"WHAT KIND OF cameras are you hoping to use?" Mr. Randolph asked us on Thursday.
"...whatever they'll give us?" I said hesitantly.
"Just on videotape?" he asked.
"Well... it would probably be really cool if we could do it on real film," I admitted to him. In the last week I had looked up every resource at our school library, the town's public library, and Amy and I had even gotten her mom to drive us into Albuquerque to look in their main branch to try and decide how to do things.
"Wouldn't that be expensive?" he asked me. I don't think he thought I had a clue what I was talking about.
"Yes, it will be," I said. "But I'm hoping we'll have some people come through for us today. When we were at the film festival everyone was offering to help us out if we wanted to do anything else... we're just trying to take them up on that. Amy and I are hoping they'll help us out," I answered him honestly.
He gave us a dubious look and let us head off to the lab where we had adopted a computer as our own. Amy and I hadn't slept a lot the last couple nights, but our page total was nearing sixty-five already. We were proud of ourselves for making it that far, but we had at least another twenty-five pages, and we wanted to finish it today. That was our goal. I had to work hard on not breaking down during that part of the script that we were working on though. We were already to a part where the three boys were tracking the protagonists down.
The heroine, her name was Allie – after my doll, had just looked up as the boys came around a bend in the ravine they were in. Amy and I focused all our energy that day to finishing the script. We were able almost get to the end during English. I was shaking a bit during band while I thought about how some of the scenes felt way too familiar. The boys ended up attacking Allie, not a lot, but some, before the one nerdy boy got together his 'MacGyver' like skills and got her free.
After dance practice we headed to Amy's house, hoping to finish up the rough-draft of the script as I stayed the night. During dinner her dad said, "I got a message for you two today," he said.
"Oh really?" Amy asked.
"Yeah, Lilly from Mattel called and said you'd called her about your project?" He looked clueless - apparently, we hadn't filled him in. We did really quickly and he nodded. "Anyway, she said that Mattel would be happy to provide you with the money to rent cameras, film, microphones, and developing of the film for a share of any proceeds." He added the last part. That began a discussion with him about the legal ramifications of the help we'd asked for.
"Okay girls, I need to talk to them again tomorrow and hash out some of this. Do you almost have your script done to fax to this Mr. Spencer?"
"We're hoping to finish tonight," I told him.
"Good, I want you two to do that and see if you can get your English teacher to proof-read it tomorrow. It would be a good thing if we can fax it to him Saturday. In the meantime, I'm going to call and talk to him myself tomorrow."
The project seemed to take on a new immediacy at that point. Amy and I worked till midnight that night so that we could finish it off. It came to ninety-six pages total, and we both felt like it was going to be awesome! As I lay in bed that night, I dreamt at first of the film making, how much fun it would be... but sometime in the night the dreams changed to nightmares again. I woke up at three in the morning drenched in sweat and alone in my room. I walked into my bathroom and paced in my bedroom for several minutes before trying to sleep again. 'This is getting old real fast,' I thought to myself.
The morning came far too early after that, and I had trouble staying awake at breakfast. Melanie saw that I was way more tired than Amy and I think she suspected that I'd been up again last night. She gave me a hug before we got out of the car asking, "Are you going to make it today, Tiff?"
"I'm going to try," I told her. She gave me a worried look and let me go on into the school with Amy. In Mr. Randolph's class we asked him, "May we go give our script to Ms. Damien to look over today?"
"May I see a copy of it too?" He asked.
Amy looked at me and said, "Sure, we made a couple copies last night," she told him. Her parents' printer had not been happy with us, and just printing four copies had taken all night as far as we could tell. We had put brads into them to hold the copies together. One of the books I'd read had said that it was the traditional way of sending our scripts. Amy and I had been learning a lot of stuff through the books we'd checked out. It seemed that the more we learned, the more excited we became. As we handed him the monstrosity, he looked at us as though we were aliens.
"You did this in one week?" he asked incredulously.
"Uh-huh," I nodded and smiled in a way that caused Amy and Ashley to giggle.
"Okay, go take another copy to Ms. Damien, I'm going to read through it today as well."
The four of us from that class walked up to Ms. Damien's classroom which was upstairs and in another wing of the school. "Hey ladies and Kyle," she said to us as she looked up from her desk. I noticed that everyone in that class was busy reading silently out of our English textbooks.
"Hi Ms. Damien," we said softly. "We're bringing you the script. Do you think you could try to proofread it today?"
"Probably, how long... is it...?" She asked while gasping as Amy and I handed her the giant document. She gave us a similar look of disbelief, but it faded faster because she knew Amy and I well enough to know we were capable of just about anything.
