Zombie flicks must be 'in' these days...not that they were ever really out-of-style.

Oh, I don't mean movies that are about zombies, I mean the ones where the cast and crew are zombified by the shooting schedule.

I shouldn't complain, really; twelve-hour days and strange, wandering schedules are the norm and we're all used to that (and worse). This weekend was just a little tougher than most, but not because of the shoot itself. Partly it was because I had the all-day conference on the Legal Aspects of Film and Video Production during the day...and shoots that ran from shortly before sunset to shortly after dawn during the night, and even more than that it was because of all the time I spent not doing anything.

For the conference, I was mostly doing technical and miscellaneous support stuff, which wasn't really all that demanding, especially once the speakers were set up and running. If I'm giving a talk, I can stay awake and alert forever; it's when I'm sitting there idling in the back when the lack of sleep sneaks up behind me and starts poking me repeatedly in the back.

I finish up at the conference and get off to the shoot, where the call time is 7:00PM. No problem...except it wasn't until 3:00AM that there was anything to do...at which point I felt I was feeling tired and out-of-it enough that I felt that I couldn't blow anybody up safely. Killing the actors is generally frowned upon even in low-budget productions and I'm pretty sure it's against union rules. Worst of all, though, it doesn't look "real" to the audience.

But since the scenes that didn't involve explosives had been finished up on Saturday night, on Sunday evening everybody was ready to go. That made it a lot easier to stay awake and alert...and best of all, though we worked through the night until after the sun was coming up, there was not a single misfire or even the slightest timing problem with any of the explosives. Whew!

Which all comes back to what we learned from the movies that are intentionally zombie flicks: non-zombies are much easier to shoot than the walking undead.

So now I'm supposed to look like I'm being eletrocuted.

Several years ago, in an incident involving a large neon sign transformer, I actually did manage to get 12,000 volts and a fair amount of current going through my chest, but there are a couple of obvious drawbacks to using this approach for film: 1) it's actually quite uncomfortable, especially if you have to do several takes, and 2) like many real effects, it doesn't look real enough on film. So, this time the neon sign transformer stayed in the garage.

On the other hand, I'd heard about bodybuilders using a high dose of niacin (vitamin B3) before a contest; it's supposed to make your skin flush and your veins stand out. (It has to be straight niacin; "no flush" niacin or niacinamide doesn't have this effect.) I'd never tried it myself, but I figured that this might be an interesting use for this particular supplement. Fortunately, I took the precaution of doing a test run beforehand. Unfortunately, taking a hefty dose of niacin didn't do a thing for making my veins stand out or otherwise creating any cinematically interesting effects. The only thing that it did do was to give a blotchy appearance to my upper thighs for about half an hour.

Which, I'm sure must have some use, somehow. Maybe that could have been the dastardly schtick of one of the adversaries in the live-action version of "The Tick." Just imagine: "stand back or I shall be forced to make my upper thighs look blotchy!"

...no? Well, okay, maybe I'll come up with some useful application for my remaining niacin tablets. Stay tuned.

But speaking of niacin, or at least of subjects wholly unrelated thereto, I was just running a logfile analysis program and noticed a significant upward trend in people doing searches for naked pictures of me(!). Why anyone would do this, I certainly don't know. The first theory that comes to mind is that we are getting closer to Halloween, so perhaps people are just starting to be on the lookout for new experiences in horror (especially right now, with my frightening cyclist-tan produced by my regular use of biking shorts).

However, a goodly proportion of these are coming from Asia lately, and I don't know how widely Halloween is celebrated in that continent. I suppose I could find out, but in the meantime we'll just have to puzzle over this for a while longer.

...or a green-head (grunette?), maybe, depending on how it all works out.

This hair thing is tough; one week I'm supposed to be platinum blonde, the next I'm supposed to have dark hair ("and, while you're at it, could you quick grow some facial hair, too?")

On the plus side, I do have fairly cooperative facial follicles. They've been known to sprout hair even when they haven't been asked to do so.

So here I am, resorting to the powers of Clairol "Loving Care" level one colorant. Personally, I'm not at all sure why they call it "Loving Care." Well, I guess you have to be careful not to get it on everything else in the area, but I missed the part about how painting your head is supposed to be loving. In this case, it's not so much "loving" as it is merely "brown." But, brown it is, and so the director is happy. Now, the label claims that it's good for six to twelve shampoos. In reality, its functional life is limited to just two or three, at which point it fades to subtle greenish highlights. Definitely a pain and a half from a continuity standpoint for any long or complicated shoots--at least for anyone with reasonable standards of personal hygiene--but in this case I only had two days separated by a little less than a week to worry about.

The most troublesome part was during some last-minute rehearsal the night before when the hair stuff was still pretty fresh. I think they really need to include some appropriate cautionary notice on the package: "WARNING: This Product may be unsuitable for people who sweat." Uh-oh; that would include me, you see...or at least you would have seen if you'd been watching the dark brown rivulets of sweat running down my face. I'm sure it's a great effect for something, but I can't think of what that something might be right at the moment.

It's a good thing I wasn't wearing a light-colored shirt. Of course, even if it did stain, at least it would have been stained lovingly.