48)
Tomi tossed his cap, jacket, and hoodie onto a chair, leaving him sleeveless and more comfortable. After spending a good ten minutes showing where cables hadn’t been properly taped down, following his attempt to correct one person’s posture, he was feeling way too hot beneath the lights. He ran his hand through his hair. He had to wake up way too early too, and he still had a horrible case of bed hair, but as long as he acted as if it was intentional, no one would know it wasn’t.
“Wow, what do you do for a living? Chop wood?” someone asked. Immediately after, he felt hands squeeze his upper arm.
He looked back at the student with a flat expression. “Post-production. I’m a couch potato of the highest degree. Actually currently working on my doctorate in couch potatoing life away. My research data is getting skewed for some reason.”
“No, really. Drop your routine.”
Tomi pulled his arm away, and then casually rolled his shoulders. “Guess.”
It seemed the student finally caught that a boundary might have been crossed, expression turning uncertain.
“Is something the matter, Tomi?”
Tomi’s irritation was swept aside by the question asked by a deep voice. It felt vaguely familiar, but Tomi didn’t take any sense of deja vu particularly seriously. He just looked up to see a middle-aged man with greying temples and wire-frame glasses.
Having been referred to by name, he stared up at the stranger.
There were plenty of middle-aged men with greying hair. Many of them had richly brown eyes with wrinkles emerging at the outer corner. His eyes travelled down over the turtleneck, jeans and all the way to the Chelsea boots, then back up. With great effort, he tried o catalogue where he could have possibly encountered this specific configuration of narrow dimpled chin, deep-set hooded eyes, and straight nose.
“…Do I know you?” he eventually asked, bewildered, when no person nor location came to mind.
“No, but we’ve met. Lars Hagen. Any bells?” The man took out a handkerchief and offered it to Tomi. “You seem a little overheated.”
“Lars Hagen…” The name felt mildly familiar. Like something he had encountered relatively recently but not in the past couple of weeks. But since he spent so much time at home and the library and the cafe…
Wait.
“Oh! Right!” Having finally remembered the drunkard he helped home in the middle of the night, he could take the handkerchief without ceremony and patted his forehead to rid himself of some sweat breaking through. “You treated me to lunch once. It’s been a while. How have you been?”
An amused smile appeared on Lars Hagen’s thin lips. “A little busy, but quite well. I finished up a project just this Monday. How about you?”
“Pretty decent. Why are you here?”
“I was asked to be a supervisor of sorts.”
“Small world. Me too.” Tomi pocketed the handkerchief. “I’ll return it after a wash.”
He turned, having successfully ended the conversation, and noticed the rude student had scampered off, but it didn’t matter to him. He was more concerned about the way the student from earlier was beginning to overcompensate for the weight of the equipment when the central of gravity had become off again.
He jogged over. “Hey! Put that down before you get injured!”
49)
A whole hour into this session, Tomi finally could sit down and relax for a little while. He sighed.
He had expected incompetence, but this was just below the level of what he assumed they’d manage on their own. These kids were going to throw their backs carrying the equipment. They absolutely needed someone to supervise them, clearly.
So, for the time being, he told them to avoid carrying any cameras and opt for literally anything else until they had been to the gym enough to build core strength. There were more ways to film. After all, these kids weren’t filming a documentary or news report, nor were they running after journalists.
He was just considering getting up and find a vending machine to get something to drink, when a bottle of mineral water appeared in his line of sight. He leaned back to look up, finding the man named Lars Hagen holding it.
“You’ve worked hard,” Lars Hagen said in his peculiar dialect.
“Thanks,” Tomi replied as he took the bottle. “Where are you from? I can’t place the way you speak with any dialect I know.”
Lars Hagen was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Norge.”
“Ohhh…” Tomi lowered his gaze and unscrewed the bottle cap, feeling awkward warmth flood to his cheeks.
He should have realised that sooner. No wonder he struggled to make heads or tails of it. He was calibrated to the entirely wrong language.
He looked up again, glancing at Lars Hagen who had moved to stand beside Tomi’s chair, arms crossed in front of his chest as he studied the students.
The man then looked back down at Tomi, startling him.
“It might take me a while to fully understand Norwegian,” Tomi blurted out.
Lars Hagen chuckled. It was a rather pleasant type of soft laugh that would make most people relax. “That’s okay. As long as the students understand me.”
Tomi hummed and looked away, pretending that the sound guys being idiots was more interesting.
He was still feeling too awkward about this.
50)
After the one acting as a director called for yet another cut, a high-pitched whistle cut through the din that followed.
It had been sudden to Tomi, and its source close to him, making him twitch in his seat. He turned to see Lars Hagen lower his hand from his face.
“This is a good time to take a break.” The voice carried the accented words through the studio. “I can see some of you are getting frustrated all the way from here. Go use the bathroom, get a snack, have some water, take a jog around the building — whatever works to destress, do it now. Return in ten minutes with a fresh mindset.”
