I'm on TV! (Showbiz SI)

Leavesden Studios, UK. October 2006.

"Oh, hi Mark!" Ah, the editing studio. The workshop of the Harry Potter franchise's very own Da Vinci, Mark Day.

Here and here alone, boys became men, the ugly transformed into the beautiful, and a lack of chemistry could be turned into an entire pharmacy.

The screenplay, the acting, the filming were just the giant slab of marble these artists sculpted into everlasting masterpieces or unending shame. 

I'd been coming here on my off hours to learn how this was done.

One of the first lessons I'd learned was that the longer someone had to spend chiseling away at your particular section of stone, the worse your performance likely was. Setting Leo and High Renaissance beauty standards aside, the last thing I wanted was Mark Day abandoning me and the editing team having to go the way of Michelangelo hammering away at me till I resembled David - specifically under the fig leaf.

So here I was, poised and posed like the thinker, to evaluate my competence and to learn new skills.

"Don't bother taking one more step unless you show me proof that you've got the goods." Behold the back-alley brokering that bolstered the bureaucracy of this corrupt system. 

In other words, yes, I'd bribed my way in here.

Autumn was in terminal freefall. The crisp, brown leaves dropping brought along a stiff breeze with them that wafted the warm steam to Mark's nose as I waved my weighty tiffin. "Sunday brunch is served, courtesy of Cadbury."

Mark swiveled his chair and sucked in a deep breath. "That smells like the good craic. Dimmies and dumplings?"

"Straight from Hong Kong's opium dens. If the story of her time working for a prominent British family pre-handover is true." 

Names remained redacted even if recipes weren't. 

"Bless that wonderful woman." The wheelie chair beside him rolled its way over to me with a quick kick of Mark's leg. "Pay the toll and park your rump. We've got a busy day ahead."

As Mark unclipped the tiffin and stuffed his cheeks full of shrimp shumai, like a particularly paranoid squirrel preparing for hibernation, all I was left with was the thermos full of pu'er tea. Neither Cadbury nor the many women's magazines were lying when they said the way to a man's heart was through his stomach.

I wasn't fibbing when I said I read Good Housekeeping.

I let him have the lot since we still had filming left, which means my diet was still in effect.

The plastic wheels of my swivel chair rattled against the tile as I scooted and pushed up against Mark's workstation. 

Monitors, switchboards, buttons, and a whole range of unidentifiable paraphernalia mimicked the complex cockpit of the concord. It took everything I had not to extend my finger, press, and shout, 'what does this button do?'

Mark's timely intervention tripped up my intrusive thoughts. "Let's recap our lesson from last time. With all this tech in front of you, why is it we still use a clapper?"

"Well, originally, when editors actually used to gather and cut film, the clapper would show a spike on the audio track. But these days it's all digital, so they sync up the audio and the visuals with a Timecode." I rattled off like a good little student sat in the front row of the class.

"Which means what?"

"So you have a reliable way of identifying and matching all your audio and video from all the different cameras and mics for any given scene."

"And because of that, I've got five-to-six angles to choose from when I'm constricting any shot. So now, let's put that into practice." He shifted away from the monitor that had Adobe Premiere running - the main editing software used for the movie and yanked out the keyboard that was linked to another screen. "This next bit of kit I'm going to show you is called Autodesk Maya. It's where we do all the CGI heavy lifting before transferring it over to the final edit." My eyes swam across the screen as the keyboard clacked. "You remember who we sent the Dumbles versus Voldie fight to?"

We worked with several different vendors for all the CGI and VFX shots, including Industrial Light and Magic, most famous for delivering the childhood for everyone one since the 70s. Star Wars, Indiana Jones, ET, Terminator, and in future several Marvel projects too. But for this specific sequence we contracted with, "The Moving Picture Co."

"Correct. And we've just got the early composites for the ministry fight." By which he meant the grey PS1 graphic concepts. 

"Let's see what we're dealing with."

[The green shine of an Avada Kedavra painted my face as I stared down the rapidly encroaching spell from Voldemort. I accepted my death.

But then with a deafening gong! The headless golden statue of the wizard in the fountain leapt from its plinth, landed in front of me, shattered the tile beneath its feet, and absorbed the killing curse.

A large grey facsimile of the fountain wizard had replaced the burly bloke in the green chroma-key and lifts.

I was grappled around my arms and torso, hefted off the ground, and rushed away from the epicenter of the duel. Green flared again, but this time Dumbledore strode out of the fireplace. 

As he headed for Voldemort, our paths crossed while I was being carried back. Our eyes met.

"Dumbledore! Avada Kedavra!" Voldemort stabbed his wand and screeched. Dumbledore's beard billowed, his eyes kept glued to mine even as the green reflection of the curse burned in his vision.]

