My First Real Movie part 3

I’m in a movie. How many people will see it? I don’t know. Probably not many outside of Hong Kong. Am I the star? Not at all. I was on set for four hours, and that’s it. I’m done. I don’t know how much screen time I’ll have. It could be a minute. I’m only in one scene and I’m not even in most of it. It’s mostly a big fight scene that they’re going to shoot later. My part was before the fight.

I got to the set at 6am. The set was a real restaurant that was closed. I thought I was going to have a hard time convincing security that I was supposed to be there, but they knew who I was right away. Not because I’m a big star, but because I’m the only foreigner in the scene. I played the hostess of the restaurant. I don’t know why they wanted a foreigner. And realistically, anyone could have gotten through that security if they wanted to.

Someone took me to makeup, which was a small room in the back of the restaurant. There were no dressing rooms, since we were on location, and I never saw any trailers for the stars. I don’t know where you would park a trailer on a Hong Kong street. There were a few women doing hair and makeup for several actors in the room. Everyone was speaking Chinese and it all seemed pretty hectic. There was a lot of pointing and gesturing me where to go.

One of the makeup women pointed me to another small room and the wardrobe woman gave me my costume. There was a big room divider in the middle of what was more or less a dressing room. The men were on one side and the women on the other. It was kind of funny that everyone was getting into costume when most of them were just wearing regular street clothes. Even I could have worn my own clothes if they’d told me to wear a business outfit.

They put everyone into position and I met the director. He seemed pretty busy. There wasn’t a lot of chit chat. He told me where to go and when to say my lines. That’s called blocking in English. I have no idea what they call it in Chinese. I met the star of the movie, who was greeted enthusiastically by pretty much everyone on set. I still don’t know who he is. He’s the only other actor I worked with directly, aside from walking around extras.

We did a slow rehearsal for the crew, so all the camera, lighting and sound guys could get everything in all the right positions. Then we did a quick rehearsal for the director. He seemed satisfied, but there was some kind of problem with the camera. While we waited around for them to fix it, everyone was talking to each other in Chinese and I was floating around in a daze. I did some student films in Minnesota. They were nothing like this.

On a completely unrelated note, today is 12/12/12. I do it the American way – 12/12/12, but here in Hong Kong they do 12/12/12. Computer people probably prefer 12/12/12.