Sometimes I still surprise myself

Some days I look at myself and am amazed at the things I'm doing in my life. If you would've told me ten years ago what I would be doing today, I wouldn't have believed you for a second. (It reminds me of a saying I once read, when someone asked God why we can't just know about what's going to happen in our own futures, and the answer was, "If I told you, you wouldn't believe me anyway...." Isn't that the truth?) Anyway, yesterday was definitely one of those days. From 7am until 11pm, I was an actress, filming for a commercial. The last scene was even of me dancing in a night club, and somewhere, somehow, I've built up enough confidence that I was able to do this on camera.

How, you may ask, did this come along? In LV, it's all about who you know, not what you know. So as some of you may remember, last spring, I received a phone call on a Sunday morning from a friend who is a film director, asking if I couldn't come and just play one short scene as a school psychologist in a series of video clips being recorded to show in LV schools. That in and of itself was a big experience for me, as I showed up, got make-uped and then handed a fairly long text (certainly not the "one sentence" I had been promised) and was told that "we're on" in two minutes, memorize it and be ready to go. I survived that experience, and was fairly certain that was the extent of my fifteen minutes of fame in life.

Not so. Mid-week this week, the same friend contacted me, asking if I would be willing to help out with filming for a commercial on Saturday. I said sure, thinking this would be another small, quick favor. The next day, I received another email saying that I had been chosen for the lead female role in this commercial and that I needed to send more photos of myself for the Estonian directors to look over. So I had to pull KB out of bed and we did a quick photo-shoot at home before school that day, because I don't have a model portfolio just ready to go. (Why, why, why they chose me over the other professionals, I still don't understand.....) Finally I found out that we would be filming two different commercials for a European hotel chain to be shown in all the Baltic countries. This required me to be ready to go at 7am on Saturday morning (I had to prepare and bring all my own outfits to change into) and the plan was that we would work until about midnight. Whew.

Luckily, I did not have to prepare speaking roles, as there will be a voice speaking over the scenes in the different languages for each country. The first scene was checking in to the hotel. They only had to stop recording once because of me, when I tripped on a light. Fortunately, that was the extent of my clumsiness for the day. :) The next scene was eating at the hotel restaurant. That was pure and perfect torture. This scene started being filmed at noon, we were all starving already, and we each had a beautifully prepared, aromatic meal in front of us which we were not allowed to touch. They also kept pouring wine into our glasses and taking it away to pour it back into the bottle, which we were not even allowed to sip. We were truly beginning to drool our own make-up off by the end of two hours of this torture.... Finally, when this scene was done, we asked the waiter to heat up the meals, ate them anyway and downed the wine. Then we all went to join the rest of the crew and ate part (or in the case of the men - all) of another lunch. Then we needed some serious coffee to pull ourselves out of the wine/food coma which followed such a good meal.

The next scene was filming a business meeting in the conference room. Then we filmed a scene in one of the hotel rooms, where I had to stand at the window drinking coffee and turn to approve the other guy's choice of shirt and tie. Whew, I had to drink lots of coffee during those shots (with my left hand, nonetheless) and it was so hot because of the lights I thought I was going to pass out. Luckily, I did not.

Then we had some time to get ready before the night club scene. We raided the mini bars in all the dressing rooms and I took care of all the Bacardi. :) I did not even recognize myself by the time my make-up was done for the night club scene (black eyeshadow, anyone?) but it ended up being pretty fun. Thank goodness for those hip hop dance lessons last year, which made me not quite so scared to dance in front of a camera (or maybe it was the Bacardi?). And that was a wrap, for a very very long day. It's funny how tourists at the night club were taking pictures of all the filming and really treating us like we were some kind of big stars....

But my favorite moment of being treated like a big star was actually on Friday after school. On Friday, I had a bit of a warm-up in acting, as my class finally put on the play of "The Lazy Teacher and The Working Kids" for the whole school. They were absolutely superb (or so I hear, as I was acting the role of the lazy teacher and had my eyes closed for most of the production)! I was so, so proud of them! Even the ones who have been shy and nervous to get on stage in the past, really opened up and everyone did such a great job. :) After school when I was leaving, there were only a handful of kids left on the playgound, but a first grader ran up to me with big eyes and says, "I know you!!! You're the lazy teacher from that show!" It was crazy cute and put a big smile on my face at the end of a long and tiring week.

So today, I rest. I'll tell you why filming was so tiring yesterday and why my brain woke up well before my body was able to move this morning. Not because you are doing anything so strenuous, but because your energy is so on and off during the entire day. KB told me when I'm filming, be ready to "hurry up and wait", which was so true. You film one take, then they spend a long time reajusting things before the next take. Then you hear "get ready!" and your body jumps back to life, only to wait another ten minutes as they "quickly" readjust something else. And all day, you are requiring your body to jump to life at a second's notice. At least with teaching, you are "on" all day. Also tiring, but in a very different way.

In conclusion, I enjoyed trying something new again (and surprised myself that I was able to do it), I really enjoyed earning so much money in one day, but I'm glad to return to the classroom on Monday, because most days that's what makes me really happy.