Chapter 26 John doesn’t know what it means, but it’s unfortunately provocative
John doesn’t know what it means, but it’s unfortunately provocative
John is buzzing around me on set like a bee around a flower.
Except the flower is getting nauseous from the bee’s buzzing.
The flower wouldn’t even be here, but the flower’s boss spent the last week preparing the flower to get involved in the bee’s advert filming.
According to the flower’s boss, the flower can gain some invaluable experience if it spends some time with the bee, who to this day is trying its hardest to get into the flower’s petals.
The metaphor doesn’t quite work, as worker bees are mainly female and quite cute, and John is feeding into the macho man rhetoric, which is rather disturbing to witness.
He is on his third protein ginger energy shot of the day.
He tried his hardest to down them, as if they were J?ger Bombs, but choked on the third one because it burnt his throat too much.
I don’t know why I am allowed to be on set, when part of the reason I was almost fired was because John and I looked too close in a picture. Malik, who cringes and grimaces every time John gets too close to my ear to whisper his directorial vision, is the only friendly face in CM Shot’s studio.
‘And then the honey drips down her hand,’ John tells the crew but winks at me.
This is so uncomfortable. Steven is too involved in his e-mails, trying his hardest to send off some document that he didn’t ask me to help with (feeling bad about almost firing me), and is now typing away in the corner of the room.
He has been extra saccharine with me these days, like that teacher I had who was told that my mum had died from cancer and that he needed to be gentler with me than with the rest of the class, but instead he ended up completely alienating me.
‘Steven, are you sure you don’t need my help?’ I ask, desperately trying to get away from John.
‘No, no. This might be an excellent opportunity for your development, at least another ￡3000 per annum if you put it correctly into your CV,’ he says without looking up.
I manage to avoid expelling a loud displeased grunt.
It’s not that I am ungrateful to be stuck in a shooting studio.
I just feel as if this would have been easier if Toby were here.
He’s been an excellent texter. Not too much, a nice mixture of jokes, casual and deep conversation.
We stayed up one night talking in detail about his favourite video games.
Normally, I would not give a donkey’s, but somehow I let him explain all about some vampire game that was split into the main game and DLC, but the main game lacked some key plot points that make no sense without the DLC, but it would be criminal to force players to buy a DLC if your base game was incomplete (he said DLC sixteen times over the phone).
He then let me talk his ear off about the film Leon picked for film night.
Her by Spike Jonze, which is a response to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation, is an absolutely beautiful piece of media, wonderfully shot...
But it just highlights how easy it is for a man to misunderstand a woman, as both directors made those films about divorcing each other, but Jonze made it seem as if he was a completely clueless man, which somewhat poisoned my pleasant memories of the film.
‘This is probably the most passionate I’ve heard you about anything,’ Toby said after my rant.
‘I am not that passionate,’ I said, hugging my knees on the bed.
‘Beg to differ,’ he murmured.
A wave of heat and embarrassment washed over me at the implication.
‘Spike is a good middle name,’ I deflected.
‘You literally just told me about how horribly uninformed he was. I am not taking the name of some fool. Plus, I think Spike is a character in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I am off vampire media for a minute. Anyway, it’s late.
Let me know how the shoot next week goes. Something tells me it might be a hoot.’
Toby would love it here right now, even if the only enjoyment he got out of it was relishing the extent of my awkward suffering.
‘Fuko-chan, what do you think of this shot?’ John pushes me to sit down next to him.
I despise the use of the chan suffix, which is mainly used for children. Me being an intern is not helping. I feel as if every time John speaks, he is trying to do one of two things—seduce me or insult me. He is only successful in the latter.
The product that we are working on is a natural skincare line for teenage girls. I study the shot where the product falls into honey (one of the main ingredients), encasing the pink packaging. It... is weirdly sensual. This is meant to be for teenage girls, no?
I watch over it another few times to confirm what I saw—the final shot, with the honey pouring over, the way it falls around the plastic.
‘John.’ I cut in to his conversation with one of the runners.
‘Yes?’ He hums, waiting to hear praise or for me to plant my lips on top of his in a passionate whirlwind.
I look around: man, man, man, man. There are seven men around here. I am the only woman. The phone in my hand takes a quick picture of the screen to send it off to Toby later.
I turn back to John, smothering the words coming out of my mouth with a thick layer of sweetness. ‘You’ve made it look like a vagina.’
‘What?’
‘Look. You made the final shot look like it’s a vaginal opening.’
I have seen this look on him, when he found out that the president of Japanese society at uni (the girl that he was trying to chirpse for a month) was not Japanese, but, in fact, Cambodian (she still to this day likes all my social media stories, as I do hers).
The completely blank stare of an error that could easily have been avoided if only a single brain synapse had been employed.
