Chapter Twelve
The cavernous sound stage at Smithdown Studios was electric with activity.
The sound of hammers driving the final nails into one of the new treetop sets, the speed with which various black-clad headset-wearing professionals dashed between sound gear and scaffolding.
Everything felt possible. And more importantly, I was prepared.
Not for the kiss. I still wasn’t prepared for that.
But in every other way, I was ready to go.
I’d arrived bright and early that morning and headed straight for craft services to pick up something to eat, crossing paths with Martin the director en route who boomed an enthusiastic, ‘Morning, Ems!’ at me.
As I milled around the table, trying to detect the juiciest orange in the pile, I tuned into the conversation going on between two of the costume team.
‘Oh, but she’s so gorgeous, isn’t she? So striking.’ I knew instantly who they had to be talking about. I held my breath and stood very still, hoping they wouldn’t notice me.
‘Stunning, utterly stunning. I can’t believe they actually got her. I hear she’s being paid an absolute bomb, nearly as much as Josh and Emily.’
‘She really brings something, doesn’t she? A bit of excitement.’
God, was this going to be my life now? Overhearing endless conversations about how gorgeous and thrilling Darcy Jackson was?
‘I suppose you have to be gorgeous and exciting if you have an attitude like that . . .’
I craned my neck, desperate to hear more but they’d already headed off back to the costume department.
I returned to my trailer to eat my orange in peace, feeling the magic of the day slightly dampened by the presence of Darcy.
The basketball hoop that Josh had installed outside his trailer on Wonderwick Woods: Beyond the Forest was already seeing some action, two of the props guys taking turns to take a shot.
He’d found the endless sitting around too much to bear, and the games of cards weren’t quite enough to stimulate him, so he’d installed the hoop and a small gym in his trailer.
My trailer was clean, tidy and peaceful, filled with my favourite candle that smelled of warm cashmere and vanilla.
I could shower after my runs, I could prep in there until it was time to get to work and on breaks it was the perfect place to curl up with a book.
Wow. I really am the on-set party animal.
The first scene we were shooting was a busy crowd scene using one of my favourite sets.
I knew it wasn’t real of course, but just like the ramshackle Jones house, the Canopy Plaza was a pure delight to behold.
On the first film, I had no idea how the production designer and the set builders had managed to create something so utterly magic, and how the visual effects team had made it even more extraordinary in post-production.
Although my character, Linderley, was a ground-dweller, Josh’s character, Rowan, lived in the treetop society.
At the heart of their world was the huge Canopy Plaza, part of the sprawling treetop habitat connected by wide, swaying, vine-laden bridges.
No detail was left out of the design, and I always looked forward to shooting the treetop festivals, market trading or important information-gathering meetings that would take place there.
We were trying to shoot a tracking shot that went from a bird’s-eye view of the Plaza in peak festival mode, getting closer and closer in until it found Linderley and Rowan in covert conversation with a trader who had heard from a travelling salesman that Lord Thorn’s daughter Loreia Buckthorn had ascended to power in their kingdom and was hell-bent on revenge for her father’s death.
The default setting of the Canopy Plaza was already a visual delight: strewn with beautiful hanging paper lanterns in gently glowing shades of red, orange and yellow, while streamers made from shimmering leaves draped down from the highest branches and tree-dwellers crowded around huge communal tables made from giant slabs of polished wood.
Because the scene took place during a festival, it looked even more amazing than usual, turning into a bustling bazaar where vendors sold magically floating candles, enchanted wind chimes that could play a different song in the breeze to match the mood of their owner, carved wooden toys that seemed to come to life in a child’s hand.
Acrobats swung from branch to branch, as below them musicians played ocarinas and wooden drums as tree-dwellers met in merriment at the festival, drinking from elaborately carved wooden chalices and dancing across the skybridges.
All of which is to say, not only was it wonderful to look at but it took a lot of coordination.
A lot of background artists (or extras) were required to fill out the scene, all of whom were now loitering in the E-Z UP tents that actors waited in between takes, decked out in their tree-dweller attire.
Finally, I was summoned by Jonas, the first assistant director, who basically ran the show.
Josh was already sitting at the corner of the polished wood table, and did not look at all well.
He smelled of stale cigarettes, which fortunately wouldn’t be a problem for the cinema audience but was a problem for me.
He nodded at me in greeting. ‘What’s up,’ he croaked out.
‘Hungover?’ I asked.
‘Uh, maybe just a little,’ Josh said with an irritating smirk, his white teeth glinting in a lopsided smile. ‘Been having too much fun.’
Before I could ask if the fun was with Darcy or a different girl altogether, Humphrey Attleborough plonked himself down in his seat to complete the trio of us that would have dialogue in this scene.
‘Greetings, old friends!’ he boomed at us. A rotund mid-fifties actor in a collarless hemp shirt with wooden buttons and billowing trousers, Humphrey played Hornbeam, who often acted as a conduit for news between Wonderwick Woods and further afield.
‘Hey, Humph.’ Josh slapped him on the back in greeting.
‘Hello, Humphrey!’ I rose to hug him and no sooner had I sat back down than Juliet, my new makeup artist, was re-powdering my jawline and one of the costume team was checking Humphrey’s shoulder for makeup marks, which of course I knew better than to leave.
‘Ready and raring to go? Prrrrimed to hear the terrible news from beyond the kingdom?’ he asked, rolling his rs in that theatre actor way that had made him a national treasure. The dresser placed a pair of round glasses on his face, and he became the Hornbeam I’d known since the original film.
