Survivors' Club - Sick and Tired

There are a lot of days when we film in bad weather - days so hot your eyeballs feel like they're frying, days so cold your hands might fall off, and rain pouring so hard you could almost drown on set. Each month we'll remember one of those horrible weather days and celebrate the survivors who braved the elements in order to film.  Why would we want to remember those days?  Because going through hell on set has a way of bringing everyone closer together when they can say they survived mother nature AND filming on a Yibble set.

SICK AND TIRED

Filming when you feel like crap

There are a lot of very dedicated actors in the company, and they’re willing to film even when they don’t feel very well.  I’m not talking about how you feel with a hangover or after staying up all night (although many people have filmed in both conditions before).  I’m talking about having more then a sniffle or slight cold – like having the flu, running a fever, or losing your voice.  You may think it’s crazy to run around a planetarium with a hundred degree fever and trying desperately to remember your lines while trying not to faint.  Hm…now that I think about it, it does sound kind of crazy.  But that’s what it takes to be an actor on a Sine Fine set – devotion, determination, a good sense of humor and a whole lot of crazy!

Obviously the people who have been in the most productions are likely to have filmed while being sick at some point.  I know Annamarie MacLeod was feeling really ill – the flu I think – when we were filming the Minstrels music scenes in my basement for The King of Elflin’s Daughter.  I could see her losing focus and having trouble remembering lyrics, but she was a real trooper and kept going. 

She also had a bad cold while filming The Stranger for Twisted Tales, but I had the flu and laryngitis that day so I didn’t have as much sympathy as I should have had.  I’m sure there were other shoots where she wasn’t feeling well, but those are the two I remember most.

“I had the flu and fever when filming my scenes for Dream Chasers,” recalls James McKinley.  “I somehow got through the shooting. But I remember leaving for campus after filming was done and we went to Hardee's.

I think the actor who was the most ill while filming has to be Rachel Anderson.  It was hard to schedule a time when both she and the Planetarium were available to film for Mind Games.  We schedule a big shooting day weeks in advance that was just for her scenes in the second half of the script.  When the shooting day arrived Rachel had the flu and was very obviously very ill.

“I was MISERABLE,” Rachel remembers. “I couldn't remember any of my lines, I was in a fog and all I wanted to do was lay down (it didn't help that we were at the Planetarium and by that time I knew all the buttons to push to create a very comfortable napping environment!). I would happily take freezing cold, pouring rain, crazy hot, mosquito infestation, unrelentingly itchy costumes, or a combination thereof over being that sick.”

Yikes!  I am so sorry, Rachel!  I honestly didn’t realize just how sick she was before we started filming that day or I would have canceled it (but once you’re on set you’re not leaving till it’s over I guess.)

So far we’ve talked about filming while having the flu, but there are other kinds of illness that can strike you on the set – or be forced on you in Brittany Ann Whalen’s case. 

When I was preparing for the restaurant scenes in Episode 3 and 4 of The Gift Bearer, I bought juice to use instead of real alcohol (obviously) and just poured it into an empty wine bottle.  The juice I bought was basically the first thing I saw that was kinda cheap, and I thought the name was cute – Juicy Juice. Yeah…apparently this juice is high in sugar and known to cause some…problems with digestion.  Although, to be fair, anyone who has to drink a whole bottle of sugary juice in 2-3 hours is gonna have stomach problems.  

Unfortunately the Peri-gets-drunk scenes were the first on the schedule for the day and by late afternoon we were filming more scenes in the library.  Poor Brittany had to keep ducking out of the shoot and deal with stomach problems the rest of day.  But she kept filming and did a great job.  If I had realized the consequences of drinking that much juice in so short a time then I would have chosen more wisely.

And speaking of stomach problems, there’s was another actor who had serious problems on the set.  Ryan Davis had been filming scenes from Episode 2 of Eidolon all morning when we took a lunch break.  We drove through a fast food restaurant – can’t remember which one – and everyone got lunch, then we headed to the MacLeod Farm to eat it and prep for the rest of the day’s filming. 

