Possibly the coolest production still of me ever

In October 2013 I was involved in a green screen short Shudder. Just the making of it was a mammoth task, I had auditioned for it in April last year and then Rob Ride the director and Tom Booth the producer had locations switched, a huge crew to assemble and then of course there was the makeup/costume issues of us all looking as if we were war photographers in Syria.

After the shoot was cancelled in the summer they ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to raise money to feed the cast and crew something other than porridge with one of the coolest awards being ‘Master Of Explosions’

I got to do a Bruce Willis, basically striding through bullets and explosions looking unperturbed. So much fun. I was actually in the Air Training Corps as a teenager as I wanted to be a fighter pilot so I used to love getting covered in cam gear and crawling through the undergrowth, shooting rifles and indeed I have flown a Spitfire (dual control) but pretending to be a hardened war photographer was crazy fun.

Even the fact that our 5.30am call time had us being covered in mud and dirt by Julie Cooper and her hardy team of makeup artists. Having MUDD face mask applied as my base foundation and coconut oil smeared in my hair was interesting. It was a weekend shoot and I was in the middle of a run of a play ‘Unrelated as well. So I had come off stage at 10.15pm both Friday and Saturday night and was up super early to shoot. But I loved it, this is why I am an actress, I love acting, the creative teams, the crazy projects, the acting and even the damp muddy clothes I was made to wear at 6am. The more ambitious the project the better 😉

Even my audition was a trip, Rob said ‘I will clap my hands once and you are getting shot in the leg, again and you will be shot in the chest and then can you die!’

Rob Ride has had this idea since film school in Australia where he and Tom studied together and the short will be probably another 6 months in post. Rob has worked on the Harry Potter movies on the visual fx so you know that his world building skills are amazing.

I can’t wait to see the finished product but this still is the first released, I am at the right almost camouflaged against the wall. I gather the film is being rotorscoped- which apparently is what they did on the Disney films, drawing on each frame so it will be a painstaking task of love.

This photo alone is worth the memory of Tom Booth waiting to drive me, completely covered in dust and mud at 5.15pm  at the end of my scene to his girlfriends house to trash her bathroom in an effort to get the mud out of me and my hair so I could then travel from Mile End to South Kensington to be on stage looking poised and well groomed for a 7.30pm opening!

Shudder production still Marysia Trembecka