Chapter Ten. SAMPLE OF GIFTED ONE

Lucky me, I sat and watched. The drawings were on the desk. You may think they were part of the scenography, but they were actually the story board. Little pieces of paper my feet trampled on from time to time. Little pieces turned into big and bold drawings, bold movements, big stories.

Enjoy as I did, small, shiny and innocent witness of all the paper and whirling around it.

I, Horsy, thank thee, Alex:)

Chapter Nine. CREATING A DIFFERENT REALITY

My permanent impression when watching them run around, each of them with their slice of creation, was that making a film is about building a second reality, as you imagine it. Some people build it in their head, these guys built it for real.
The only problem was that the true reality always tried to come out. People didn't get along, people didn't want to work anymore, film was unsharf, objects were not what they seemed, the doors were nailed, the salad was polystyrene, the light was fake, the table cloth was full of holes, drawers were missing, ceiling was missing, the actor's right hand wasn't his, he wasn't alone in his room, he was surrounded by ten other people, the books were all antiquarian stuff nobody would buy, the magazines were 4 years old, vomit was water or coke, the cabinet doors had no glass, the drawings were yellow xerox copies.
Now try to keep all that together, so it wouldn't show. It was like they were all pulling invisible strings, their faces turning red, trying to make their reality cover the old one completely.
I was the only real thing there.

Chapter Eight. WHAT WENT ON

The first thing that i think of when remembering the film is the fact that after they had shot half the film, they found out that it was unscharf. All of it.
Don't tell the director. Whispers in the corners. It was the bad projection. It was the wrong lens. It was the sharfeur. We don't know what it was. Continue to shoot. Long faces. Hysterical laugh. Don't let the actors find out. Shit, they found out. Dorin found out. Continue to shoot.

The next day it was ok. We saw the film in a cinema. Only two frames were to be shot again. Hysterical laugh.




The rollout episode. We were to film the last frame of the film, rehearsed it twice. It was emotional. I started crying. Unfortunately, we had only 40 seconds of film left. We hadn't timed it. The father said to trust him, he estimated less than 40 s. We did. We were too tired to rehearse again. So we sat down in front of the video assist, someone was holding me so I could see, my legs were shaking with anxiety. Cos counted. Rolling. Action. 10... 15... 20... Trav... 30, 35, 40, 45... Rollout! The scene had ended exactly on time. I was dancing around, but nobody saw me:)



Another nice thing that happened is that they ran out of boeuf salad. It was expensive, it was out of reach, they were out of time. So Banderas jumped in with his professionalism and said: We will make it out of polystyrene. And so they did. He cut out a circle, placed it on a plate. Iuliana came with some mayo she found somewhere in the back, held her nose with the other hand, and made it look like real salad. 10 olives and it lookes like a birthday cake. It smelled like rotten cabbage. Bon appetit!


Well, this time the picture says it all. Vlad needed to record a conversation of the parents, but the set had an echo and some other stuff I really can't talk about, so he used a black sheet to cover the table, but not in the conventional way. Everyone was holding it, recording and filming it. I watched from my shelf, pretending to be just an old porcelain horse.


Vomit time. The most disgusting moment of all. Water, soap, hair spray and boeuf salad mixed in a jar. Spilled on the carpet from time to time, so that it looked fresh and juicy from take to take. It smelled horrible. Dorin covered it with newspapers between takes, cause he couldn't stand to look at it. Andrei, though, proved to be a professional actor, as you can see in the picture below. He pretended to vomit 10 times, rehearsing and inhaling that stuff (unless he has a special method of holding breath while you're falling on the floor and coughing at the same time). Thank God I was in the back, outside the set, watching the video assist and the bush with red flowers someone had placed on it.

Chapter Seven. And then they played

What, am I too big?! No one wanted to play with me. They all preferred the smaller guys, and starter building houses and boats and all for them. The only thing that makes me hapy is that one of the soldiers got to spend seven days on a horse. Painful...

Chapter Six. Building it.

Lucky me. I was there from the beginning, so I got to see how everything was built.
In the beginning, there were only two rooms, with weird paint left from the film that had been shot there before. Bianca, Alex and whoever else happened to be there worked day and night for four days until it looked like a real house. Nihaha!


Alex, work in progress.


The HEAD. The one thing on the set that EVERYBODY loves:)


My friends on the shelf. They're from Galati. I get along well with anyone, no matter their social status or job: cops, soldiers, cowboys, Olive Oil, Lizard, pigs, cows, and others.


Full view of my friends on shelves.


Dinner table in the living room. celebrating with boeuf salad that smelled really bad. At one point they had to put more mayonnaise on it, but they had run out. Iuliana went to the shop, but they had no mayo. What to do, my friends? They used sour cream with paint. I hope nobody ate.


Well, here are my shelf neighbours. The two guys next to me kicked each other's ass until one of them broke...

Chapter Five. THE ACTORS

Andrei, main actor in the film. He was a very good actor, i think, although guys who spend half the time naked are not exactly my type...


Mircea Constantinescu, the father. His acting blew me off.


Cornelia Pavlovici, the mother. Looked better without the tie tied to her head. Yes, it was a tie:)


Mother and son rehearsing.

Chapter Four. MORE CREW

Alex, very talented guy who did all the drawings and painted the walls in the boy's room. He made me that huge mouth to talk to when all the crew went home. It talked pretty loud, though:)
Cos, best boy. Really, he was the best.


Iuliana, best girl, also responsible for the making of. Was loving it.

Adi, assistant cinematographer. His t-shirt reads "I am fat, but you're ugly. I can lose weight, but what can you do?"

Frankie, sound assistant. Sorry, my horse hands trembled when taking the picture.

Banderas, key grip! This guy could lift a ton and move it to your left.


Bianca, best looking mother in the world (besides Victoria Beckham), helped us make the set look like a home, together with her assistant Catalin.

There were some other guys on the set, but unfortunately I have no pictures of them, as they were always somewhere in the back setting the lights and carrying stuff around.

Chapter Three. One by one, even two by two

This is the crew, as I got to see them from my shelf, thank god they moved me from time to time so I got to take these pictures from different angles, in all the rooms. Apparently they wanted me to be in all the scenes. Or maybe they didn't?



This is Dorin, the film director, closely watching some take on the video assist. Seemed pretty tired. Plus, he had that elbow in his mouth...


Stefan, assistant director and Laura, chief editor, having the time of their life.


Ioana, cinematographer at work.


And Vlad, the sound specialist, with a light in his eye and a sound in his ear.

Chapter Two. THE CREW.

Well, I was sitting on my shelf and this is the story of what I saw there. And I am telling you, it was hardcore:)


This is half of the film crew, with the director in the middle. They were shooting the hardest part of the film, in which the main caracter, the boy, had to puke on the carpet, while his father was pushing him towards that disgusting stuff. Puke was made of water, soap, hair spary and some boeuf salad that had been sitting in in te spot light for three days, and smelled exactly like that...

Chapter One. I ARRIVE ON THE SET

Hi.

I am the horse in the corner.

I lived all my life in the nice house of two very rich biscuits factory owners. I was well treated, dust never settled upon me, and was well fed with stories and photos. The two were always off to see the world so I quickly lost my taste in neighing and started talking to the other objects on my shelf, so that the long months of waiting would pass by faster.

I am old now, and was satisfied with my life, thinking that I had lived many and unusual things, when one day destiny showed me that the most interesting part was yet to come.

Some youngsters came and brutally threw me into a dark and unfriendly bag. I lost conscience and woke up like some french actress of the forties in the dustiest, loudest and draughtiest place on earth: THE FILM SET.