"Wow..." she said as she began reading it right away in front of us just to skim it. "I don't know that I'll be able to get through all of this today..." she said, "but I'll do my best," she added. She signed the pass that we'd used to come to her class and the four of us returned to Mr. Randolph's class.
While we had been gone, he had become absorbed in reading the script. He barely noticed that we were back at first. "Amy, Tiffany, you two really wrote this?" he asked as he had just finished up about page twenty.
We nodded.
"This is incredible. I'm going to talk with Ms. Damien about what else we can do to help you all."
"Oh, Mr. Randolph?" Ashley said excitedly, almost interrupting him.
"Yes Ashley...?"
"Is it too early to turn our research paper in?" She asked.
He stammered for a second, "Why don't we consider this a rough draft and I'll take a look at it..." Again, he gave the four of us a look like we were aliens. While our group, plus David and Nikki, had been working hard, the vast majority of the had made almost no progress on their projects. It was hard for them to imagine what we were doing. For the rest of the day our group gathered in any spare moment and looked over the script. We began making lists of things that we would need such as props, costumes, equipment, and likely candidates for some of the filming locations.
The fact we weren't sitting idle that day when she entered the classroom to start class was not missed by Ms. Damien. She spent some time talking to us for a bit while the rest of the class just read their assignment silently from their books. "Here," she said at the end. "I managed to get through the script... you all owe me lunch," she said with a wink. "I could hardly eat lunch because it was such an interesting read!"
Amy and I rifled through the pages and found red ink on most of them, it wasn't quite oozing out like blood though. "Oh and Mr. Randolph gave me this copy to give back to you," she said. His too was marked up some, but more from the history and story point of view. "I think this could be a really awesome project, but how are you going to do it? Won't you need a lot of equipment?" she asked.
"Well, we heard back from the lady who is the head of the Barbie division at Mattel yesterday," Amy told her. We watched her eyes grow wide as Amy continued, "Anyway, Lilly seemed to think that Mattel would be willing to supply us with the money for renting cameras, paying for film, and all of that as long as they got a portion of profit down the road. They bought our other film, so she thinks they'll want to do the same this time."
"Incredible," was all she could mutter.
"We also need to fax a copy of this to a professional film producer we met who was interested in helping out. I think he's going to at least help us get setup with equipment maybe..."
"That's cool," she replied to us. The bell rang before we could talk anymore. Amy put both of the copies safely in her bag for us to take home.
We didn't have dance practice after school, but I had to go to see Doctor Reynolds. She spent a lot of time asking me about my nightmares. I was embarrassed to do it, but I shared with her the worst of them from the past week. I was crying through most of the session feeling like a total baby. As we drove back home afterwards, I was beginning to wonder what the point of it was, I felt worse than I had before I'd gone.
Mom and Dad took me to see a movie with Amy that night. I was grateful for Amy's presence. Her presence seemed to keep my parents from asking too many questions. Mom had sat outside of the office for most of the session, so she really didn't know what was going on every night. I'd been too self-conscious to share the information with her myself, even though I knew Doctor Reynolds must have afterwards. The movie was pretty good, but I wished that Kyle had been there to hold my hand like he had at the movie a few weeks before.
At home the two of us opened up our script on the computer and began making the changes that Mr. Randolph and Ms. Damien had suggested. Almost all of them from Mr. Randolph made the story better and more believable, while Ms. Damien saved us from spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors that might make things tougher to work with. That night Mom sent us both to bed early with warnings that she wouldn't let us stay together for a week if we didn't sleep. We both thought that would be impossible, but did as we were told because we were 'good little girls,' as Amy called us. Neither of us would really disobey our parents, so much so that we both had our own jokes about it.
When morning came, I was glad Mom had sent us to bed earlier rather than later. Coach Holt worked us close to death that morning. By the time we got to the afternoon I was sure we were going to die. During a break six of us lay down on the gym floor with our heads next to each other and legs going out like wheels on a spoke. One of the girls said, "This is the last Saturday of this... right?"
"Next Saturday is State," I told her... "Though I suppose if we didn't make finals, she could make us do all of this that day anyway..."
I heard a groan next to me from Ashley. "Please don't give her any ideas Tiffany! She's evil enough on her own."
"What are you saying, Tiffany, that could possibly make me more evil?" I head a maniacal laugh and saw Coach giving us a demonic look.
"Nothing Coach Holt..." the other five said next to me in unison.
With that everyone started laughing and she got us all working on the routines some more. At three she had us get dressed in our jazz outfits and work on each other's hair and makeup for our four o'clock performance. In addition to the audience, Ashley's dad had his studio send a camera crew. The town's newspaper also had a reporter there to write an article. Just before we did our jazz routine the newspaper reporter had us pose for a photo. Coach Holt introduced us a few minutes later and we came onto the floor just like we were going to for the competitions. When we were all set, Coach Holt started the music for us.
