of course, these birds were not angry. They had no reason to fight. They just wanted to hang out, or more likely to run away. So they decided they had to try and get them scared to make them fight (allegedly). So take after take we were told to yell at the birds, to clap our hands, etc. Then one of the crew would blow air on them from the canned air. (used to blow off dust on the lens). But that still didn't work.

So then they decided that they needed to pull on the ropes to make them fly up and out and (hopefully) make them look like they were fighting. And now, I'm not a member of PETA, but I felt bad about this. (allegedly)

So eventually the director felt it was good enough. The birds never even looked like they were fighting, and frankly I was sick of 'acting'. Although, I have to say, this experience did give me new respect for actors. Boy did I suck!

So once that scene was done I was trying to see how the birds were doing. I saw a few spots of red on the snow. (the area was covered in snow). I was like 'dude they are bleeding!!'. I was a little mad, but there was nothing I could do. It didn't look like they were hurt that badly, but they were definitely scared shitless. Then I was like, "what the hell are you guys gonna do with these things now?" It was then decided that we were suddenly hungry, and hell, we had a fire! Just kidding, seriously another crewmemeber has a cage in his backyard with other animals, so he just took them home as pets. (allegedly)

So that scene was done, and eventually we were done with that location.

That night we moved on to the "Haunted Mansion" about 30 minutes away.

Now this place was phat as hell. It was like 40+ acres of land with a barn, ponds, huge ass house, a mini house, yet another barn, and like other stuff. Plus like since this place was in the middle of nowhere, you could see 1,000 times more stars than you can from my house. That was totally worth it to me.

Then it was revealed to me that the house was haunted. It was built in 1810, and has been on the market for like 10 years now. There was electricity, but no running water. Which really sucked because you have 20 crew/actors and no where to pee! Plus the bathroom doors didn't even close, so even if I did want to pee, I was too scared to do it where: 1) people could hear me and 2) ghosts could very easily kill me being that I was so vulnerable. But I made do, I mean, I made pee....

Anyway, so again we were outside most of the night. Which sucked. A lot. It was butt ass cold!! It came to the point around 10pm that the only thing visible was my eyes. Thank God I remembered to bring my scarf. Plus we were filming a carriage scene, so there was a truck pulling this handmade carriage on an icy road. I was helping them set up the cameras and lights when I slipped on the ice and rammed my leg into the metal between the truck and carriage. Which produced this:

So that hurt like hell. But at this point, it looks worse than it feels. Every now and then I would go inside to try and get warm, even though I was scared of the ghosts. One crew member said that he went upstairs (by himself) and looked in a mirror and saw someone behind him. He turned around and there was no one there. At first I was like, 'yeah right'. And he was like, 'no seriously, I'm not going back up there.' Dude!

The thing is, I love ghosts stuff, but only when I'm with someone else. I couldn't go up there by myself, but I went up there with my boss and we looked around the completely empty house and we saw that one bedroom had flies ALL OVER the window sill. Hello! Can you say Amityville? No? Well yeah, it is hard to say. (and spell)

So that night we 'wrapped' (another movie lingo for you to add to your vocab list) around 11pm. Long day to say the least. Being that day was Valentine's day was kinda lame but when I came home I had flowers! My good friend Josh gave me a dozen white roses, which are BEAUTIFUL! And Mike gave me half a dozen red roses and daisies. I love daisies, those are my favorite flower. They just make me smile. So that was so sweet of them. Mike even gave Cameron a red rose, which was really sweet.

I guess this entry only described one day, so I think I will have tomorrow's entry be about the last day.