Space Fairy Blog

Pre-production: Last week before filming…

Oh the joys of pre-production! I am the production manager (aka paperwork bitch) but I don’t feel like I’m doing a terribly good job of it. Production managers are supposed to be the organised ones. Have you seen the state of my room lately?

We are supposed to be concerned with practicalities… dude, how freaking practical is it to take a week away from work (when most of us are broke) and other uni subjects during one of the busiest times of semester to shoot a student film in the middle of fraking no-where? It’s not practical. And for the record it wasn’t my idea and I had to reluctantly agree if I was to pass this annoying-ass subject. Oh, the joys of groupwork! Of course, groupwork in a uni assignment context is very different from how an actual film set is run (I know, I used to work on a couple). For starters, when you’re a student you don’t need to think about such matters as insurance and liability…

“Oh, its ok if we ask our actors to balance precariously on the edge of this slippery embankment…”. Duuuude!

I nearly cried when I received a 12 page shot list from the director, from which I was to write up the production schedule… bearing in mind this was for a three-minute film. I will never look at a script in the same way again, and I now have a better appreciation for how scripts are chosen for production.

Three days later, the shooting schedule was completed to the best of my ability- most of it by “guesstimation”, fuelled by late nights and lots of caffeine. The day before shooting commenced, I was informed that it was all wrong and was asked if I could possibly tweak it. Um no, I have other assignments to finish by the morning and am already running on no sleep. Who keeps to the written schedule on a film set anyway? Well maybe on professional film sets they don’t have four major projects they are trying to work on at the same time… and maybe they get paid.

Wednesday 3rd Oct: Day of shoot #1
I awake with a sore throat (so I think) and reluctantly drag my huge-ass overnight bag onto the uni bus. Getting away takes longer than expected (it usually does). We drive through the back streets of Brisbane searching for a service station which isn’t out of petrol, before getting lost while figuring how the frak to get back onto the highway. At one stage it looks like we are driving into the brewery, but it turns out the girls are really after the petrol station next door.

The ordeal must have stressed our director, Sass, as she is drinking alcohol already and we haven’t even left the city

After a few missed turn-offs and embarrassing U-turns, our convoy finally arrive at destination: Ravensbourne, aka. The MIDDLE OF FRAKING NO-WHERE.

The crew set up inside an old abandoned grainshed (aaah I never want to hear the word “grainshed” again!) It is full of shit which makes our noses twitch, but I am told it is THE perfect location.

Thursday 4th Oct: Day#2
Sick as a dog, AND stuck in the middle of fraking nowhere with no mobile reception or chemists nearby. Niiice.
By now it has become apparent that there is a problem with my wisdom tooth. I mention this to a few people and they casually shrug it off. “Yeah, my tooth was sore too when it came through. You’ll be alright. It’s probably not infected. Here’s some Panadol. Now back to work, we need your help.”
As the day progresses so does the pain, until every few hours I need to disappear from the set and lie down. Not happy, Jan.

Thursday night: My requests for filming all on the one farm fall on deaf ears, and at ten o’ clock pm we drive an hour away to another farm, this one even more remote (but at least with mobile reception). We are now staying at a hundred year old haunted homestead with no electricity or plumbing. We only cease filming that night when the generator breaks and we are left in the dark with no power. (Thank GOD).

Friday 5th Oct: Day #3
Today I am in so much agony. They gave me painkillers but it’s making me a drowsy wreck… and my teeth are still sore. I help when I can. Hell, I even dragged myself out of bed at 4:30 am to film a sunrise that didn’t even work out. You can’t say I didn’t make the effort.
“Where is Melinda? We need her help.”
“Sorry guys I’m kind of incapacitated right now” (said as I am curled up on the floor in the foetal position, trying to rock the pain away).
All day I try to subtly make known that I think I need a doctor or dentist, or possibly both… only I don’t think they’re getting the hints. I wonder, If I die here, will they notice long enough to pause filming?

Friday night, back at Ravensbourne, the majority of group members seem quite pissed at me for not helping as much. Seriously, they should be lucky I was there to help at all. I probably should have been in hospital.
“We’re all getting up at 4am to film the sunrise in the morning and we will need your help tomorrow”.

Saturday 6th Oct: Day #4
The sunrise shoot is an astounding success!

… and I am on the first car-load out of there (thankfully some people with cars had to be back in Brisbane for work, so I was able to hitch a ride).

As soon as my housemate picks me up from my drop-off point (at this stage I was too far-gone to try for a bus), it’s first stop: medical emergency! On advice from a triage nurse over the phone, we headed toward the hospital. When we see the waiting time in the ER, we make other plans (well Narelle made other plans… I was truly out of it by this stage). Narelle took me to her surgery, which only charged $70 for concession card holders on a weekend. Of course I didn’t have $70, so I waited around for my mum to drive up from Ballina (three hours away) so she could pay for it.

