cherylese.com

okay, maybe not. but, it truly has been an epic six days in chile so far. in fact, the aforementioned epicness, has lead to less blogging than i had originally hoped to accomplish while here, but once you read the full run-down, i think you'll understand. and yes, it's all true.

• experienced my first earthquake - though i was later told it was just a tremor. i was on the fourth floor restaurant of the hotel when the entire building felt like it was bouncing up and down. rattling dishware and the terrified look on the hostess' face confirmed that i wasn't imagining it. the tremor itself felt pretty long...or perhaps that is something i truly did imagine.

• shoot day one - four hours in, our actor who is climbing down a ladder slips and falls...crashing his entire six-foot-three body on top of our set art director. the fall results in our art director heading to the chilean emergency room where he is drugged up and slinged. am told surgery will be required upon his arrival back in canada.

• 6 preproduction meetings in one day - for the ad types that are reading this, you can appreciate how insane we are for attempting it. believe it or not, it was mostly okay-ish.

• power outage in the hotel. for a moment i'd totes convinced myself i'd blown all of my fuses somehow (the power adapters scare me).

• despite having an obscenely early call-time the next day, i rush back to my room to watch the olympic ceremonies. sadly (and embarrassingly), it really was not worth the lack of sleep. serious disappointment. natives? fiddlers? lip synching? and what was donald sutherland even talking about? yikes. dear canada: where was cirque du soleil?

• shoot day two - 5:50AM call-time. we arrive on set to the coldest chilean morning i've ever experienced. breath could been seen, and shivers could be heard, aaand the damp grass was filled with many hungry mosquitos. by take number nine, we had fired our english child actor, who was unable to take any direction whatsoever. the french child subs in and all dialogue is removed from the script for him. but wait, it gets better. our english "dad" actor also sucks. like suuuucks. his takes become so painful, client and agency start removing their headphones to spare themselves from his delivery. did i mention he looks like gary busey? scary. once the sun had finally risen, we start hearing very loud, very high-pitched barking. oh, what's that you say? there's a chihuahua breeder next door to our location? awes. that should make getting dialogue recorded really, really easy (i hope my sarcasm is coming across here...)

• we're told beyonce has a couple of concerts in santiago and is now staying at our hotel. of course, this means up'd security, and fans sitting around and hoping to catch a glimpse outside. this also means she has a 'vip' section at the hotel's pool lounge. this makes me laugh, because she basically has the last cabana (which is right next to all the others) roped off, with her security surrounding her.

• that leads us to tonight. 6:50AM call time tomorrow. but, who wants to sleep in on a weekend anyway?  

hope you all are well, and are having a slightly less epic week than i am.

xo