The Lighting Guy...
I studied media at university (look where it got me! yay!)...

Anyway, final year we had to make a film and split up into groups to do so. Of course there was one guy that no one wanted to work with (three years worth of stories, too much to mention) so he got stuck with us.

Now here I am about to reveal a theory I have about some as yet undiscovered chromosomal anomoly. We all know, or are acquainted with people who resemble oafs. I don't mean in a lovely huggable way, I'm talking oversized and overweight, strangely out of proportion bodies, beady psycho eyes, big jaws and advancing hair-lines. These are by no means the only symptoms, but the most prominent.

So, this guy that was thrust unwillingly upon us, was an oaf. And he stank, and was a prick.

So we're shooting the film and one scene takes place in a public toilet, a small badly ventilated public toilet. Packed with some very high wattage lights to set the scene. This toilet was hotter than Granny's gusset at a Tom Jones concert.

And the Oaf was working in there to get the lighting right for several hours, did I mention he was a perfectionist with a demented and skewed idea of perfection? Needless to say, when we all ventured in to start shooting, we were in for an olfactory shock.

Our dear Oaf smelled at the best of times, mainly BO but with tinges of mildew from his questionable (and not very varied) wardrobe, and occasionally, the hint of faeces (you know, like just the tip was poking our and massaging the crusty cotton of his underkeks).

I've never been subjected to a condition that I couldn't get used to, or at least bare for the greater good. Admittedly I am quite sheltered, but have been in my fair share of farty tents and mouldy living rooms.

But this Oaf's odour was bringing tears to my eyes and bile to my throat, and the longer I stayed in there, the worse it got.

Extra sweat, sweaty mouldy re-activated mildew and seven shades of jobby smell, from dry and crusty, through to moist and maleable.

We kept trying to all be in there and get the scene done how it needed to be, but none of us could stand the stench for long enough to switch the camera on and we wound up making excuses to run outside and breathe something other than fetid man-Oaf stench.

In the end we just let Oaf have 'creative control' over the whole scene and subjected our poorly paid actor to the odour while we stood around outside airing our clothes.

Still made the film though. And it got the highest mark of that year and the five years previous, along with the only lecturers comment I have ever been proud of.

"At times I thought your group dynamic so destructive that I am surprised you managed to produce a film at all, let alone one this good"

Length? It was eleven minutes of pure sh*t, but it seemed like a good idea at the time.
(lessmiserable, Fri 23 Mar 2007, 13:32, Reply)