Focus

"Sph-eeds," said Reggie, vape in mouth as he pressed one of the two bright red record buttons.

"Scene thirty-six apple," Marcello began, "Take one, mark," The room instantly filled with the crisp sound of a production slate slamming down hard.

"Action!" yelled Evelynn abruptly.

I immediately retorted, "Standby for focus!" I rolled the focus dial on the motor back to the approximate position that Charles' would land on when he walked into frame.

"You good?" Reggie asked, slightly worried. I had seen Reggie finish three cups of coffee in the span of four hours today. He was worried about having enough time to get through the rest of the scenes we needed to shoot today.

"Set!" I yelled for everyone in the vicinity keeping my eyes on the monitor. A moment of silence wafted throughout the room. Charles, standing and ready to walk into frame waited patiently for another "Action" from Evelynn. At least thirty seconds passed. I couldn't bear it anymore. Reggie looked over to Robert who looked over to Evelynn and therein lied the rub. Evelynn was either addicted or just woefully oblivious to the happenings around her because in the ten seconds that it took for me to get my focus marks, Evelynn was somehow able to start another game of Smoothie Smash. Charles ever so slightly began to turn his head around to see if he had missed a memo or cue somewhere.

"Action!" yelled Robert, to which everyone instantly jolted to seriousness including Evelynn who jammed her phone back into her tight jeans.

"Alicia... what did you do with the pillow!?" Charles yelled as he walked into the frame. He rummaged through the room for a couple more seconds before getting visibly frustrated. "Alicia!" he yelled as he walked back out of frame.

"Cut!" Evelynn was satisfied. "That was perfect." She turned toward Reggie. "Can we move on?"

"If you're happy, I'm happy," said Reggie.

"Great! I'm getting another donut." Evelynn said gleefully. "Anyone want anything?" The room gave a collective dismissal to which she merrily left the set.

"How are we supposed to finish shooting today?" Charles asked as soon as Evelynn was no longer in the room.

"We won't," Robert said, turning to address the rest of the crew. "We'll just shoot as much as we can until she realizes that none of this is properly planned for." Robert, the Assistant Director, as right as he was, ironically was in charge of making sure that all of this was indeed properly planned for.

"We're doing that scene with the ton of makeup next right?" Reggie quickly asked Robert in a hushed tone.

"Yea," Robert responded. "So that's going to take about thirty minutes to finish up according to Jen—"

"Can't we do a bunch of other stuff in this room with the setup while we're here—"

"Yes I know, but Jen is only here for another hour so we wanted to prioritize this."

"What..." Reggie gave Robert a dumb look. "Should I even ask?"

"I know what you're thinking.” Robert rolled his eyes back trying to sympathize with Reggie. “She has to pick up her kid from an appointment or something like that."

"It just doesn't make sense," Reggie started, frustrated. "We can't even start lighting outside until it starts to get dark and we have all this dead time now."

"Reggie, listen, there's no way we can finish this today so I am just trying to get us through the day."

"Yea…” Reggie threw his hands up in the air, feeling defeated, “whatever."

I felt a soft nudge on my elbow. It was Marcello. "Did she tell you anything about an extra two grand after they sell this?"

I was shocked, "Extra two grand?"

"She pulled me aside a bit earlier and gave me a contract for two grand after they sell the movie."

"Did you ask for that?"

"No..." Marcello said as he took a quick gulp of coffee. "She just grabbed me during breakfast."

"She didn't pull me aside. Should I ask her?"

"Fuck if I know—"

"Marcello!" Reggie yelled. It was time to move sets. I hung the focus dial around my neck and grabbed the camera off the dolly track and slapped it onto a tripod to start moving it downstairs. I couldn't believe that Evelynn talked to Marcello separately. Was it my fault? I know we had to do some re-takes because of focus but those were hard shots with zero prep. 'No,' I thought, 'Evelynn is just a cunt.' I couldn't think straight for the rest of the afternoon.

The first shot of the evening was a moving car shot. Reggie had asked me to help mount the camera on the car with a custom car rig he had rented.

"I know this is not your job," Reggie said, "but Marcello is getting all the lights rigged and we just don't have another body to get started on this." I reluctantly obliged. I just wanted to get things moving. I had limited experience with car rigging but figured between Reggie and I, it wouldn't be too difficult. "I'm just gonna grab a smoke real quick."

'Figured,' I thought, 'There wasn't enough nicotine in the world to satisfy this man for more than five minutes at a time.' As I watched Reggie walk over to the end of the block, I caught Robert jumping on the smoke-break bandwagon and trailing him. Eventually, they agreed on a spot far enough to be courteous in terms of second-hand smoke where they both lit a cigarette each. I got on all fours and opened the case for the car mount rig to decipher my next steps.

