Last chance, this.
Not just because it's the last day of filming, but also because my confidence is severely dented right now. Unless I can actually prove to myself I can still deliver clean takes regardless whatever ridiculous pressure I'm under, I will quite seriously consider whether or not I will keep on trying to be an actor.
Enough eventually gets to be enough, after all. I pull in a bit of decent extra pocket money from my voice work, no reason to stop that. Although F has deep pockets, and it never goes far. But stage and film work? Next to none these days. There are long gaps on my CV. Casting people can't vault long gaps on an acting CV. Purblind morons* that they are, they assume it means you've turned crap.
So last night, despite being in a rather shell-shocked state, my wife helped me run my lines for nearly two hours. She's rather more OCD than I am. She doesn't let approximations slip in. She doesn't take three successive perfect deliveries as a sign that it's good enough. She's a wonderful coach, and I wouldn't have managed to get this done without her. I also slightly want to punch her and then go to sleep. Tough luck, Hogg, you don't always get what you want.
So our first shoot of the day is in a packaging warehouse. True to form, the director has picked a loud environment full of curious employees in which the set is constantly being moved. Although to be fair, this lot express their curiosity with the occasional sideways glance as they robotically load boxes into other boxes, perhaps because their boss is babysitting us.
There are a lot of heavy goods, oil drums, loosely stacked pallets and speeding forklift trucks around. Everybody is required to wear high visibility jackets and protective gear. Not me, I'm not really a person. I'm just a talking puppet with shit hair. After putting the hi-vi waistcoat on, I get told to take it off and carry sandbags, because the production assistant has called in sick.
Forty to fifty takes later, my confidence is entirely restored. Okay, it's taken us forever and a half, but it wasn't my fault this time. Two or three fluffed takes, yes. But by god, I know these lines. I can say them backwards. I just did. Four fluffed takes.
No, I'm not the limiting factor today. And from a couple of quiet remarks made by the lighting chief, even if it was clear to one and all I couldn't cope yesterday, it seems like I might not have been the worst offender after all. A slim hair, I'd say, but apparently the camera equipment is still ahead of me.
Full of mounting triumph, I hit the ground running at the next shoot. We're now in a container facility in a different part of the docks. Towers of multi-coloured giant lego blocks loom in all directions. I am asked to emerge from one, glide confidently across a stretch of open ground and finish with a backdrop of bustling loading cranes at work.
Predictably, the set is full of gigantic lorries. They keep stealing our containers. Ever seen a container-shifting forklift? I hadn't. By god, they're an intimidating sight. The fork is the same width as the average two-lane road. Half the time, it has something the size of a caravan dangling loosely from its jaws. The whole monstrous contraption looks like something Ripley would use to ensure Aliens never had any sequels. I wish she had.
Bored with the comparitive ease of trying to get a clean take in our shifting scenery, the director decides to up the ante. I am now to glide confidently across a stretch of open ground, leap jauntily on to one of these uberforklifts, pat it on the side as one would a docile horse and then disappear heroically into the sunset as it drives off, oblivious to the corrugated container wobbling two storeys above my head or the fact that I'm desperately clinging on to the side of an accelerating tractor.
I mean, okay, they only go about fifteen miles an hour or so at the absolute most, it's hardly Extreme Forklift Surfing. All the same, the tires are taller than my head, which I incidentally note would fit neatly into the gaps between the treads. And this isn't even part of the scheduled scene.
For some reason (insane bravado), I do this entirely unplanned and un-safety-checked stunt anyway. I nail it in four takes flat before it can do the same to me, and I feel like a king amonst men. Damocles, specifically.
It's plain sailing after that. Up and down an office lobby, filled with the ebb and flow of rubbernecking deskjockeys. For three hours, because the cardboard box towers I'm supposed to carry for this composite scene haven't been built yet, so I have to wait about for the crew to rig them together from gaffer tape and optimism. I retain my lines throughout, although my deliveries get tired, bored and irritable before the end.
- You're looking very red and sweaty, can you do something about it? the director asks me.
"The red is sunburn, the sweat is sunblock," I say tartly.
- Well, you looked kind of angry in your last take. Smile more for this one.
So I do. Because I'm imagining a series of tractors driving over his head.
Look, I just want to reiterate to any starry-eyed wannabes out there - this is not an atypical day of filming. This is just how it is. I'm writing about it to let off steam, and that includes a certain amount of bitchy whining, hyperbole and bruised ego. That given, everything here is entirely factual. I got paid for it, that's how I know, otherwise I'd assume I made it up to make people laugh.
At the end of the day, the director is pleased. The memories of my bad lines have phased out in the static joy of a wrap. Okay, I have to point out to him that there are four blocks of voice over text that he's forgotten to record. But that just means he gets to announce that it's a wrap twice. Extra value, right?
I haven't seen F for three days, because I've been leaving before she gets up and getting home after she's asleep. She grins when she sees me, points me out to mummy, then goes back to ripping up her envelope. I get a brief punishment tantrum when I try to pick her up as mummy goes out for a well-deserved drinks night with work colleagues, but my absence is soon forgiven. She runs up and down on the carpet, practising jumping on me with excited screams.
Honour, mental stability and pride in my work are all restored. I will not give up acting, not today. I'm Hogg-headed that way.
*If you're a casting director, I didn't write this. Someone else made me do it. Please give me a job. Even a chance at one. I'll do anything.
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