More Than Meets The Eye

More Than Meets The Eye -2-

Sitting in the dressing room she shared with two others, Autumn stared at herself in the mirror. Her hair was bunched up into perfect curls that framed her face and her skin was powdered with foundation until she held a sickly pale colour. It was uncomfortable, having all this artificial muck across her face but it was necessary for her to act and get paid.

That was her goal. Act, get paid, move out and live happily ever after.

Happily ever after? She snorted quietly to herself. This was the real world; nobody lived happily ever after.

“Hey Autumn, we need to be out there in fifteen minutes,” one of her co-stars told her with a wry, tired smile. “You look perfect as always.”

Autumn shook her head and smiled modestly. “You’re the Prom Queen in this, Jenna; you look perfect.”

Jenna shrugged, flicking her dirty blonde hair over her shoulder and sighed. “And Solomon is going to be there, screaming his head off at me, telling me that I’m not perfect enough.”

“Not just you,” Opal reminded with a frown and applied lipstick. “I am his date, of course.”

Normally the set would have hired people to do the makeup and hair for all the actors but because this was still a small and closed set after they were robbed, the director didn’t want to risk any undercover tabloids to strip their dressing room again.

Opal frowned, her peach coloured gown looking quite uncomfortable to sit in. She fluffed her brown curls, winking her blue eyes at them mischievously. “I think I forgot some of my lines. I’m out early to rehearse.” She saluted, flashing a brilliant pearly-white smile and stepped down, with her skirts and script bunched up in her hands.

“Poor girl,” both Autumn and Jenna chorused and giggled.

“But you’re the Prom Queen and Solomon will be fighting over you in it,” Autumn said with an eye roll.

“But he’s only on the Prom Court and he’s supposed to be Opal’s date,” Jenna pointed out smugly. “I’m surprised she doesn’t knee him where it counts when she’s holding his arm!”

Autumn laughed. “I’m surprised too!”

Grabbing her script, she quickly ran over her lines once more. Autumn played the role of a girl named Hailey Prince, a shy young girl who overcame her timid behaviour. She was the quiet friend of popular girl Jenna and the entire season they were filming for had been about how the leads, Jenna and Kendall’s characters, were parted after Kendall was knocked into a coma after a brutal gang fight. His injuries were so bad that they had to put him into a drug-induced coma to fix him up but something had gone wrong and now he had to come out of the coma by himself.

Honestly, Autumn thought it was a little cheesy but she loved how everything revolved and was based around a thriller and mystery story. She couldn’t wait to see the faces of the series’ fans when they found out the major surprise in the end!

After all, they had worked incredibly hard to finish the first part with success and without as much trouble with Solomon as possible . . . even if they had to film at five different angles for each of the scenes to get the right shot and that it had taken over a month for one episode. Ridiculous, really.

“All ready?” Jenna smiled, posing in her icy-blue gown with script in hand. Her makeup was perfectly done with the help of Autumn and Opal, her dirty blonde hair straightened from the normal waves that cascaded down her back. A small, glistening diamond pin had been delicately slid into her hair and it perfected her entire appearance.

And yet, all this was for a single episode that had two parts to it. The filming took much longer than it seemed on TV, each scene and part of the episode needing to be shot from at least five different angles and lines repeated numerously, over and over again. Sometimes the lighting was wrong or the character profiles were shot from the best angle and when the director finally found the perfect one, they could stop repeating the lines that had etched into their brains.