Starbird

Chapter 25

Waking up at three in the morning proved to be a much more difficult task than I expected it to be. I don’t know how many times I hit snooze, but eventually James had to come in and sit on me until I couldn’t breathe so I would actually wake up. The house had the eerie feeling to it once again as I padded around, pulling myself together, throwing on layer after layer. Just as I brushed through my hair and pinned it back, James told me it was time to go. Grabbing my purse loaded with my Monster, sketchbook, and everything else, I exited the house and into the car where Rick waited for us. Before we even left city limits, I was asleep in the back and I didn’t stay up long enough to see if James was out too. Every now and then there’d be a small bump in the road, making me smash my head into the window, but I was too out of it so be woken up that easily. 

Eventually, I felt the car slow down and my eyes blinked open to look around the set they had been filming at for the past week. I wiped the sleep out of my eyes and stumbled out of the car, trying to orient myself. It was quite a ways outside of London, far out in the country and it looked almost identical to the place where Pride and Prejudice was filmed, when Keira Knightly was on her way to Pemberly, but first there’s a big dramatic moment where she’s standing on the edge of a cliff. Yeah, you know that place? That’s where we were. I didn’t waste a moment, instantly taking out my Monster to capture the scenery. It didn’t even look real! It looked like someone painted a backdrop and set it up over the entire sky, the sun blazing over the land, setting everything on fire. It was beautiful and perfect.

“Cam, let’s go,” James told me, gesturing for me to follow him. 

“But James! The view!”

“It’ll still be there after I show you where you’ll be hanging out for the day. I know you’re going to want to wander off, but please just stick with me for ten minutes.” I knew very well I was prone to wander, but I slipped the camera strap over my neck and followed James towards the mass of people.

Everyone was in action, getting their jobs done and getting ready for filming for the day. Slowly, we worked our way through everyone until we found our way to a small gazebo a little ways away from where I could see the cameras.

“So this is where you’ll be, ok?” James told me. “We’ve been eating in that,” he pointed to a much larger tent set up much further away to my right, “and we’re filming over there,” he pointed again to the plethora of cameras on my left, “which means there is no reason you should be getting lost because everything is pretty straight forward, alright?” 

“Yes, James, I will do my best to not get lost.”

“Good, now I have to go get ready. Finch is around here somewhere, but if you want you can go take pictures. Just no pictures of the set!”

I waved my hand dismissively. “Yeah, James, I learned that my first day, no worries. Go get ready, I’ll be fine.” He gave me a last, hard look before deciding I would actually be okay and then he turned and took off for hair and makeup. Checking my camera’s battery and memory, I called it good and set off to explore.

It was a freeing feeling - to just wander about and actually be allowed to be there. I never realized how incredible it was that I was allowed to just freely meander a closed movie set. Adjusting the camera, I leveled it to my eye and started snapping pictures of the blazing sun as the sky turned all shades of pink and orange and slowly rose to blue. I didn’t stop snapping pictures as I moved about, making sure I was somewhat paying attention to where I was going. Every picture could turn out slightly different than the last and I couldn’t check right now with the rapidly changing skyline.

“Cam?” I turned to see Bonnie walking towards me.

“Hey Bonnie, how are you today?” 

“I’m alright, a bit low on sleep, what are you up to?” I raised my camera as if that worked as an answer. “I didn’t know you were in photography.”