a week on set: miss mia meows

❉ oh how much fun it is to make films! i had the most amazing week! (although i worked so much i had no time for a life outside of)... since we were working underground from 8am to 8pm each day, i didnt see daylight all week and began feeling like such a vampire!...
we had our own little world down there in 'ginglik', a grungy basement bar that apparently used to be a public toilet back in the day... i'm sure those walls have seen some bizarre things over the years.. maybe nearly as bizarre as the miss mia meows film set!

tuesday: miss mia, after killing a man, flees to madame big mo's to plead for help from her transvestite friend poison, who's the in-house singer. the bar is full with the usual crowd.
we set up the bar (which looked very ratty to begin with) and transformed it into a colourful wonderland, with velvet and satin drapery, fairy lights, posters, golden frames, mismatched antique chairs and tables covered in silks and sarongs, fringed lamps and candelabras... it really did look amazing!
then we set up the rest of the dressing room, which was decorated like a retro boudoir. i got the job of creating the wall collage, which was to be an explosion of vogue fashion magazine pictures and gay porn... 

then the extras arrived! i was placed in the boudoir to take care of their costumes and there were some spectacular ensembles! margherita (the production designer) had her own fabulous collection (including her mum's handmade hat collection from the 1960's) and then they'd borrowed and hired a whole load of stuff as well. the extras were already a quirky bunch of people but we transformed them into transvestites, dominatrices, gypsies, goths, belly dancers, burlesque beauties, fortune tellers, pretty spanish gay boys, toy boys, fag hags..... every weird and wonderful creature you can imagine! one of the extras didn't show up so the director asked me if i'd fill the role....
'...of course i'd love to!! '

wednesday: i was dressed in a royal blue velvet dress with a real blue fox hanging over one shoulder, draped in pearls and passed on to the hair and makeup ladies who did an audrey hepburn slash amy winehouse beehive hairdo and vintage-glam makeup. my first scene was to waltz dramatically into the bar, stop with hand on hip, scan the room until i glimpse my two young toy boys, walk over to them and drape myself between them on the sofa, after which they'd feed me grapes and kiss my velvet arms.... i stood behind scenes, waiting for my queue to walk in. maurizio, the director winked at me 'shake that arse like you're brazilian, girl!'...

thursday: a russian fortune teller sits in one corner of the bar and miss mia goes to her for a tarot reading.

i asked them if they wanted me to arrange the cards so they actually meant what the fortune teller was saying in the script, just for credibility. all of a sudden, 20 people were asking me to read their cards. the director dragged me backstage... 'please can you read mine?!' 'ok, you and no-one else, so keep it a secret'. i laid out the cards on an old suitcase in the dark and whispered his fortune to him.

next was the party scene, set later on in the night when everyone was wasted. i had slept with the beehive in so as not to have to redo it the next day. all the extra's, including me, were taken into hair and makeup and roughed up, their lipstick smeared, their eyes made panda, my stay up stockings were loose and dangling, my dress hanging off one shoulder and the pearls a tangled mess... probably close to how i look in real life when i'm out partying :o)
we were dancing most of the scene, with fake cocktails in our hands, looking as drunk and disorderly as possible. i've probably had too much practise at that and found it very easy.

friday: so that the actress playing miss mia could go home and get some sleep (it seems everyone was running on a couple of hours per night), i was asked to be her hand double for the final scene. though i told then i had man-hands, she assured me hers were even worse since she was a seamstress. my nails were painted vixen, and thrown into the camera.

the rest of the day was spent packing up the whole set. all those hours of decorating were torn down within seconds. my masterpiece glam-porn collage was eradicated, and everything was loaded upstairs into a van. as we climbed those stairs and saw daylight after a whole week without, it felt like a true possibility that we could melt or vanish... i was so sad to say goodbye to everyone. after a week working on the project together we'd become so close. we'd all been wrapped up in our own little world together, all sleep deprived and stressed and exhausted, but also happy and inspired and buzzed. there'd been such a nice feeling on set the whole week because of the people. i was so glad i'd stumbled across the job... we exchanged contact details and promised to see each other at the film screening in march...

back to the real world! i finally have some time to spend with jerry, to do some washing, to gather my thoughts and get back on the yellow brick road....

:o)