As soon as it started, I focused just like I knew I had to, moving deliberately to every pose. At the end of the routine, the forty or so people in the audience gave us a big cheer. I had a smile on my face from the moment we entered, just as Coach had drilled us, but the enthusiastic crowd made that easy. As soon as we finished, and the applause diminished, she signaled and we hurried into the locker room to put on the unitard set for the pom-pom routine. Coach Holt followed us into the locker room and times us at that point, loudly counting down from five minutes. Amy and I were the first done somehow in three minutes, the other girls fell in behind us to go back in quickly.
"Good job ladies," she said with a smile as she led us back out to the gym. The pom routine to me seemed a lot harder. There were times when you put the poms down, times when you were jumping, and I felt that we must have been pushing the rules to the very edge with some of our more difficult moves. At the end when we were in our final pose, there were two girls behind me with their poms at different angles and mine were horizontal, I felt like we were in good shape for the next week. Once again, the audience applauded and we left off the floor to have cake and ice cream with our parents. Coach Holt made us change first though.
"Great job Tiffany," Mom said as she gave me a big hug. My grandparents had come too and they also gave me hugs. It ended up being a fun afternoon that led up to Amy and I having to stay at our own homes that night.
After my grandparents left, I found myself sitting on my dad's lap for some reason. "You know you're getting way too tall for this," he told me as he hugged me tight.
"I'm not tall," I told him, "but I hope I get taller," I replied with a tired smile. It was a comment that only a twelve-year-old girl could say and have it make sense - and only after a day of exhausting dance practice! I felt safe in his arms though, so I stayed there. He switched me from one knee to another after a bit since his leg had gone to sleep.
"Okay Tiffany, my legs can't take this anymore," he said softly. But I was asleep. He gently carried me to my room, and Sunday morning I couldn't remember having had a nightmare that night.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON OUR group met together at Amy's house to try and plan how we were going to do the film. Amy's dad had faxed a copy of the script to Robert Saturday morning, and I hoped he would be able to come through for us. "Won't film be kind of hard to know how we're doing?" Ashley asked.
"What do you mean?" David asked back.
"It takes a while for it to get developed. My dad says there's a place in Albuquerque that can do it, but we have to drive it over there each day and we won't get it back until the next day at least." In addition to managing the TV station that he worked at, Ashley's dad had worked in the film industry for a while. "Not to mention he said we'd probably need to go to one of the movie theaters to watch it..."
"So, does he think we have to use the same kind of cameras we used before?" I asked her. Our project had looked good before, but you could tell the difference between it and a normal film. It seemed to me with as much work as we were doing that we might as well do it the hard way and do it right.
"He said it would be easier..." she said and there was a pause in our conversation.
"How about this?" I started, "Why don't we wait and see if Mr. Spencer comes through for us. If he's willing to come out and help us, or maybe he gets a professional camera crew to help us then we'll use real film? Otherwise, we'll get them to rent some cameras with the digital BetaCam setup again," I looked around at them and they all nodded.
"That seems okay," Ashley agreed.
"Where are we going to get actors?" Amy asked.
"Well why don't we use you, Nikki or Ashley, Kyle and David as the main characters," I suggested.
"And what are you going to be doing?" Amy asked.
"Playing with the cameras," I said with a smile. It met with some resistance at first, Ashley and Nikki didn't like the idea of being on camera, but eventually Nikki was talked into it.
"What about the other three main characters?" Nikki asked.
"I bet I can get Jake and Anthony..." David said.
"And I know a couple other guys we can ask," Kyle added.
"Well let's get them asked so we can get clothing sizes... we're going to need to start working on costumes," Ashley said excitedly. That was what she had really wanted to do, we'd figured that out during her battle with Nikki on who would be in the film.
"I'll pin them down this week," he assured us.
"We should probably start working on a calendar up for this," I said a bit later.
"Yeah," Amy said. She ran into the kitchen and brought a calendar off of her refrigerator.
The six of us worked determinedly together for the next couple hours setting a tentative calendar of when we were filming. After the first weekend of February everyone was free for a couple weekends before track season started... it seemed like the ideal time to work on filming.
"So, we'll schedule the filming for the school scenes during this week?" Kyle suggested, pointing at the calendar. He had given us the idea to actually take the script and schedule each of the sections on certain days. It worked out that we could finish by the end of February and have all of March to put it together.
"Yeah... someone should probably talk to Mrs. Henry about that..." I thought aloud.
"I'll do it," Nikki offered.
"Thanks Nikki..." I was sure I was the person who knew her the best in the group, but just because I knew her the best didn't mean I wanted to be the one to talk to her!
