Filming the Short for Bite
...took place this Saturday just gone and gathered in a warehouse/studio in Dalston were a number of people from the London Vampyre Group, a film crew and other cast members and director and author of Bite, Kevin Jackson, due for release early October.
I must admit to running late, having realised I forgot my most important of accessories which I turned back to get...but there was much to do and be filmed and various solos were underway when I arrived so I just had to make the quick change into my vampyre persona as some of my scenes were scheduled to be filmed soon.
The studio, it has to be said, didn't look so impressive but the vampire scenes were all filmed against an black background and it was good to see some film magic take place before your eyes as there were monitors around where various people could watch the action. Against this background, with the addition of lighting and smoke, the scenes all looked very eerie and unreal from some of the stills I have seen....I hope I can get some of them soon to post.
There were a lot of people around and lots of cameras and kit. I got better acquainted with movie cameras, not having much experience with them really, and one of the cameramen gave men a bit of a talk on it. Must admit to being impressed with the calibre of people around there and everyone was really great, interesting people, there was a good vibe around the place and having lots of vampyre friends around the day was mostly banter and fun even when down to the serious business of shooting. I've been warned film sets can be boring, as you spend ages sitting around until you are needed, but the time seemed to fly by and it was interesting to watch even when you weren't needed - great to see friends transformed and look really eerie....I'll name a few friends who were there who you may know Rebecca (Miss Mordred -The Vampyre Queen) and handmaidens Louisa and Nancy (of the esteemed LVG committee), Vampyre Footsoldiers were Nick ( chaoscowboy) and Paul Ewan (he of many faces and arguably more outfits) also Martin was taking stills.
I had a few sequences to perform in, and couple of group shots, and the one which had me most worried was a dancing sequence where I was supposed to waltz with an 'innocent mortal victim' before bringing her over to the dark side. Problem is I can’t waltz and, despite having some instruction, still can’t! It turned out ok though, seemed an actual attempt at a waltz was too cumbersome to make the scene so just had to make some much simplified dancing movements and spinning around until we were both dizzy! I was reassured that the sequences looked great, despite not having seen them myself, transformed again by movie magic. The scene which needed the most takes, which sounded the simplest, was a bit of hand acting where I had to take the hand of the Innocent Mortal and gently lead her to the dark side! All the vampire roles were non-speaking roles as our scenes are supposed to be surreal and suggestive and it's a film short anyway so there is no big dialogue in there anyway.
Anyway, it was fun, good to try my hand at something a bit different...I'd like to do more acting, I did tread the boards in my youth but that was an age ago and the best thing about getting involved with projects like these is getting invited along to launch parties of which there are two, one for the book and one for the film short - to be held at the Halloween V&A late on 30th October