You're Never Weird on the Internet (Almost) (20 page)

Repeat that motivational cup sentence until it gets in your gut and doesn’t sound like something stupid on a Hallmark card, because it is the basis for anything that will make you happy in this world. This is something I truly believe.

I looked at Kim and Jane across the booth and nodded, feeling warm and fuzzy, like I was having the best stroke EVER. I had the power to film my script. I wasn’t alone; we could do this.

We were going to MAKE SOMETHING!

[
 Makin’ It! 
]

I’m going to share a dirty secret with you . . .

Actually it’s not that dirty. I was trying to inject some suspense here. I’ll stop.

I love crafting. Knitting, decoupage, scrapbooking, any “lady-ish” art form, I’m a fan. For about six months each. Then I shove all the supplies in a closet, alongside the skeletons of long dead New Year’s resolutions, like saber fencing, playing the ukulele, and Japanese brush painting.

During my bored-actor years, I recruited lady friends to join me in doing crafting “Projects!” to relieve said boredom. (Note the
exclamation mark. That was part of the vibe. Say “PROJECTS!” like a stereotypical gay character on television and you have it.) A little before Christmas and Valentine’s Day, I threw parties to make holiday cards from scratch. I would buy CARTLOADS of supplies: pipe cleaners, decorative paper, gold filigree, dot matrix pictures of Bea Arthur . . . it was a bacchanal of glitter and glue sticks. I would cater tea-time foodstuffs (sandwiches without crusts and heart-shaped tarts with yuppie-berries) and serve them on flower-embossed ceramic plates.

It’s strange to remember I was so vaginal at a certain point.

The same enthusiasm that motivated me to create dozens of handmade Christmas cards every year—and some for Hanukkah, because I tried to be inclusive but I didn’t really understand when it was appropriate to send them to people, so I ended up shoving them in the closet—drove me to take the script I wrote for
The Guild
and turn it into a web series. From scratch. With my friends.

But through that process, I learned the hard way that making a film is not the same as throwing a Sunday afternoon tea party. It’s actually . . . nothing like it at all. So I’d like to share my top five tips for anyone who decides to film a television-like show in their garage for almost no money!

[
 1: Befriend a Hoarder or Become One 
]

When Kim, Jane, and I started breaking down how we would shoot the first ten pages of my TV script for a grand total of $1,500, we realized, “Gee, we need a lot of stuff. For free. Why did I throw anything in my life away, ever?”

So while Jane pulled favors to get pro-bono crew members and
Kim worked on the icky producing logistics, I concentrated on gathering the props and superficial stuff we needed, because in my mind, being able to put together a cute outfit equaled “Fabulous at film decoration!” natch.

There was no length I wouldn’t go to get the perfect object. I raided my friends’ houses for props we needed, even doing the “Look over there!” trick to steal a stuffed animal from a two-year-old’s hands. (She never noticed, babies are so dumb in those first few years after they’re born.) Without asking, I borrowed a large, fake house plant from the set of
How I Met Your Mother
to decorate the background of one of my shots, promising my friend who was an actor on the show, “I’ll have this back Monday!”

For some reason, it was incredibly important to me that each character’s room be well-decorated. This was a LADY production and I was obsessed with
Trading Spaces
and other renovation shows on TV that I watched alone on Saturday nights, no WAY were any of my characters living in a hovel! Unfortunately, my exacting standards often butted up against the practicality of having no budget. “Sorry, Kim, your aunt’s bedspread will NEVER do for Tink. Her palette is pinks and oranges. Let me show you the paint chips I collected from Home Depot. Can you search the old folks’ home for something in this color range? No? Fine! I’ll find it myself!” With zero dollars and incredibly high standards, I had to look in creative places for set decorations.

Thus began my obsession with trash.

I started trolling up and down alleys, putting anything colorful and not covered in feces into my trunk. Yes, that might sound gross and hobo-y, but it’s amazing what people throw away. I found a few things, like a hot dog cookbook and a 3-D picture of Jesus, that I still have in my home. (Wiped them off with Windex, promise.)

And it wasn’t only post-apocalyptic scavenging that decorated
The Guild
. I used technology to find trash, too. Since Craigslist was out of our price range, costing actual dollar amounts, I found an online service called Freecycle where people give things away, provided you immediately race to come get them. I’d click on the site dozens of times a day, like an obsessive day trader, so I could jump on a posting first.

“Broken electronics on curb near Glenoaks Ave and Hubbard St in Sylmar, come before 6pm.” Perfect set dressing for Bladezz’s gaming space?
BAM! GET YOUR FAST AND FURIOUS ON, FELICIA!
Sylmar was about an hour away from my house but the grainy flip phone picture of stacked microwaves and VCRs spoke to me, artistically, so I drove ninety miles an hour to beat whoever else might be vying to grab the precious treasure. Someone else could have used that DVD player for entertaining sick children, but I had a
vision
to bring to life. I
needed
that trash!

