MONDAY, November 11

Our first day in the water… although it wasn’t on the schedule!

Today we had a lot of coverage to do: our little tourist party cruising around the lagoon at various points in the story, the mood declining from the cheerful start of the tour, to getting bored and a little “over it” and then, quite spooked and threatened.

Time permitting, we intend to film some scenes of the boat colliding with the by the mysterious creature.

After lunch, the stunties go through makeup and prepare to be spilled out of the boat into the swamp in our places.

Each actor has a stunt double costumed and groomed to resemble us. My double is Asian, younger and in far more robust condition, but in wardrobe should pass from a distance.  His name is Chuck and he is the stunt coordinator who ran us through our basic water and tree climbing training last week.  That already seems like a month ago.

We watched as the boat is hoisted by cables attached to a crane, jerked violently, as if struck. The stunt doubles are seated in our spots, and the boat gets flipped, spilling everyone overboard. It’s performed over and over again, covered from various angles.

The soggy stunties act up a storm, screaming, falling into the water, flailing around.  Safely ashore, we actors applaud each shot. It’s very convincing.

After the stunt shot is done, we actors are shuttled over to the boat and are told that we would just be “jostled” a couple times, but that the boat wasn’t going to get overturned. We don’t need to worry about getting wet today, that happens tomorrow, when we will have wetsuits on, and a lot of care will be taken to make sure everything is safe. Today, we just need to react to being jolted.

We do one experimental set of “jolts”, the cable attached to the boat hoists the port side up a foot or two to simulate a blow by the beast.  Each time we do our dialogue and react.

The jolts have been pretty gentle.  Several of the actors suggest that they could be “more extreme.”  James the director calls for a bit more “jostling”; for the team to “take it up a notch.”

Unfortunately, next take the boat dips too far to starboard, and immediately takes on water and capsizes, spilling all the actors into the drink.

When I see the water start to come in, and realize we were going over, I put my attention on making sure no one got trapped under the boat. Luckily, things happen in slow motion once we are overturned and no one gets trapped or injured.

We aren’t wearing wetsuits, just costumes; our shoes, hats, etc, get immediately soaked.

The cold water isn’t particularly deep, just up to shoulder height on most of us. We are all immediately helped out of the drink and given towels along with lots of apologies.

Since none of the performers or crew are hurt, it wasn’t traumatic, but it was understandably vexing to the producers, who are of course aware of their ultimate responsibility.  One of them finds us at dinner to hand deliver an apology in writing. along with bottles of Prosecco, to make amends.  (As I don’t drink, he promises to bring me some chocolate.)

All of the actors give the unlucky messenger a hard time, since we have him at our mercy.  But he is genuinely very contrite.

TOMORROW, then, as scheduled, we go into the water for real for the first time.