Two days of voice work on the other side of the country.
It took three months after getting the job to nail down tiny details like when it might happen, how much I might get paid and if travel was included. Fair enough, production schedules can be tricky and budgets aren't always controlled by the people giving you the job. It took them fifteen minutes to send me a Non-Disclosure Agreement after the job offer, mind. Good to know where their priorities lie. 1 = Corporate Liability, 50+ = Pay The Actor Scum.
Making sure all the travel costs were minimal, both for our budgets and theirs after they finally admitted they could pay some expenses, meant travelling at 0400 and sleeping in a hostel. Not done that in a while. I was fairly nervous about it, despite the place having a good reputation online. Lots of things have good reputations online. I probably have a good reputation online. It means nothing.
I was worried I might not be safe sleeping there. I needn't have. I didn't get any sleep.
Yes, there was some vomit in the communal sink where the american teenagers had overindulged. Yes, I forgot the code to my room door when I got up to pee in the night and got let back in by a very angry south american guy. Yes, the Portuguese backpackers who arrived at 0400 needed to have a good old laugh about how much noise they were making. And the one in the bunk opposite me snored violently all night. As the thin sun slithered in through the net curtains that morning, it lit up the flabby naked buttocks his sheet had fallen off, at which point I decided enough was enough and left.
There were also long hours of nothing to do. Stockholm's a good city to visit, but expensive. And the best way to not spend money is to wander about looking at things, although November isn't exactly the cheeriest time to see them. The Riddarholm Church is amazing, but it's also shut at 0830. If you've just spent five hours drinking lots of water to save your voice and lots of coffee to stay energised, then you have to spend lots of money I didn't have to use the pay-to-pee loos. Or the free but stinking ammoniac pissoirs in the street, which look like old fashioned guard duty boxes. Maybe they once were, your guards could stay out longer that way whilst getting their bearskin hats fumigated for free into the bargain.
I got some english money from my lovely aunt M for my birthday, which was luckily still in my wallet. I converted it at the station and spend the Friday night at the cinema. I watched 'Fury', which was a by-the-numbers war film. Apparently, war is hell and makes good men do bad things. Who knew? The interminable climax came after about fifty minutes of SS men getting dismembered graphically by machinegun fire. Heroic Brad Pitt (Spoilers!) dies when a grenade gets him. Whereas all the nazi cannonfodder got burst to smithereens by such explosives, Post-Death Brad looks little the worse for wear, just a little tatty round the edges. As though he's merely been smothered in his sleep by the heavy hand of symbolism.
The job was good, despite all this. Eight hours of highly-appreciated shouting in a booth for a computer game, which I'm still not really at liberty to discuss thanks to the NDA. The high was probably being told to make the line "Yes! Smell my musk of strength" sound 'more like Hitler'. I think that's how Shakespeare imagined it when he wrote it.
The low was still those buttocks winking in the early dawn. Dammit, I can't get them out of my head.
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