The scavenging process was satisfying, like acting out my favorite part of a video game in real life. I was smashing barrels and getting rewards! Except I didn’t find gold or weapons, I found
actual garbage
. And LOVED it. Maybe too much.

The tipping point came three weeks into pre-production when I dragged home a stand-up hair dryer that was probably made in the 1960s. It was huge, dirty, and my boyfriend was at his wit’s end. Justifiably so. Our place was turning into a dump.

He met me on the porch, and I could tell it was gonna be a THING. I tried to deflect with chipperness. “Hey, honey! Huge super awesome find today, huh?”

“Did you rob a salon?”

“No! I found it on the sidewalk with a ‘Take Me!’ sign attached. It was fate!”

“Is there a reason for this ‘fate’? Like, do you have a place for it in your script?”

“No, but it screams comedy to me!”

“That’s what you said about all the free yoga balls, and now my office looks like a gigantic Chuck E. Cheese.” He moved closer and examined the hair dryer. “There’s still hair on this thing! Don’t bring it into the house. Or anything else you find on the streets. Please?”

“Fine, I’ll leave it in the driveway, gawd!” What a hypochondriac.

After that, I stored trash in my car or in Kim’s garage. Life compromises, sigh.

[
 2: “Favor” Is a Four-Letter Word 
]

There’s merit in having the plucky attitude, “No problem is insurmountable if you’re willing to be creative and bat your eyelashes a little!” (Not sexist, guys have eyelashes, too.)

The problems start when plucky morphs into desperation. “Please help me. Look how friendly I’m smiling, yet my eyes say I want to enslave you!”

Kim, Jane, and I recruited anyone we knew to help us bring
The Guild
to life. Literally anyone. Conversations like, “We need a baby. Who do we know who’s bred recently?” peppered our prep meetings. Guilt, blackmail, you name it, we muscled it.

“Hey, I drove my hairdresser to the airport that one time when her uncle died. I’ll call her up, she owes me!”

When we fell short on personnel, we put an ad on Craigslist for people looking for experience on film sets and said yes to anyone who didn’t seem like they were a parolee.

“Here’s a student from Santa Monica Community College who wants to do sound for us.”

“Does he have his own equipment?”

“He might be able to bring a boom mic held together by duct tape.”

“Invite him aboard!”

We ended up with a camera assistant who was a recent émigré from Hungary, and couldn’t spatially place the clapboard in the actual film frame.
Her ONLY job.

“No, Veronique, lower. LOWER! The general area the camera is pointed would be good! Ugh, close enough. Action.”

The trouble is, when you’re asking people to work for free, you can’t be an exacting perfectionist.

“I know you’re doing this as a favor, late at night and on weekends, but I hate what you did. Can you revise it fifteen times until it’s perfect? Cool?”

I ended up having to use my own craft party skills to make our show logo for the opening credits after Kim’s neighbor’s cousin fell through in the graphic design department.
Because she was busy “going into labor.”
Psh.

Yes, I used MS Paint and a mouse. No, I was not drunk.

I’ll admit that some of the production problems we ran into were my fault. I am bossy and arrogant enough to think I have a “vision,” so we needed a much bigger crew than an average web video warranted. Many times during filming, I’d start to cry in frustration at myself. “Why didn’t I just write something that could be shot with one person and a phone camera?” Five minutes later, I’d run up to Kim. “Hey, let’s fully CGI animate the opening credits! We can do motion capture like Gollum! It’ll be great!”

In terms of free labor, you’d think that the actors would be the easiest to recruit. I mean, we were shooting in Los Angeles; that’s like asking in Vegas, “Where can I find a glass of alcohol as tall as my torso?”

And things looked promising initially. We posted an acting listing for “The Guild. Web Series. Zero Pay. (Seriously, there’s no pay for this thing.)” And got about 500 applications.
For each part
. We weren’t special, that’s just what happens when you put out a notice for actors in Los Angeles. Good thing I went through the process AFTER I’d
been an actor for a while, or I’d have immediately moved back to Texas to play “I Will Always Love You” on the violin at church weddings for the rest of my life.

But as we started going through the applications, not to insult my own profession or anything, we realized that releasing a “free actor” posting is like sending out a virtual birdcall, “Whackadoodle! Whackadoodle!” into the Los Angeles jungle. Ninety-eight percent of applicants were “swipe left” immediately. For instance, when you post this character description:

TINKERBALLA: early 20s, Asian. A sweet, doll-like face belies her acrid tongue.

You KIND of assume the photos submitted will be, at a minimum:

A) Asian

B) Under 30

C) Female

But when you allow just ANYONE to submit themselves, which we did, we got some, shall we say, “out of the box” head shots. Like a fifty-year-old Hawaiian man standing butt naked on a surfboard. Or a “current” head shot for a woman clearly taken back in the 1970s, accompanied by halter dress and Vaseline filter. Or a cheerful blonde who, for some unknown reason, posed with a cooking ladle.