‘I certainly am!’ I said, gamely, while Josh just gestured his hand in a could go either way motion. He was bleary-eyed and I desperately hoped he would magically snap out of it when we started shooting.
‘Has someone been imbibing too abundantly? Naughty, naughty boy!’
Checks and then final checks were called, and finally, the sound I had been waiting for: Jonas called action.
Above us, cameras moved in an elaborate dance, gliding elegantly to create the bird’s-eye effect, weaving their way down into the Canopy Plaza, through thronging crowds eating, drinking and being merry, then following a barmaid carrying a tray of drinks towards the table, finally settling on the group of three hunched at the end.
‘Hornbeam, you’re sure?’ I breathlessly delivered my first line of the shoot.
‘Have I ever been wrong before?’ Humphrey replied in his sonorous voice, leaning forward conspiratorially.
‘Then we need to start preparing for a fight,’ Josh said, pounding his fist on the table. The only problem was, that wasn’t the next line.
‘Cut!’ Jonas called, wearily.
‘What did I do?’ Josh asked, bewildered.
‘There are at least two lines before you say that,’ I sighed. ‘You’re meant to say “And this isn’t just some ground-dwellers causing trouble – no offence, Linderley” and then Hornbeam says, “I heard it from the most reliable source, I assure you,” and then you say the line about the fight.’
Josh’s cheeks flushed.
‘Need a spot of the hair of the dog, old boy?’ Humphrey nudged him, producing a hip flask from his trouser pocket.
‘I wouldn’t say no.’ Josh swigged from it. ‘Just this once,’ he added, seeing my expression. Everything was reset, and we tried again.
‘Hornbeam, you’re sure?’
‘Have I ever been wrong before?’ We delivered the lines identically to the last take. All we needed was Josh to—
‘And you didn’t hear this from some ground-dweller, right?’
‘Cut!’ Day one and Jonas’s patience was already wearing thin.
‘Shit, sorry, I know, I know.’ Josh shook his head in irritation as the shot was reset around us. The extras were talking amongst themselves, shooting glances in our direction.
‘Josh, get it together,’ I hissed at him while Humphrey had his wig adjusted.
I didn’t need everyone else to hear it but I needed Josh to hear it.
I couldn’t let today set the tone for how Josh was going to behave for the rest of the shoot.
He took up too much oxygen on set as it was, and I couldn’t live like this for the next three months.
I didn’t want to be counting down the days on what was meant to be my dream job.
‘You can’t keep turning up to set hungover!
It’s embarrassing! And you’re making work for people who already have more than enough to do! ’
‘Christ, Emily, you’re not my mom, you’re not Martin, you don’t need to always be riding me so hard,’ Josh said, exasperated.
A hot wave of embarrassment swept over me. I was doing the same old stuff I would always do. It was hard to remember I was meant to be trying out a whole new easy-going persona on this film when Josh was messing around like this.
‘OK, I’m sorry,’ I muttered, not looking him in the eye.
‘You just make things worse, you know? I feel stressed as shit knowing you’re judging me the whole time. Maybe if I didn’t feel like I was under a microscope all the time I wouldn’t make so many mistakes.’
This was too much. ‘How is this on me? This is your mistake. And anyway, I’m not judging you, Josh, I’m just asking you to learn your lines! It’s the bare minimum!’
‘All right, all right, whatever.’ He shook his head, dismissively. ‘Let’s go again.’
Jonas made sure the shot was properly reset, and we went again.
Finally he got the line right, but that was just the beginning of having to shoot and reshoot the usual eight or nine or even twelve times.
Such a lot of work for such short snatches of film.
By the time we were finished, everyone seemed exhausted.
Maria, the second assistant director whose job it was to coordinate the production schedule, was striding towards us with the next day’s schedule.
‘Change of plan,’ she said, handing us each a call sheet. ‘We’d originally planned to shoot the river scene next week but the forecast is fucking abysmal and the next two days seem like our best bet so we need to switch things around. From tomorrow, we’re on location.’
‘Got it.’ I nodded, resolutely.
Thanks to the reliably unpredictable British weather, the production would rearrange itself to accommodate the elements.
So much of Wonderwick was filmed indoors with meticulously calibrated lighting to give the effect of being outside, but there were still several key scenes that had to take place outdoors.
The iconic sets like the Great Archive, the High Council’s Sky Lodge, Linderley’s house and the Canopy Plaza were possible, if not easy, to replicate on huge sound stages but the river less so.
Fortunately, there was only one scene in this film that took place there, but that could still mean multiple days of filming.
Josh looked a little flustered. ‘Uh, all right,’ he said, looking down at the call sheet, something he was not known to do habitually.
‘See you there.’ He gave her a charming, roguish smile but I knew him and I could see right through him: he was going to have to spend the evening learning lines for a different scene.
The first day had been so exhausting I almost fell asleep in the car back to the house.
‘If you don’t mind my saying so, you look shattered,’ Mike said, looking at me in the rear-view mirror.
‘I feel it,’ I said with a weak smile. ‘But it always feels like a silly thing to complain about. So many people would kill to be where I am now. Oh, and we’re going on location tomorrow, did they tell you?’
‘All under control, don’t you worry about that. It’s out near your parents, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, in that sort of direction.’ I was faintly troubled by the implication that maybe I should go and see them after we wrap tomorrow, or even stay there overnight.
We sat in silence for a moment, before Mike said, ‘It’ll get easier. It’s always strange at first but everything sorts itself out, every film.’
I smiled. He was right. Surely this was just first-day teething problems, right?
Wrong.