"Not even my fuckin' job," I muttered to myself as I started to put together the contraption. It was an odd little rig. There were three legs with individual rotation adjustments to accommodate varying setups interlocked to form a baseplate where the camera would sit. At the opposite end of the three legs was a slot where the suction cups could be joined which would be placed on the hood of the car. It looked like a piece of crap but it would do the job. It took about ten to fifteen minutes to get two of the interlocking legs together but as I attempted to get the third one connected I realized we were missing a piece.

"Hey, you basically got it!" Reggie said behind my back. He then squatted to the ground by my side to take a look.

"I think we're missing a piece," I said nervously.

"Fuck... seriously?" I handed the rig over to Reggie who observed it carefully to come to the same realization that I did. "Well, it's gotta be in here," Reggie said aloud. I could hear his tone getting more angry as he rummaged through the flimsy case.

"I finished up lighting. Is camera ready...?" asked Marcello.

"Yea... could you help get this up?" Reggie said standing up as Marcello squatted down. At this point I was inspecting the ground with the flashlight on my cellphone to see if I had dropped anything. Marcello then joined the effort at which point Reggie pulled out his phone and said, "Let me call the guy."

"Hey," Tiffany, our unpaid Production Assistant stumbled upon the chaos. "Anything I can do to help?

I explained that we were looking for a missing piece to a car mount. At this point there were now three people on the floor digging through dirt and gravel, flashlight in hand, looking for the missing piece.

"He said it's all in here," Reggie said as he finished the call with the owner of the car mount rig. He dropped down to a squat and began examining the unfinished rig that I had already put together. I got up off the floor and attempted a wider search area standing up.

Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed Evelynn running over to Robert. I had never seen this woman run before. She was freaking out. Robert seemed like he was trying to diffuse the situation.

"I can't find it anywhere. I don't know what I'm going to do!" I overheard Evelynn telling him. After a quick exchange, Robert started heading over to us. I turned around to go back to my search.

"Oh you fucking dipshit!" Reggie said. He was looking straight at me. "You put two of these connectors back-to-back. That’s why there’s a ‘missing’ piece," I was mortified. Reggie removed the piece and reconnected it to the right part of the rig.

Overhearing Reggie, Robert jumped in, "Everything okay here?"

"Yea, everything is just fine," Reggie said passive aggressively as he handed the car rig to Marcello. I knew Reggie's anger was completely directed to me and I felt like shit. I wanted to scream at him. People make mistakes. Robert caught Reggie's tone and tried to diffuse the situation.

"To be fair, it's probably because she's on like five hours of sleep from last night," said Robert attempting to defend me. Reggie didn't say anything. I was fuming. I needed to get out of there. I quickly slinked out of the set and walked towards my car. It was the only solace I had where I didn't have to see anyone from set. My chest felt tight and it was hard to breathe.

'It wasn't even my fucking job,' I thought, 'fuck you Reggie!' I slammed the door closed and sat there. 'Fuck all these white men!' I wanted to scream and break something but realized that I was in a ten-year old used car with more than one-hundred and twenty-thousand miles on it which was my only ticket back home. I sat in silence for a minute or two staring at the stop sign at the end of the street. It was then that I noticed that I still had Evelynn's production slate hanging on my side. It was decided. I had to get out of here. I had never walked off a set but for a moment, I felt united with stories of people who had done the same. I walked towards Evelynn's car bypassing the car rig setup that was still happening. Evelynn's car was left open for the entire production because she always left random things in there that we would be tasked to acquire. I opened the car and found the bag for the production slate and opened it to find a stack of twenty and hundred dollar bills.

Working in film, I had seen plenty of play money before but knew this was the real deal. The assortment and texture of crumpled bills validated its authenticity. But most of all, it was the smell. The combination of cotton, leather and ink all worked together to create a pungent yet satisfying smell. I threw the production slate into the bag and grabbed every single bill I could find. 'Fuck it,' I thought. 'I didn't get paid enough for this shit.' I walked back to my car, got in and drove. It was nearly 8pm, twelve hours since I had arrived that morning and I still had an hour drive before I got home. I knew I would need some caffeine to make it through the drive. I drove into a Scoopin' Scones parking lot when the thought of counting the money I grabbed entered my mind. I expected a couple hundred dollars given the number of bills. As I counted, my eyes grew wide. The total count was twenty-thousand dollars. I pulled out my little black notebook where I routinely recorded my clients, gigs and expenses and added an extra zero to the entry that I made for this job. 'Not bad for ten days,' I thought as I finished adding the zero. I pulled into the drive-through of Scoopin' Scones and ordered a caramel latte supreme with whipped creme. It was the best drink I had that week.