Ah week 5.. Finally I had one of those weeks when it felt that I went to work on Sunday and came back on Thursday. It might not sound fun to some, but I like my job a lot and feeling tired and accomplished at the end of the working day as well as the week really makes me feel like I deserve to rest. Not sure if it isn’t some underlying mental condition, but hey ho. Let’s start.

Sunday – day 5 of the shoot. We traveled for over an hour outside Bangkok to shoot in this fancy big house, with chandeliers and a tropical garden with a little pond. I finally got to meet our number 3, very talented guy. Had a lot of scenes of him on the phone and normally those are so boring, but our DOP really surprised me. Every shot we did had a beautiful developing motion and made the scene that much more interesting to watch. Impressed.

Monday, Tuesday was at the same fancy house location. Had some tropical rain, some big talking scenes and days of interior, which meant no shoes. For the first time in my experience (I think, can’t quite trust my memory at this point) we used a crane to shoot an interior scene, looked cool. On Tuesday the real person on who our number 3 is based on came to visit the set. Very nice man, so chatty and it was an absolute pleasure meeting him. The story we are doing is kinda grim and meeting the real person who went through all of those event was special. He said that I reminded him of somebody he worked with in the past (at the time of the story), made me feel a bit special too, hope it’s true.

On Wednesday we were shooting more in town again and I managed to go to my Pilates reformer class after work. It was all in Thai as the instructor could only count in English, but I managed to get on with it no problem. It was just very nice to do something else after work than just shower and sleep. I also joined one of my colleagues for a fresh coconut after the class, so felt well productive that day.

Thursday we were at the same location, but had it completely blacked out to replicate the night for the interior scenes. It was already a pretty hot place but with all the black out tents outside the windows… ouch it was toasty. For the cast and crew  comfort we had what we call ‘anaconda’ installed (huge aluminum pipe), which was directing cold air into the room. I spent some time crouching next to it and was not even sorry.

In the evening I had few too many drinks with some of my colleagues celebrating the end of the first full week. It was lovely, but ah, my bar days are long gone, I cannot handle cocktails that well anymore. Around 2am the boyfriend flew in from Shanghai to see me for a weekend and I was out of it. Quite embarrassing actually, but I also blame it on me being tired. Luckily he wasn’t too upset so we spend Friday doing absolutely nothing, aka. chilling, eating, watching Netflix. Went to my Pilates in the evening though. Patting myself on the shoulder for that. 

Saturday we took a trip outside Bangkok to one of the amusement parks. It’s called ‘Dream world’ and probably 30 years ago it was very dreamy as a lot of stuff felt faded and outdated. We still had fun though and if you imagine that they were going for this vintage look on purpose it’s kinda impressive how they managed to achieve it through out the whole park. Food options for vegans were practically non existent though and me being keto it would have meant me starving. So we reached a new milestone in our relationship with the bf and I ate some of “his friends” in front of him. 

We returned home and few hours later he left me for Shanghai again. With this my week 5 was complete.

Stuff I found interesting:

  • Shooting interior scene with a crane was definitely one of the cool moments.
  • Got to meet our stills photographer. He reminds me of one of the line producers I worked with in Morocco last year. Nice French man living in Thailand. He did a mini photo shoot for me. I was just after lunch, dripping sweat and all red as outside is usually hotter than inside, so yes. Glam.
  • During Halloween kids in our apartments were ‘trick or treating’ in a fancy dress. Have not seen that probably ever as it it’s not what people do back home. Cool.
  • One of the Thai actors who has a part in our show has filmed in my home country few years ago with the director I worked with this summer. Film industry is a very small world.
  • When we took a taxi to Dream World, there was a button just on the side of the door for emergency. Never seen one before. Where would it call exactly?
  • Also at the Dream World, some very decency questioning art work? Oh and they had a Hollywood action show experience which we attended. Exceeded my expectations for sure. Great stunt choreography!

Cheers with a glass full of loving elephant.