The acting director nodded and said, “That’s right! You all go.”
“I meant you too, little director,” Lars Hagen said calmly.
Tomi watched the various student file out of the studio and got up from his chair in the back, finding this a good opportunity to review the footage. Not to comment on it — but to understand what he’s really working with.
Throwing out their backs aside, Tomi was asked here as a videographer, meaning the footage mattered too.
For now, he really just wanted to make sure no one got injured, though.
Useless kids not having taken their studies seriously enough.
51)
“Hey, you, the camera teacher!”
“Hmm?” Tomi looked away from the footage to see one of the sound guys come over. It had already been a few minutes, and some students had apparently returned while he was taking stock of the inexperience.
“You know sound, right?”
Tomi said with a nod, “I’m a former Media Production student.”
“Oh, good! Could you help us out? I have had questions for days and no one to ask.”
“Sure.” He followed the student without objection.
The student looked back at him. “What’s your name? Sorry if I should know.”
“Just call me Tomi.” He motioned to a non-existing band around his neck. “I just started today so not everything is prepared yet.”
“Oh, okay. Sorry for the trouble, Tommy.”
“…”
Tomi was immediately displeased.
To him there was a distinct difference between the English pronunciation of Tommy, the local pronunciation of it, and Tomi. And “Tomi” was the most distinct.
Yet, it seemed that especially in recent days people didn’t put in the bother with his name.
It was nothing new, and it had only been a mild irritant before, but for some reason it truly bothered him now.
Rather than express his offense, Tomi lowered his gaze, withholding his sour comments. He was used to it and needed not to retract into himself over such a minor thing.
Instead, he listened to every question and concern that the student listed and advised accordingly. Hopefully, some of it would stick.
It probably wouldn’t.
He knew this as well as much as he knew that people would likely Anglicise his name time and time again for as long as he didn’t live in his home country.
He wasn’t entirely new to education, even if it had been more on tabletop games than anything else. No one needed to know that any more that they needed to know he disliked every variation of his name aside from Tomi.
52)
Tomi spent the next few hours either bombarded by questions or quietly advising based on things he saw were issues. Occasionally, he got to sit back and merely watch.
At the end of the day… The footage was likely awful.
He still decided to check a sample of it while students were beginning to pack up, wanting to asses each individual who had been working the cameras this day. In part because he was curious, in part because he was a little tired, and staring at some footage was a familiar task he did almost daily as part of his actual professional life.
He was a good few minutes in when he was quietly joined by Lars Hagen. The man said nothing and eventually Tomi was going to change whose footage he was looking at, so he looked up, wondering if the man had anything to say.
Lars clearly took the opportunity the moment it appeared: “Are you free now? We should have dinner.”
“Uh…”
“I don’t think you’ve had time to introduce yourself to the students.”
So that was what he meant.
“I don’t really have the money right now…”
“As your senior on this set, I’ll treat you as a welcome aboard gesture,” Lars Hagen said earnestly.
Tomi couldn’t decline free food with how broke he was right now, so he agreed readily with a nod.
He watched as Lars called out to some students to spread that anyone free should join in for dinner after they all packed their things.
53)
Because it was Friday evening, the students had strong opinions on where to have a meal. When Tomi heard the name of the place he hummed, but didn’t point out that the majority of a whole student film production — actors, boom operators, camera operators, directors, assistants, screenwriters, costuming, and so on — was unlikely going to have enough space at a popular establishment without prior reservation. If they all wanted to eat at the same location, then they would need to find a less impressive operation and call in advance to ensure there was enough space.
This would have been reasonable to assume for a group of just ten people, never mind dozens of enthusiastic twenty-somethings and maybe one or two nineteen-year-olds.
Lars Hagen seemed to notice this as well. He wore an amused smile at the outer corners of his eyes and in the slight curve of his lips.
Tomi did what any reasonable person should do: quietly check for a restaurant that could house him and his man-shaped wallet.
The man-shaped wallet, on the other hand, decided to make a few calls. In the time it took Tomi to find a place that wasn’t an immigrant-owned pizzeria — nothing against those, the occasion was just wrong — and popular among students, Lars Hagen finished his calls.
“There is a pub that can set up a private room for us,” Lars Hagen announced to the group as they were gathering back in the studio after packing up. “It’s a bit of a walking distance from here, but for those who may require it, there’s a bus stop nearby.”
There was some opposition, resulting in Tomi merely stating, “If you want to stand at a bar and eat or forced to eat on the pavement outside the restaurant, that’s up to you. I, however, am going to where I can put my butt on a guaranteed seat.”
That seemed to seal it for most of them. Those who were unhappy were silenced by group pressure or simply wouldn’t come along. Tomi didn’t care either way.