The studio was busy.
A few young actors running in and out, trying on different costumes and trying to convince each other what to wear. One of them stumbled over her own feet and was caught by a senior student before she plummeted face first to the ground. Her face turned bright red, and, if it wasn’t for the fact that she was held by the waist in such a way that she looked folded in half, it might have come off as vaguely romantic.
Another group was trying to discreetly eat lunch while squatting off in a corner, but everyone with functioning eyes could see them. That they huddle right under a sign that said, “Do not eat in the studio!” either made the sign seem sarcastic, or the students unfortunately brave.
A few sound engineers were trying to not break down in tears as they couldn’t get the microphones to work. If they only could bother to look around, they would notice the set of power outlets they had plugged into wasn’t even on yet.
Three students were arguing about a scene that no one else cared about yet — they had clearly worked on the script. Were still working on the script. In real time. These literary students had been recruited for this purpose but it would seem three might just be too many chefs for this project — all of them very ambitious and unwilling to admit defeat.
A few students were trying to set up cameras but they seemed oblivious to how these worked and one of them was searching on the web in fear of damaging the borrowed property. Eventually they seemed to agree that it was best to simply carry the equipment during filming, the tripods being stashed away in a dark corner by a student thinking no one saw it.
Several drama students were setting up for the scenes they were at least considering to film this day, whether that would in fact happen or not.
Someone sat in a chair, snoring quietly.
Two people were playing cards, seemingly having given up on their education on this particular day.
This was the scene he arrived to find, dressed in a coat over a knitted beige turtleneck pullover and black jeans. He raised a groomed eyebrow but didn’t announce himself. He just removed his coat, and changed his aviator sunglasses to a pair of wire-rim spectacles he kept in a case in his pocket.
He ran a hand through his dark hair speckled with white, then hung his coat over a chair with asheete of paper taped on to it. The sheet was as crooked as the handwriting that read DIRECTOR written in black marker. Someone had added the word pretend in parentheses in pencil.
Amused by this scene, he raised his phone and got a snapshot of the chaos created by these children playing pretend, not realising that many of them would likely end up in vastly different careers than they planned to in this moment.
They were all still at the impression that they might just make it. Especially the young actors.
The middle-aged man smiled at the photo he took, thinking back on his own youthful dream he had once harboured. Everyone started somewhere, and so he wouldn’t tell any of them they were in the wrong to believe they could make it, but he wouldn’t sugar-coat their flaws.
He quietly walked over to switch on the power and when the sound engineers realised it was working again, they looked at him with the sheepish expressions of young adults who realised they acted like fools.
They would need to learn in the future that being foolish was part of life.
He moved to the group eating lunch and simply stood behind them for a while. When one of them looked up, he smiled as he told them, “You know the smell is the tell, don’t you?”
Several of them stuffed their mouth quickly to hurry and throw out the garbage. The one seated directly beneath the sign just smiled back at him shamelessly.
As he moved over to the arguing scriptwriters, he tapped the sleeping student on the shoulder to wake him up. As for the scriptwriters, he simply told to go sit down in a classroom — this wasn’t a discussion the rest of the production needed to be privy to. They could return once they had agreed. And if they could not… Well, there were 9lent of people who could take creative liberties and make a new scene altogether for them.
By now he had been noticed and a girl hurried over with the script to ask for his advice. He wouldn’t decline. He had needed guidance back in the day, when he trained to become “Lucien Holt”.
The children around him began to settle down, to find a rhythm that was lacking in the chaos until then.
The student in charge of directing for the day could finally get a word through the noise.
He heard how the set went from chickens running about to a more familiar cacophony as the students settled into each of their supposed roles. He glanced up as he saw a few, decently costumed, actors took to the stage to begin filming.
He studied them silently before he returned to help the young actor-in-training by his side to understand the emotions of her role.
Just as the student asking for advice had changed to one of the directing students, showing him some plans, the door to the studio opened. He looked up to see a blonde, pale young man in a baseball cap, a well-worn, unbuttoned varsity jacket over a graphic hoodie, distressed jeans and battered sneakers that certainly had seen far better days. After barely a pause, the young man noticed something and removed the shades he wore as he strolled right past with not a single glance to acknowledge him.
He followed the blonde with his eyes, no longer catching what the student said, yet hearing the young man some distance away speak with an accented cadence that came with heavily rolled Rs, harsh initial syllables and an interesting merge of Bs and Ps: “Your back’s going to hate you if you carry that camera like that. Hand it over, and I’ll show you how to carry these things before you break your back.”
The blond man was both shorter and slimmer than the student carrying the camera, but he had the confidence of someone who seemed to hold trust in the experience of what he was doing.
He watched as the blond took the heavy camera equipment with ease, carrying it like it weighed no more than a equallysized bag of cotton.
A familiar, husky voice of a woman spoke from beside the middle-aged man, “One of the Media Production professors sent him over. He’s the, let’s say, ‘senior videographer’ for this project.”
The man turned to Birgit. “Tomi is?”
“Oh? You two know each other?”
“Not really. But we’ve met a couple of times,” he said vaguely before his eyes returned to Tomi, who was already handing over the camera over again and adjusting the student’s posture.
He then retrieved his gaze and turned to the student, saying, “I got distracted. Where were we?”
Author’s Note
Oh, it’s not Peter’s cousin?? What a surprise. (said in a flat voice)
I originally didn’t plan on having any interludes, but here we are. Interludes are apparently happening.