John stops moving, frantically replaying the video again and again. Malik comes behind us, tapping John on the shoulder to ask a question about a memory card.
‘Fu-u-u...’ John says under his breath, shaking the hand off.
‘You all right, man?’ Malik asks his boss but looks at me.
I try really hard to suppress my grin. ‘John made a vaj.’
‘What? Where?’
I let Malik take my chair.
He studies the footage for a solid minute, then kisses his teeth, and throws his arms in the air. ‘Ho ho ho.’
He laughs and walks away. The entire set is now picking up on the strange energy emanating from their director.
‘Just reshoot it, mate,’ I say with my hands behind my head, leaning back on the chair. ‘Or maybe just swap the shots around and cut before it forms a—’
‘We can’t deviate. It’s in the contract. We have to follow the storyboard that was approved. It has to end with a honey drip. That’s the whole marketing campaign.’
He shows me the storyboard. It doesn’t look suggestive in the draft version. I stand up and play around with the lighting settings to see whether there is any other way to submerge it without its vulvonic glory.
Malik and the crew help out with the lenses.
We try to lower the pink tube down the honey fish tank using different angles, but it sinks too quickly to be used.
The ‘honey’ is actually dyed corn syrup, which is a much cheaper material, but it still feels like a waste every time we have to wipe it off.
Nothing is working with the way the camera is set up. The tone and the story are off. What if, instead of a bird’s-eye shot, we use an eye-level... No, that looks wrong.
I walk around with the camera, asking the crew to change the lamp’s intensity and the hue.
We just need one shot that does not look like a reproductive organ—I did make it look like a penis, which was picked up on by everyone immediately, of course.
Steven has now joined in and is fully caught up.
He makes a quick jokey quip that ‘he knows a good optometrist company who could have helped with that’, and I can’t lie, I do laugh louder than I want to.
The fish tank is transparent on the bottom... Now, what if...
‘I need two strong boys to hold the tank above, four weaker boys to light up the syrup using the lamps, and one weak but still impressive boy to drop the tube into the tank.’
This violates several health and safety rules, so we have to be quick.
I do not want the men to drop the glass box over Malik’s head, who seemingly sees the vision—the product will fall into the honey, coming into focus when it hits the glass bottom.
I haven’t concluded what message I want to tell yet, but at this point, I think it isn’t as important as making sure we have one shot that would rate PG in cinemas.
The first try is unsuccessful. The focus is off; the man on the left wobbled and caused a tilt.
The runner brings two sturdy chairs that hold the tank up for the second shot.
The second try is much better, but I didn’t love that the cap was leading the fall and hit the glass first. For the third and (luckily!) final shot, we have refilled the tube to make sure there is no air that could make it float.
I have also asked the dropper to submerge the tube and keep in close to the surface rather than dropping it into the syrup from above.
It takes forever to fall, but John is happy to fix it in post.
‘Well done today.’ Malik smiles, packing away the cables.
‘You too. Thank you for volunteering to take the camera at the end there.’
‘Can’t let a lady crawl on the floor. I do not know if we wash it.’
I look at the syrup splatters. ‘Please do it this time.’
‘If you ever need a camera and crew, let me know. It was nice working with...’ He thinks really hard about what word he is allowed to use. ‘With a different vision.’ He smiles, in a way that is kind and friendly. Without a trace of flirting that was there at Salsa.
‘I am sorry I didn’t call.’
‘Nah, it’s all good, no stress. I thought it was a long shot, anyway, after pretty boy swooped in.’
Wow, so it was obvious to everyone, huh? Embarrassing. ‘Don’t let him hear that, he’ll get too big for his boots.’
‘But I am not being funny, like, if you want to shoot, give me a shout.’ He winks and opens the Peli case. Damn, John did well. I think the military uses them. It must be that Dubai sheikh’s money.
It’s almost five o’clock. I unlock my phone and take it off Airplane Mode. Toby’s message pops on the screen, and I can’t help but smile.
Toby: Listen, I know I am not back to work yet, so no date allowed... But I want to see you.
If there weren’t people around, I would squeal from happiness.
Fuko: I am listening.
The speech bubble pops up immediately.
Toby: There is a pub quiz tonight. Me and some friends are going. I would like you to come if you are not too tired.
‘Fuko.’ Steven waves me down, his bag fully packed. ‘Well done, very impressed with your initiative. Does make me wonder why we are paying them that much money when we have someone in-house who could do things better for cheaper.’
The last sentence was said with the most secretive of whispers. He keeps talking about other work-related things, when I hear the amulet’s bell chime. Multiple compliments, fun day at work, and a confirmed increase in luck.
Fuko: I want to see you too. Have many stories to tell. I feel like today is a good day for a pub quiz.
Toby: Excellent. I’ll see you there.
There is nothing stopping me today.