Future Traded Yestoday

7

They've started filming us.

It's mainly just while we dance to allow us to check our positions and level of synchronization, but that doesn't make it that much easier to get used to. Watching ourselves on a screen has started to feel less foreign, but only slightly. And I was a child actor for commercials awhile ago.

The strangest part was when they gave us a camera during our school lessons and told us to entertain an audience. We didn't have an audience and the video wasn't going anywhere, so we had no idea what to do.

The camera had been given to our unspoken leader, and he just started talking to it. He explained what we were doing as he panned the camera around the classroom while we all waved, and then he'd come up to our desks and ask us questions on what we were doing.

At one point the Chicago guy decided he wasn't being fun enough and stole the camera from him, going around and asking the rest of us random questions. The kid the same age as me noticed he was more focused on the youngest than the rest of us, complaining he was picking favorites.

So the Chicago guy purposefully avoided the new kid, only showing him on camera at the very end. We didn't know when we had to end it, but apparently the Chicago guy did.

Our teacher for that time slot just watched us film ourselves, refusing to allow himself on the camera. He took the camera once we were done and appeared to review the footage while we continued working on our assignments, but we weren't sure what was going to happen after that.

A few days later we were given the same assignment in a class again, but after that we were given a camera in a hallway on our way to the cafeteria.

This time we actually got two cameras so we could film the majority of the nine of us at once, although it brought more attention to us. As if we purposefully didn't split up in the hallways to bring less attention to our group.

The youngest and the guy that had been to America at some point in his life were given cameras this time, but the youngest got so awkward that the Thai guy had to take over for him. We mainly said that we were going to the cafeteria for lunch and talked about what we hoped was going to be there in the buffet line. For the most part we were just trying to appear the least amount of awkward even though we felt extremely embarrassed talking to cameras in a hallway.

At one point the Canadian- who was standing next to me- tried seeing if he could implement some freestyle rap, but he got stuck on a rhyme and I had to help him out of it while the Japanese guy cooed at how cute we were. It had been mainly for practicing because that seemed like the only thing we did.

They only gave us a camera in the hallway while other students were there one other time, and I couldn't tell if that was to give us another try or because they wanted us to get used to it.

After that they stopped with the cameras for a bit and let us focus on school work. Once they decided we had caught up enough with school, they brought out the cameras again. This time with scripts.

We were given an hour to memorize the scripts- they weren't that long- and then we were given half an hour to put together our skit on our own. They appeared to be more on the promotional side of skits, so we came up with different ways to try and make them fun.

The only thing we could really change was the way we conveyed the lines because the scripts had action cues too. We didn't have too much room for creativity, but we certainly tried.

Apparently we did what the people watching us wanted the first try judging by how the cameras didn't come back our for a long time after that. Either that or they're starting to give up on us.