High on pain medication, I waved to all the nice people in the waiting room and said hello to them all before almost fainting. Afterward, the nurse was very rude to me, as if she assumed that I was on these drugs for recreational use. I hate it when people assume that. I dislike drugs intensely and think that people who use them for “fun” are freaking knob-heads. The doctor was angry at me for not getting antibiotics sooner, and said that I was very lucky.

Two days, a trip to the dentist, and an x-ray later, I was recovering in my own bed at home, sleeping and being in pain and sleeping mostly.

How am I going to make up all this missed work?

So… I have been doing a university assignment about strippers for my creative non-fiction writing class, because for some reason I find it a fascinating subject, and I figure that if you’re going to spend many hours working on an assignment, the topic might as well be interesting, right?

I had to admit that I was curious about strippers. After four years of dealing with Centrelink as a full time university student, and subsequently four years of praying that I’d have enough money in the bank to eat most weeks, the idea of becoming a stripper entered my mind more than once.

My excuse not to go ahead with it, was always the same-
“I’m too much of a prude”
“I have to close the bathroom blinds when I have a shower for christ sakes”
“Icky, unattractive guys watching me” (If they were all cute, young, well-mannered men I may have considered it further).

Notice that my major concerns didn’t include any ethical objections… when you’ve been scrounging for food vouchers for four years you start not caring as much about ethics.

While doing background research, I came across a woman named Bernadette Barton. Bernadette is an American university professor of sociology and women’s studies, who, in the last few years has gone undercover in strip bars across America, for research purposes. In her recently published book, Stripped; Inside the Lives of Exotic Dancers, Barton confirmed the most popular reasons for becoming an exotic dancer.

“Many women began dancing after struggling to support themselves through more conventional means and after exhausting other employment options. Finding work that supports oneself without a bachelor’s degree- and, unfortunately, sometimes with one- is increasingly difficult… the number of jobs that pay a living wage is decreasing”.

Barton says that independent students and individuals in low-paid service sector jobs face increasing difficulties in meeting their daily expenses, finding affordable housing, transportation expenses, as well as a lack of time to look for better paying alternatives.

“A woman who needs to make fast cash can avoid most of these problems through exotic dancing… In fact, exotic dancing offers women more opportunities to find a job outside the sex industry than many low-paying retail, fast food, or factory jobs because sex workers have more time to job hunt, a higher income, and potentially greater savings to tide them over between jobs… Furthermore-feminists take note- sex work is the only occupation in which women make more money than men”.

Well then…

I originally planned to interview some burlesque dancers but they were all busy touring (ok, I left it to the last minute to contact them) so I interviewed a close friend from uni (J) who stripped when she was younger.

Now, bear in mind that up until this point I had never actually been to a strip club.
I asked J about the types of people who frequented such establishments…

“There was a good mix of guys there. Generally you had your dodgy old guys, your dodgy young guys, then you had the guys who were so pathetic and sad that you felt kind of sorry for them. We also had a lot of army boys.

Generally the boys that came in there weren’t all that shy. They’d walk in and go ‘wow- breasts. I’m just going to call out as many obscene things as I can and see what I can get away with.

Saturday night was bachelor party night, which I actually ended up refusing to work at after a year because I couldn’t handle drunken yobbos, who were quite rude, just out for whatever really”.

Days later, the article was drafted and submitted for peer-review. However, I still felt there was something missing to this assignment. I had still never actually been inside a strip club.

This was remedied on a spur-of-the-moment decision a couple of weeks ago, after the usual Friday night dinner at the pub with friends.

“Ooh, Showgirls has been renovated” I exclaimed to a girlfriend, upon passing the sign (I often make random observations out loud just for the pure sake of expression). Before I could blink, she had taken me by the arm and was leading me toward he door. One of our male friends seemed a bit uncomfortable. He was like “Well, I might go home and leave you girls to it then”… which he promptly did.

So, oh-my-god I was sitting in a strip club drinking, and watching naked women pole-dance. I felt like I had accidentally snuck into some secret underground realm where only men were allowed, and I might be kicked out at any moment if discovered. The dancers were mesmerising. Part of me was afraid to stare; yet I couldn’t look away. I’ll tell you- those girls have talent.

After the first dancer had left, a guy in a white tank top, upon which was scribbled numerous profanities, introduced himself at our table and asked if we wouldn’t mind signing his shirt. He was, he explained, here for a bachelor’s party.

Guy: What’s your favourite body part on the dancer?
Me: Her shoes.

Somehow- god knows how- we ended up chatting about Star Trek. I’m guessing that Star Trek isn’t a usual discussion point in many Strip Clubs. I happened to enjoy it.

It was soon time to leave, so we bid each other farewell before he sneakily managed to get my phone number.

Later that night I was siting at home alone, when text- messaging revealed that we were in adjoining suburbs. Brilliant. The night is young, it’s a full moon, and there’s a bar down the street… the adventure continues!