10
And we were on Friday; what a bloody week.
Parts from hell, parts really great. Today was a different studio in a second old industrial type building.
Only this time it was really old industrial, and we were not doing built sets, but scenes with other actors in real old time settings.
Not my taste for fashion, but then, no one asks me.
So it was just Lowri and myself; Mom wanted to do some shopping and was going into the city with a few gals from Byron’s office.
There is a shortage of the feminine type around his home as a rule.
Imagine that. Byron’s mother and sisters are very accepting, but they do not do London in the winter, love, not a chance in bloody hell.
I think that his parents are in Christchurch; I know they have a place there.
And his two sisters are in the Caribbean somewhere, which I instantly forgot, maybe Miami for all I remember; lots of Brits winter in Miami.
There is even a consulate there, and you can get a passport there if you have the right birth certificate.
Anyway, Mom had not brought over enough clothes, and I do understand that nowadays.
Angel was flying into London in the morning, that being early Saturday morning, local time/date confusion.
And Mom flies out Sunday about 1 p.m., I think, again local.
So we, the family, will have Saturday evening and Sunday breakfast to be together.
Dad is still staying in London. He is doing some stuff for Ellen, dealing with a gal she wants to bring over to New York but is having issues with her visa or permit, not a green card.
It is difficult for a model to actually work in the United States, as the States require a green card for models, even though they are contracted employees.
I do not understand it. One of my advantages is that I have a British passport, and that means I can pretty much work anywhere I want as a Shannon girl.
But here is the really strange part, Shannon girl can not work in the US because she does not have a green card, so in the US I work as Shannon boy.
And now you have to understand why my father finds this all so interesting and why both Byron and Ellen are becoming dependent on him.
So he works for me for free, but according to him, he is paid far better for Ellen and Byron than he would be working for some ball player, and this way, economically, he is better off.
Saturday is another on location in the same industrial complex thing. Fortunately, we, Lowri and I, have a studio RV, think of what a Hollywood star would use. And it is heated, with drinks and snacks, and comfortable. And it has a private, very clean bathroom.
For this type of work, the pace is slower, a lot slower.
There can be twenty extras in the shot. They all have their hair and makeup done before I am called, then I come in, do the striptease and dress, makeup/hair thing, and we shoot for maybe 10 20 minutes.
A half dozen cameras. This is an expensive video commercial shooting now, not the advertisements, but the TV and movie stuff.
You know all those ads you see in theaters now.
And we shoot each scene three, four, or more times, constant changing clothes in what I do.
I swear I spend more time undressed on a shoot than dressed.
And I am going to be brutally honest, if you have something against wandering around in your panties and bra, wearing 4” heels, looking like a hooker while someone is fiddling with your dress and 50 people are waiting and watching you, because it is always the top model’s fault, you realize.
My fault is that the zipper was sewn shut.
Why in the bloody hell would anyone sew a zipper on a dress shut.
Anyway, you are shivering because the heaters do not cover this part of the interior you are working in, and there is no way you are walking outside to your trailer dressed, or rather not dressed, like this.
This is modeling on a January day in London. And this is all for a luxury brand. Imagine if this were for Marks and Spencer’s bottom line, the one they sell in the basement.
Now, never, ever say that Byron, Alex, and my parents do not have a sense of humor.
Byron had a set of clothes from the Princess Collection, of course, sent over for me to wear coming back to the estate.
Now, my sister had arrived that morning, and she and Mom did the normal shopping thing you do in London when money is not a real issue.
And then, well after my last hair and makeup, Byron had the hair and makeup gals driven to the estate, and they did Angel’s to match mine.
And then she was given the identical clothing that I was wearing.
And this is down to the boots we were both wearing, the jewelry, even the coat I had to wear, and the bag I was carrying. And remember, this time I am in on this.
But Lowri was not.
After Walter dropped me off, I did the scooted off to the bathroom thing while Lowri did her normal entry.
