Chapter Five
She woke up feeling less refreshed than she would have hoped, and wishing she’d gone to bed earlier, but after a shower and a cup of coffee in her room, she was dressed, refreshed, and ready to start the day, staring into the mirror and giving herself a mental pep talk. She was nervous as hell now, of course, and didn’t have a clue what to expect. She’d woken herself up with plenty of time so that she could get ready, and now all she had to do was wait.
Eventually, she wandered down to the lobby for her ride, which arrived promptly at 7:30am, which was her call time according to the schedule she’d been given. She hadn’t had time to eat, so she hoped she’d be able to get breakfast on set.
“I’m Tim,” the driver smiled as he leaned over and opened the passenger door for her to jump inside.
“I’m Ashleigh,” she smiled back as she got in, the two of them shaking hands.
“Yes, you are our new runner.” He grinned as they set off, immediately hitting some LA traffic, which wasn’t exactly a surprise. “Welcome to the team.”
“Thank you very much. I’m really excited.”
“It should be a good shoot,” he nodded. “We did have a runner initially but he found out his girlfriend was pregnant and quit, that’s why we advertised for a new one last-minute.”
“Ah, I see. Well, it’s a great opportunity for me, I’m thankful for it,” gushed Ashleigh.
Tim seemed like a nice enough guy, and the two of them chatted for most of the journey to the studio. He asked her where she was from, whether she’d done this kind of thing before, and in turn answered a lot of her questions about his work.
It turned out he was a permanent employer of Romero Films and one of their unit drivers for all the shoots. As such, he spent a lot of his time behind a wheel, ferrying people back and forth.
“Ah, I did wonder if I’d be doing that kind of thing,” smiled Ashleigh.
“Well, you might be once we start on the location shoots. We’ll need all hands on deck then, getting the actors to and from the locations. Guys like me normally move to transporting gear and equipment at that stage, and leave the actor liaisons to the runners.”
Ashleigh nodded along with interest, taking it all on board and feeling like she was learning so much already.
It took them about thirty minutes to reach the studio what with all the traffic. Tim rolled down the window, leaned out, and flashed his pass, then the large electronic doors were opened by the security guy who gave them both a little wave as they rode on past, finding a space to park over by the main entrance.
“Follow me,” Tim said as he got out. “I’ll walk you inside and introduce you to Sally, then she’ll take over. I gotta go pick up someone else.”
Ashleigh followed him, clutching at her shooting schedule nervously and looking around her as they stepped inside the studio.
It just looked look like a long, endless corridor with rooms on either side.
As they walked past each room, she heard the hum of activity from inside behind the closed doors, and noticed all the doors had labels – Studio A, Studio B, makeup, costume, special FX, dressing room A, dressing room B, C, and D, kitchen, green room, office A, office B, then finally, Production Office.
It was this door they stopped at, and Tim raised his hand to knock.
“Come in,” someone called from inside.
It was a brightly lit, large room with a big window overlooking the parking lot, and included five large desks, three of which were currently empty.
The two occupants of the room, one male, one female, both looked up as she and Tim walked in, the woman standing with a smile on her face and stepping forward, offering out her hand in greeting.
“You must be Ashleigh.”
Ashleigh smiled and clasped her hand. “Yeah, I am.”
“I’m Sally, 3rd assistant director. The one who you’ve been e-mailing.”
“That’s right. So nice to meet you in person, finally.” Ashleigh felt her heart race with nerves, but everyone seemed really nice so far, and it was helping her relax a little.
“You too. And this is Julio, 2nd AD,” she indicated the man sat down, who raised his hand and waved.
“Hi there,” he grinned.
“Hey,” replied Ashleigh.
“Right, I’m off,” interjected Tim, giving a quick nod to everyone in the room. “See you all in a bit.” And with that, he disappeared down the corridor again, leaving Ashleigh alone with Sally and Julio.
“This is the Production Office,” Sally explained, pointing out the different desks for the 1st AD, director, and producer. Then she led her out into the corridor and gave her a full tour of the whole interior, then taking her outside into the little courtyard area where there were several trailers set up, a catering van, and a large double decker ‘dining bus.’
“Those are the lead actors’ trailers. The supporting artists and background artists share dressing rooms inside the main building…the ones we walked past. And we get our meals over there by the bus.”
Ashleigh nodded. She was fairly sure she was going to get lost at some point but she’d soon get used to it.
“And what are my main jobs and responsibilities?” she asked.
“Well, that just depends what we need you to do on the day,” answered Sally. “The cool thing about your job is…you’ll get to do loads of different things. I promise you, you’ll never be bored, and you’ll never be short of something to do. They’re long days, and they’re tiring, but it’ll be worth it.” She gave her a reassuring smile.
“I’m excited to start.”
“Good. Well, the first thing you can start with is getting yourself some breakfast, then come see me back at the office; there’re some phone calls you can make for me, and some scripts I need you to print out and stamp together.”
“Great. Thank you so much.”
And so began Ashleigh’s first day as a runner.
