After much mincing and discussion with the shadowy and omnipresent Planning Department officer who had been sent to monitor our activities, the crew agreed to go and film some scenes at the entrance to the site. All the gear had to be loaded back into the vans. The director stood in the shade waving a limp wrist at any passing male, whilst the crew sweated over a million heavy boxes. Black Paddy came out of the cupboard.
The idea was to take some footage of me walking into work. However, in order to get the correct camera angle they had to move the camera into almost the middle of the road. Traffic on the main road was brought to a standstill as the guy with the furry thing and the man with the tape began to set up the cameras. The camera man popped his head out of the van, lit another cigarette and complained to the director who seemed to be trying to score with the Planning Department guy.
By the time we were actually ready to shoot I was dripping with sweat and had large unsightly sweat stains on the back of my shirt. However, being inscrutable Orientals they had thought of this and ‘towel man’ entered the fray. His job seemed to be to follow two steps behind me with a towel. This came as considerable relief to me as for a moment I thought that the director was going to offer to wipe me down himself.
By the time they were finally ready to shoot, the camera batteries had died and we waited another lifetime in the scalding sun for someone to rush to the local electrical store for some fresh ones. By now quite a crowd had gathered outside the building to watch. This ruined the director’s carefully staged shot and sent him into a rage of unintelligible Japanese.
Out of the van popped ‘crowd control man’. He rushed over and with much bowing and kow-towing cleared the area of confused Japanese researchers. Towel man was virtually chasing me round the car park for a rub down. The camera man was running perilously close to finishing his third packet of cigarettes and the director was rushing round yelling the Japanese equivalent of “Ohhhhhh darlin’,” to anyone who would listen.
Eventually, they got all the footage they wanted, which was just as well as the traffic was now backed up about three miles along the main highway and the camera man had run out of cigarettes.
Next we moved to the lab to record some footage of me actually doing some experiments. It had been so long since I had actually been in our lab that all the equipment was covered in a thick layer of dust. The rehearsal went well, though. They wanted to film me using a certain plasma torch. However, I forgot to tell them not to look directly at the torch as it would damage their eyes and as I fired up the torch the whole crew gathered round the small observation window trying to get the best view. I guess it never occurred to them to ask why I was wearing thick green glasses.
After I had completed the run I turned round to ask if they were happy and found all eight of them gripping their heads and rubbing their streaming eyes. Towel man and the cable guy were wandering round the lab aimlessly and banging into things in a drunken half blind way whilst the camera man was clinging to the director for dear life. The only person who appeared unaffected was the Planning Department guy who actually seemed to be looking a bit healthier.
After several cigarettes, cans of tea and more kow-towing to the Planning Department man, the director finally picked himself up from the box of delicate equipment on which he was sitting and declared, “Ohhhhhhh darlin’,” which was obviously the cue for action. Before I knew what was occurring I was being rubbed down by towel man, and sized up by tape guy. It took about twenty minutes to take just 30 seconds of footage and then another half hour to convince the crew to give me back the protective goggles that I had lent them. The guy with the furry thing had his on Biggles style and seemed more than reluctant to return them. We found the cable guy twenty minutes later wandering around the carpark half blind from the plasma but staring directly at the sun using the goggles. “Ohhh so interesting,” he kept cooing to me in Japanese.
Working with school girls »