Shortly after having lunch, Ryan started to feel nauseous.  I’m pretty sure it was food poisoning because I don’t think he felt sick earlier in the day.  I don’t remember him throwing up on the set, but he might have.  Regardless, the poor guy was so sick that there was no way he could film, so we ended up calling it a day early.  We filmed the rest of the scenes three months later, and luckily no one had any problems with food that day.

And then there’s Morgan Thomas, who found out she had a health problem as a result of an injury on set. 

 “Apparently I had a tumor growing that was missed for over 10 years while filming!” Morgan told me.  “And you know how we found it? Because of Eidolon. During the knife fight scene between Ryan Homberg and I, and I hit the doorknob. Well, I was having consistent pain from that. Went to get an x-ray done. Lo' and behold, there the sucker was, bigger than a softball/grapefruit and pushing my insides to the left and putting pressure on my bruised bone from the scene. That's why I was always so sick.”

Poor Morgan has probably been injured more than anyone else while filming, but since War Wounds is another topic entirely, I’ll post about it later.

And then there’s me.  If I’m not willing to cancel a shoot because someone else is sick, then I sure as hell won’t cancel just because I’m not feeling well.  I am perfectly willing to suffer through the same kind of pain I’m forcing my actors to go through, so maybe I’m not just a sadist but a bit of a masochist as well. Mental illness and breakdowns aside, I have bravely filmed with through horrible sunburn, being literally covered in mosquito bites, and with a sprained ankle. I’ve also filmed when I was sick with the flu and had laryngitis – twice.  

The day we filmed The Stranger for Twisted Tales, I was getting over a bad case of the flu and still had laryngitis, which I am apparently prone too. 

 If an actor had laryngitis, then there’s no way he or she could film and I would have to cancel the shoot.  But I’m the director, and although it’s hard to communicate when you can barely speak I found a way to make it work. 

The worst day of shooting for me – on any set – was by far during a shoot for Episodes 15-19 of Pandora’s Box.  It was the first of two really long days of filming scenes at the Virginia Theater right after Christmas. I had come down with the flu a couple of days before filming and it was still going strong.  But scheduling actors and locations during the two weeks of winter break (since most were still in high school at the time) was so complicated that hell would freeze over before I cancelled it for a silly little thing like me being sick. 

I felt like crap - head in a fog, feverish, and of course I had laryngitis so I sounded like Mickey Mouse on drugs.  And one of the actresses – who was in almost every scene – didn’t show up.  Between scenes I was frantically trying to call her to find out where she was, but got no answer (this was before cell phones). It turns out she was traveling that day (literally on an airplane while we were shooting scenes) and I somehow missed the memo (I'm pretty sure she told me and I just forgot). The scenes on the schedule included her in most of them, so we filmed what we could without her. By the early afternoon it was clear that I was a mess – high fever, dizzy, and feeling faint.  So I did the unthinkable and ended the shoot several hours early, figuring that it was better to go home and get some rest then soldier through the rest of the day.  Besides, we were scheduled to film for 8-9 hours the next day. I went home and took my temperature – it was a 102 – then collapsed.

But even when you feel like crap, you can still enjoy being on set.  Like all of the Survivors’ Club experiences, it kind of makes you feel stronger for having lived through it, and even if it was hell at the time it does make for a very memorable day of filming.

“It was fun filming even if I was sick,” added James. “I remember us getting around the fire just to stay warm and all the funny bloopers that got me through it.”

Quite frankly, given the number of times I’ve forced actors to film in bad weather like cold and rain, you’d think more of them would have ended up deathly ill.  Maybe they did, and I just didn’t know about it. 

Did you ever film when you were sick?  Let me know in the comments.

Thank you to all the people who’ve filmed through sickness and health, for richer or poorer, till death do…oh wait. No. No death please. Thankfully, no matter how bad anyone felt, no one ever fainted and we’ve never had to call an ambulance…yet. 

So to those who have suffered with sickness and filmed with fevers, I thank you and salute you.  You are real troopers.