We had just about seen everyone off when the phone rang. Amy ran to get it and said, "Tiffany, get on the other line!"
I picked up and heard, "I think she's on now Mr. Spencer," I got excited.
"Yes, I'm here," I said calmer than I felt.
"I called because I'm looking at the script you girls wrote and I'm really amazed by it!" he said to us. He sounded a little excited actually. "I don't know if you remembered our conversation at the film festival but the Mattel executives and I were in agreement that a film written and produced by average twelve and thirteen-year old's would be dynamite... and I think this has potential to be that and more..." he talked with us for a while and we motioned Amy's dad to get on the phone after a bit, and was joined by her mother too. "So, here's my idea... I have plenty of cameras, dollies, sound equipment, and such from the studio that I can offer you guys for use. I talked to Lilly at Mattel and they're willing to front the cash for the film and processing... I'll get you the equipment and a few camera operators to show you how to run things. When are you going to film?" He asked.
We listed off the weeks we'd planned on filming. He listened intently and seemed to jot some notes down before saying, "That's a great shooting schedule," he started, "and I'm free for all but the last day of your filming if you would like me to come give you a hand as well."
"Really?" Amy and I said together excited.
"Hold on for a second Mr. Spencer, before we agree to anything, we're going to need to see a contract for rights and everything."
"Of course, Mr. Hancock, I'll have one of my secretaries fax you something tomorrow?" He suggested.
"That'll work... and if I find it satisfactory, I think this will work out."
"Great! The other thing we need to talk about then is when you're editing it. You said it needed to be done by the end of March, right?" he asked. We said 'yes,' "Well that's pushing it, but I think if you come out here to the studio in L.A. with the kids during their spring break in March, we can get a rough version done. We may need to do some additional work before we think about putting it in the box office."
By the end of the conversation Amy and I were so wound up her parents gave up trying to calm us down. The agreement that was made by the end of the phone call was that all decisions were up to us. Our entire group had agreed to let me be the producer and director for the project, so that really meant the decisions would be up to me. That thought had shivers and nerves tingling up and down my spine as I went to bed. 'Would this be even better than our last film?' I wondered to myself.
'I hope so,' I answered as I drifted to sleep.
THROUGHOUT THE NEXT day Amy and I told all of our friends the exciting news about our project. Mr. Randolph and Ms. Damien both were thrilled by it as well, but being the cautionary adults set up a meeting to talk about it with Mrs. Henry. They scheduled it during seventh period that day when they both had prep periods.
"Hi," she said to all of us as we gathered around the conference table, "Mr. Randolph and Ms. Damien said we should all meet about your project?" she asked.
"We're doing another film," I started off – so much for Nikki doing the talking to her.
After about twenty minutes of questions and answers she said, "I don't see any problem with it, but I do think there needs to be a release form signed by whoever participates," she directed that towards Ms. Damien and Mr. Randolph.
"I think we can come up with something," Ms. Damien told her.
"Just keep me up to date with stuff, I don't see any problems with it," she told us finally at the end of the meeting. We finished just in time to head to dance practice after school, but I was glad to have that meeting over with. The less time I spent in the office, the better. The rest of the week we spent time lining up places to film outside of the school. We decided to use Amy's house, Ashley's house, and finally my grandparents' ranch as the other main locations.
The casting call process was the other thing that took up a large part of our week. We decided to see who else might be interested in acting in the film, and held auditions. Amy, Kyle, David, and Nikki stayed in their roles, but we also added in three boys and several teachers to play the adults. My grandparents were even going to be playing a small part in the film.
With all of that figured out, we took a trip into Albuquerque and hit some thrift stores for clothes for the characters. Amy and Nikki already had outfits that would work, but Kyle needed geekier clothes. David and the other guys also needed clothes to match their characters. Amy and I were so excited about this project that we were actually disappointed when we had a snow day that Thursday. We'd been planning on working on making some props that day. Coach Holt called us at lunch time and asked that all of us go ahead and come in for a practice at two-thirty though.
Amy and I had been playing in the snow most of that day, making snowmen with the foot of snow that had fallen overnight. That meant we were already tired when we got to practice. I noticed most of the girls looked to have done the same thing. It had been the first real snowfall that winter. We forced ourselves to give Coach Holt a good practice though, since it would be our last before State the next day.
AtAmy's house that night the two of us fidgeted nervously about the house. Neitherof us could calm down for bed. My last memory was still being up at two in themorning and looking at the alarm clock that was set to wake me in four hours. Whensleep eventually came my nightmares returned as they usually did when I wasstressed, but these were the normal silly kind, like finding myself nakedduring the performance the next day...
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