SHOOTING DAYS (Page2)

...As I say, I was ready and waiting for my call. The shooting was a bit behind schedule, someone talked of a number of extras who hadn’t turned up for the day and this was causing problems. An hour goes by. And a half. I wonder if I will be called before lunch. Clare, my PA appears. ‘They’re ready for you now Jenny’. ‘OK. I’ll be right there’. Amanda, my make-up girl, puts the pointed hat on my head and carefully ties it in underneath my wig - taking great care not to touch the bat’s head on the back of the hat, which makes her feel sick! Suddenly I realise that I haven’t been to the loo since the early morning and it really would be sensible to do that now before going down on set. ‘Clare! I’m just dashing to the loo!’ ‘That’s alright Jenny. I’ll wait outside for you’. I skip quickly into the loo and that’s when my problems begin! I stand there, trying to figure out how to handle all this clothing with these enormous finger nails. The short answer is that it just can’t be done! I panic. Of course, now I urgently want to go to the loo and don’t have any idea how this can be achieved! I rush back to the make-up room, ‘Amanda, help! I’ve got a real problem!’ She understands immediately, ‘Don’t worry Jenny. I do this all the time!’ she says. I would like to know more about this but don’t have time to ask her - ‘Come with me’, says Amanda. We head back to the toilets. ‘Right. You hold these’. She manages to gather all my skirts together and put them into my arms. ‘And I’ll deal with the rest!’ and she yanks down my pants before I have time to object. By this time, we are both giggling so much that Clare, coming to see what the hold up is, is amazed. ‘What’s going on in there?’ she asks. ‘Tell you later!’ I shout back. Amanda has completed her task and we are re-arranging all my clothing. ‘What would I have done without you’, I gasp, as we emerge into the corridor. ‘Oh, don’t you worry’, says Amanda still laughing, ‘It’s all in a day’s work!’. Clare grabs my arm and leads me hurriedly down the stairs.
The stages for filming are naturally very large and all built in different parts of this old aerodrome. At the bottom of the stairs, there is a driver waiting for me in a kind of golf buggy which they use to transport actors to wherever they are needed. Not only does this save time, but it protects the costume and make-up so that very little ‘repair work’ is needed when you reach the set. The driver has a walkie-talkie. I get into the passenger seat and we set off. He speaks into the walkie-talkie. ‘Stand by. Miss Tarren is travelling. I repeat, Miss Tarren is travelling’. It all seems so wierd. I sit there, rather like the pope in his popemobile. An old Hag being chauffeur driven! It only takes us about three minutes. We stop at the back of this huge set which towers some hundred feet high and is accessible by flights of stairs and a number of constructed platforms. The whole thing looks rather like the tenement block setting for ‘West Side Story’. There are a few chairs set out on each platform where camera men and props guys are waiting for instructions. I’m led up to the first platform where I am greeted by myself! Even I have a stand-in who has to be roughly the same height and build and is wearing a very similar costume. In this way, they can set up lights and cameras which will be in the right position for the shot. She smiles and I say hallo as we pass each other. She is no longer needed for this shot. The set is amazingly narrow. I squeeze past cameras and lighting cables which are piled into the back room of Borgin and Burkes and emerge into a dimly lit Knockturn Alley. The actual alley is even smaller than it appears in the film. I judge it to be no more than 3 feet wide. Gaffers and camera men are squashed into doorways, extras dressed as wierd and strange people are pressed against walls. The whole Alley is built on a slope, with several sets of steps linking the pathway. At the lower end, in the distance, is Chris Columbus.’Hi Jenny’ he calls out, ‘How y’a doin?’ ‘I’m fine thanks’, I shout back. I can hardly see him against a barrage of lights which are behind him. ‘Come down and lets look at you’, he calls again. I head down the alley where I am scrutinised by a number of people including Chris. They whisper and talk and Chris nods. ‘Jenny, I don’t think you’re dirty enough! Lets get make-up to add some’. There are always make-up assistants on set waiting to touch up inbetween shots. I head back up the alley and make my way through Borgin and Burkes and back onto the platform. The make-up girl gets out the ‘soot’ and liberally covers my face and hands. Then she adds green and black smudges. Someone with a head-set comes over. ‘Jenny, Chris also thinks your teeth are too good. He wants them stained more’. This causes problems. There is nothing in the make-up girl’s box which will work on false teeth! The head-set man immediately gets through to the make-up department. ‘Send someone down with the stuff now!’ he barks. While we wait I am aware of another small drama going on. The extras who didn’t arrive are still being accounted for. The man in charge of them is going frantic. ‘This is typical!’ I hear him shout. ‘Some of these guys just can’t manage two days work together. What’s his problem now?’ The make-up girl grins at me. ‘He’s had a really bad few days’, she says. ‘The thing is, when you ask for the strangest and wierdest extras you can find for a scene like this, they are mostly strange and wierd people! They live pretty oddly and you just can’t rely on them to turn up and do the job!’ One of them though, did have a real grievance. I discover later, on the set, that he is required to wear an opaque contact lens, to give him the appearance of being blind in one eye. Unfortunately, this lens irritates his eye and sets up an infection which is very painful. He still needs to wear it to complete the shot but understandably says that it’s not worth losing his eyesight for! An urgent call goes out for a shaven headed replacement who’s used to wearing contact lenses! ...
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