The House

Chapter 3

I felt the tightly wrapped sheets coiling around my body like a snake, the more I struggled the tighter it got. I felt suffocated. As my headache grew by the second, I began to wrestle and claw out. There was a sense that the room was closing in on me, the heat of the sun penetrating through the cracks of the closed blinds.

--

That was the only real interaction I had with Angel Asylum that day was a nervous breakdown of a conversation.

The rest of the day was spent admiring Kash Arroya's prodigal talent and fending off Tzuyu's remarks and imitations of me with Sana: 'My best friend's favorite band, my ass' and 'Y-yEs' being only a few of them.

I was starting to fit in, not only was I was given more tasks by the production manager, Ms. Yoo, though they were rigid and stressful I felt like I was really making an impact with my presence.

Plus, I got loads of insider information from Tzuyu. She was apparently quite knowledgeable about the set and people there!

By my fifth day on set I had gotten quite comfortable with the staff and crew. I had learned not to talk to Mr. Kash before his morning latte, and understood to never touch any of the thousands of dollars worth of camera equipment, honestly I had come to the conclusion that my job was just to sit, observe, and assist. Which I was fine with, I was rather happy watching the masters work and learning new techniques then making my own deficient work.

So strolling past the security guard and onto set on the seventh and last day of the shoot, a melancholic nostalgia washed over me. Though I hadn't done anything more than fool around with Tzuyu, and follow orders for the past five days, I felt as though I had taken a step into a whole new world. A world that I would never stop wanting to be a part of. I even made friends with a couple of the men in the camera department and got to walk around strapped to one of the heavy gimbals, which was quickly dismounted and taken away from me as I began wobbling my legs from the weight.

I'd already learned more in the past three days than I had in the past 19 years of my life. From how to grade a scene so it matches the vibe of the video and the skin tone of the artists to certain camera movements and post production techniques to give the film a smooth flow, moving from shot to shot in a timely and concise manner so that the viewer is focused on the storyline and plot rather than the quick cuts and botched quality.

Besides that, I spent most of my time in The Equinox, a small room attached to the main set that housed a myriad of screens displaying surveillance footage. There Tzuyu, Vim, and I liked to sit around a round table editing clips on the main laptops with our blond roast coffees. We were always in there, adding music, making sure the scene cuts were smooth, working the off-white balance, and talking about ourselves. In fact during that time from the morning 6AMs to 10PMs I got incredibly close to Tzuyu and Vim, and I forgot about everything that bothered me. Even in our free time away from the set we would travel to nearby fast food spots.

Vim, the third intern, had come in later into the program though he never personally revealed the reason why, many staffers had been saying that he was attending his grandmother's funeral after she was killed in a brutal fashion from a break in.

To say the truth, Tzuyu and I didn't want to ask, Vim was generally a very quiet kid, he was tall and lanky with a bushy mop of hair, and an oversized sweater, the kind one would get lost in. But over a day or two his demeanor melted and he was a lot more open, and at ease around us. He opened up about school, certain other productions he worked on, and how he played the guitar. Which explained his hallmark nail-cutting decisions. He only cut the first two nails on his right hand so they wouldn't interfere with his playing and something about tone or whatever.