As it happened, she spent most of that first day inside, in one of the offices –not the main production office but a separate one away from everyone else– printing off scripts, stapling them together, making phone calls, cello-taping and preparing envelopes, and doing a load of other admin work. Sally would call in to check on her every hour or so and collect the work that she had done, but other than that she was mostly left to her own devices. When there was something specific or new to be done, Sally would come and tell her. A few times she was asked to go and collect various supporting actors and escort them to their makeup and costume calls, which was fun, as she got to meet them and chat with them about their work and how they’d got into acting, albeit briefly.
At lunchtime, she could go and help herself to food from the catering van whenever she liked, then sit and eat it on the bus. Due to the hectic schedule of filming, Sally hadn’t had a chance to introduce Ashleigh to every single member of the cast and crew, but she had at least met the 2nd AD and 1st AD, the makeup and costume team, the caterers, a couple of the drivers, and some minor cast members.
She initially sat on her own for lunch, but then Marlow and Liz from makeup invited her to join their table and she was grateful of the company, answering much the same questions that Tim had asked her in the car that morning, about her background and how she got into doing this. They both had lots of advice for her, and told her they were sure she’d have a great time working on the movie.
In the evening, there wasn’t an official meal from the van, but cakes and sandwiches were served and passed around all the various offices and departments, then the day’s filming finished at around 7pm.
By the time she was dropped back off at her hotel, it was closer to 8, and Ashleigh was far too exhausted to do anything other than get changed into her PJs and lie on her bed, chilling. She looked at the schedule for the following day and made it an early night. This time, she didn’t have any trouble sleeping.
Her second day on set started much the same as the first. She woke herself up with her alarm, had a shower, made coffee, got dressed, and was picked up by Tim and driven to the set. She spent the morning knocking on dressing rooms to collect actors for their costume and makeup calls. It all got pretty hectic and at one point she was literally running, living up to her job title, dashing from one place to the next, her heart pounding. She was a little stressed, but she was loving every second.
Unfortunately though, she also wasn’t really looking where she was going and neither was the person who was striding down the corridor just as she was dashing out of the costume department.
The two of them collided blindly, and Ashleigh gasped as she felt a sudden scalding warmth.
She glanced down at herself to find her white shirt was covered in a hot, brown liquid.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry. Are you alright?” someone was saying. She felt a hand on her shoulder.
She was still in a bit of shock by the whole experience and more embarrassed by anything, looking up to see who it was she’d bumped into.
Her eyes widened and she let out a gasp, realizing she was face to face with none other than Rico Fernandez himself.
He looked incredibly apologetic and worried, a concerned frown on his beautiful tanned features and holding a now half-empty cup of coffee in one hand, his other still on Ashleigh’s shoulder.
“Are you alright?” he asked again. “I was in a world of my own there, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m so sorry,” she blurted out, even more embarrassed now she realized who it was, and the fact that her white, wet blouse was fast becoming pretty see-through. “I wasn’t looking where I was going either, I was in a rush and–”
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” he interrupted her flustered rambling with a dismissive wave of his hand. “I was the one who threw my coffee all over you.” He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m a clumsy idiot. This may be the first time it’s happened but it probably won’t be the last.” He flashed her a glimpse of his winning smile, his eyes sparkling in the dim lighting of the corridor as the two of them stood there staring at each other.
“O-oh…” Ashleigh didn’t quite know what to say, nor how to react to any of this. She had the urge to say sorry again as she still felt like this was her fault, but she didn’t have chance, as Rico carried on talking.
“Look, if you want, you can take a shower in my trailer and I’ll sort you out with a clean shirt…”
Ashleigh’s eyes widened. Was he really…inviting her back to his trailer? “Are you sure? I…I wouldn’t want to be stealing your clothes…”
He waved his hand. “I always bring a bunch of spare T-shirts and stuff on set with me, it’s not a big deal. You can wash it and give it me back whenever you like.”
“Well uh…if that’s really okay…” She felt like she was blushing so hard her entire face was red. It probably was.
“Of course it is. You can’t walk around all day in wet, coffee-stained clothes, can you now?” He gave her a relaxed, easy smile and turned around, beginning to walk in the other direction, down the corridor and out towards his trailer.
Ashleigh walked at his side, her heart pounding in her ears.
It was the first time she’d even seen Rico wandering around on the set. Yesterday he hadn’t been eating at the same time as her or any of the others. Perhaps he’d still been finishing a scene, or perhaps he gets his meals delivered to his trailer for privacy.
A couple of people nodded and smiled, or exchanged brief words with him as they made their way across the courtyard to the little area where the leading actors’ trailers were.
Ashleigh hadn’t even been to this section yet. It wasn’t her job to go and collect the lead actors. Sally did that. She supposed she wasn’t well trusted enough to do it yet, which was fair enough. It was only her first week on the job. Perhaps she could build up to it eventually.
“Here we are,” smiled Rico and held open the door for her to step inside.
Swallowing her nerves, Ashleigh did so, and soon they were alone in the quiet of his private trailer.