Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Ten Women. Two Days. Toffee.

I managed to have an adventure a few weeks ago. I did a two day industrial shoot for a product that shall remain nameless. The shoot was set up in a single family home - the family was away in Africa on vacation, we were told, and although they left behind the furniture and most of the furnishings, there was very little clutter, which made it seem like a model home and which led me to suspect some of their personal belongings had been moved off site while a film crew invaded their home. The shoot was set up like a gathering at someone's home, with a total of ten women involved.

Now, I could detail the shoot, and how much waiting around there was, and how the catered lunches were wonderful and how it was a really fun experience to be paid for being an actor, put up in a hotel room and given per diem and things like that. I could talk about that, but what was really fascinating was the people! However, I may have crippled my ability to do so, because the first day involved a massive, massive error on my part:

Ten women are wandering through the upstairs, lounging on the beds, examining the furniture, and generally making small talk to move the day along. (This could be the beginning of a fabulous murder mystery.) One of these women has her laptop out, which leads to a desultory discussion of blogs and websites (we range from "I update my blog everyday" to "I never could see the point of having an email address until very recently....computers are greek to me"), and I say, "I have a blog, but it's not a big deal. I think maybe three people read it."

"What's the address?" she asks, perky and interested.

And I told her. As well as a couple of other people who were in the room and who asked later.

Now, that's not a huge problem. But for the most part, I have been content with my small virtual space where I could say what I wanted and no one would be looking. I'm not so obnoxious as to imagine any of those women are checking this page regularly, but the very idea that they COULD, that they might stumble back upon it, leads me to an unhappy conclusion.

I can't write down exactly what I thought about it all. Because it's work, and I could run into these people again, and it's unwise to bite the hand that feeds. Not that I have much to say in the negative column, but I can't even make fun of them! It would be rude!

So I've been stymied as to how to talk about my adventure, because I have to come up with a edited way of approaching it.

I'm beginning to see why so many people turn to fiction.

2 comments:

tokyocrunch said...

I'm confused, Els -- are these the women you were telling me about who you thought were were a catty herd of self-absorbed tarts? Same ones?

elsbeth said...

No....I was talking about your mother and sister when I said that...I see where you get it from.