Lights... Camera... Camera... Camera...

Now, I've never actually been in a train wreck, and aside from seeing them in a couple of David Lean films, I've never witnessed one either. I did, as a child, have a nightmare about coming across one that left me shaken and scarred for quite some time.

Obviously, I was not in a train wreck yesterday, if so I would probably be in a hospital, or pinned beneath twisted wreckage and regretting the fact that I never got to Machu Picchu, or more than likely figuring out how to get in on the class action lawsuit against the railroad and the dumbass who thought it would be good idea to “Dukes Of Hazzard” it across the train crossing. The video shoot yesterday though was (from what I understand) LIKE a train wreck.

Okay, maybe it's that I've made a couple of films, or that I've been on the set of other people's shoots as an actor, but I thought it was a given that the best way to progress with this sort of thing is to have a script. Barring that, at least a vague idea of the shots you hope to accomplish that day.

The director was the sort of man who couldn't be hampered or held down with a script. In fact when questioned about continuity by a member of the creative team, who sat in chairs behind the monitor like a battalion of generals, the director said:

"Continuity is for wimps."

Continuity is this funny idea that film makers have about making sure things are continuous throughout the film. A for instance: someone enters a scene carrying a coffee mug, that actor should always have that coffee mug throughout the scene.

And so we were thrown into a melee of no script and no shot list, only a vague idea for what was to be shot, and continual discussions about odd little technicalities that the creative department wanted to get into. It was like watching the engine just ignore the tracks altogether, taking down a long line of unsuspecting cars. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it.

The thrill of being on a set quickly left even the cheeriest of volunteer actors. People began to trickle away as the day wore on and the inevitable sugar crash from the bowl of Jolly Ranchers set in. I kept myself to a quiet corner and studied lines for an upcoming play for the large amount of time that I was sitting around doing nothing. When at one point I was shaking my head at the ridiculousness surrounding me, a coworker asked what I would rather be doing.

“I’d rather be working,” I told him with all seriousness.

I was a little depressed in finding that one gig could so easily sap the joy out of an activity that I love, and wallowed in the irony that it was in fact my real job type job that did it. But then I realized that what I did yesterday was not acting, it was standing around for hours in order to watch someone masturbate.

And I get paid good money for that on the outside.