Then, when her uncle Alex called her, she showed up in a room that had Angel and not me. So for about ten minutes, Lowri was in a conversation with Angel and never had a clue. Not one. And the rest of the room were playing along with this until someone asked, “Where is Angel?”
And that was my clue; I called out, “Coming,” and walked in looking identical to Angel.
And we all proceeded to act like this was completely normal.
Except that Lowri by now realized that she had definitely been had.
And then Alex, her brother, made her guess which one of us was her charge. She got it wrong.
And that we would not allow her to forget.
And it was now official: Lowri was part of my family, as we had something over on her, and with two out of the three sisters involved…
What more can I say?
It was a great evening.
Sunday, they are allowing me to have a day of rest.
The real reason is that we are a day behind, and the crew is working double time to get the next few locations set up.
Then it is back in the studio for Angel and myself.
Angel has five days of shooting and flies out on Saturday morning, so we have to complete her work by then.
And I have a few days to catch up on some little stuff that we are shooting here in London, but it is for a US customer.
Hey, it is fashion, OK. And I fly out Sunday overnight, but private.
Angel and the parents can fly first class, but I am not allowed to.
Too much risk of fans. My face is too well known.
I think that Angel shares that risk, but she is not awarded the degree of security that I am.
And that is simply safety. If a fan did get to me and harm me, it would cost someone millions. They have to protect me.
And on Sunday morning, I was told that I would be joined at school by two young female security people.
Well-trained, they will pass for Co eds and are going to live in the sorority house.
The sorority has more rooms than we need, and KK is really paying way more than a sister would for the use.
All of my sorority sisters know that I am a model, hard not to when you are getting covers on Vogue, and they all understand the risk.
They did put it to a vote, and it was clear that 100 percent voted to have me back despite the issues associated with that decision.
So they know about the two. These two are enrolled in class with me, and one will be in every class that I am.
Not that I am actually taking classes, but I will audit a few when I am on campus.
I am doing 12 hours of independent studies this spring, so technically I am not in class, but on campus.
Still, there are a few classes I would like to audit when I am here.
I earned my almost 4.0, remember, and it is my bloody mother who gave me the only B I have carried since the 5th grade.
Damn her. And I disagree; at 16 I am old enough to take a class on Porn as Literature, even if my mother is teaching it.
Anyway, forgive me. I tend to run on at times.
Monday through Thursday was what you would expect for a series of shoots. Two on location and two basically featuring the same clothes before a white or green screen, the catalog part of the job. Monday and Tuesday were print ads.
Friday, however, was to be very different.
We were booked at a facility with an indoor grass tennis court.
Strange, but this is London, remember, and there is a hell of a lot of international money here.
And we had a cast of about twenty, including some children.
It was all for video for Australia, and they have very different ideas of what constitutes a commercial than we do in the US, or even in England or Europe.
The Southern Hemisphere, and this really includes India, although it is not south of the Equator, has a different take on life.
So we were shooting these video commercials, all action, no spoken words; you have to hire actors to do that. Models never speak on camera; it is some legal thing, seriously. Good Lord knows what guilds I had to join to do this bloody work.
OK, so here is the setup. I do a scene, shoot it three to five times, then with the cast remaining in place, Shannon 2 comes in dressed differently, and the scene is reset, again three to five times, then Shannon 3 comes in.
Until all the variations of the clothing that the principal, meaning me, is wearing are shot, what they did was to shoot constantly and switch out Angel and myself.
While I was being filmed, Angel was changing, and the reverse when she was being filmed.
This improves the speed, as the extras stay in character and in place for the 30 40 minutes it takes to shoot that scene in the variation desired.
Then we take twenty, and come back and shoot a second video, and repeat the sequence.
And by five, instead of seven, we had completed the day’s takes.
The staff and the extras, and this included us, were told that we still were getting the full twelve for the day. No one expected this to work so well.
Angel was thrilled to death; she got my wages, or wages that matched mine, which are a lot higher than her normal wages. I think she made on Friday what she did on Monday through Thursday.
Regardless, she returned home a very happy camper.
However, I think that Lowri is going to miss her.