Tap. Pause. "Here's my immediate instinct. This brief glance you and Gambon share is the torch of the current battle passing from one to the other. So, the option I have for the very next shot is to keep the camera closer to you to observe the action or splice the footage seamlessly with the wide shot camera using Dumbledore's apparation as the transition.

"The latter sounds more dynamic, I reckon."

"Then let's check the timecode and swap the camera."

[Dumbledore remained in frame as if the previous shot was the same. He stayed centered even as I, and the surrounding ministry, blurred with a thunderous crack!

The scene suddenly shifted to the other side of the impromptu arena as Dumbledore apparated. He landed smoothly, with a whirl of his cloak, on his feet as the background showed the vile, viridian, curse sail safely past me where Dumbledore previously stood. Teleportation magic, you know? "It was foolish to come here tonight, Tom." Dumbledore stood abruptly behind Voldemort. "The aurors are on their way."

Calmly, Voldemort craned his neck first, then the rest of his body twisted around to face Dumbledore. He grandly gestured with his wand resting on his palm, face up. "By which time I shall be gone, and you dead!"

With a flourish of his wand, the rest of the statues around the fountain sprang to life and struck down on Voldemort like lightning. 

Voldemort apparated away before the one armed centaur could stamp him and fired off an acrid cloud of darkness. 

Dark curses met transfiguration as Dumbledore, with a twirl of his wand above his head, caught the head of the spell and transformed it into a whip of roiling flame that slashed its way at Voldemort. It coiled around him, momentarily hiding his form before Voldemort wrenched control of the fire, inhaled it and exhaled it into a giant, furious, hissing serpent made of cursed flames. Fiendfyre.

The statues immediately formed a bulwark in front of Dumbledore, deflecting the snake's first strike even as they melted into slag. Voldemort took that dip in concentration as an opportunity to cast another killing curse at me. 

The headless wizard shielded me one last time as it burst into shrapnel and dropped me painfully to my knees. I still had the bruises from that one. 

The added CGI complemented the fans and explosive charges that were used to create the tumultuous environment during the battle. My gaze never wavered from the ensuing war, even as the world around me in the scene descended into chaos. I was sweaty, shaking, and in more than just a slight shock, but I couldn't peel my eyes away. 

Dumbledore banished Fiendfyre, forcing Voldemort to shield himself. He wrested control of the fountain, washed Voldemort away in a tidal wave of force, and trapped him in the orb of swirling water. 

Voldemort fought fiercely. He clawed at the water to escape its crushing weight. "Nyeeaahhh!" came (Ralph's) Voldemort's signature yell. The water ball burst. The deluge turned into a rain of shattered glass that zoomed towards both Dumbledore and I.

Voldemort fell to his feet, as the last of Dumbledore's spells harmlessly transformed the cutting edges into soft sand.]

"Not too shabby, eh? I think I'll send this back to MPC and see how it looks with the full lighting and renders. So what should we work on next?"

I had full faith in the editing now, but there was still one aspect I wanted to take a gander at. "Show me how colour correction works."

--

DISCLAIMER:

The latter half of this chapter contains another explicit evening that Bas shares with his newest conquest. Enjoy!

--

Only by the time the colour of the sky had corrected from bright and sunny to the deep night did I make my exit from the editing chambers.

I was barely awake when I trudged up to my caravan, when Cadbury forced my hyper nutritious meal down my throat, and left after tossing me in the shower. 

The moment my head hit the pillow, I was ready to conk out. The only thing keeping me away from that pleasant embrace was the strumming of an acoustic guitar coming from the caravan next to mine.

And last I checked, Cadbury wasn't in a band.

I snapped open my bloodshot eyes, whipped off my quilt, and marched over to the offending caterwauler's domicile. 

My knuckles would not suffice, so I thumped my head in frustration thrice on the door to emphasize my displeasure.

"Do you have any idea what time it is?" The door slammed open before I could go for number four. 

Since the RV was parked a few steps off the ground, I came face to face with a pair of black cotton panties with a cartoon cat in the center that made me want to say 'Hello, Kitty.'

Panning my neck up to look at her irritated face wasn't much better, as she was wearing the loosest shirt she likely had in her wardrobe without a bra that let me catch an eyeful of under-boob. 

No, it wasn't a surprise that the first thought that flitted through my hormonal head was what those pointy nipples taste like. 

Why was every inch of this woman radiating sex? Dammit, Natalia. I wanted sweet dreams, not wet dreams!

"That's precisely the question I came to ask you." 

"Oh. Was my personal concert keeping you up? I'd give you an apology, but I can't do that till you bother looking at my face first."

Clearly my wandering gaze had been noticed. "No, that's er… alright. Just keep it down if you don't mind." She said nothing, just stared at me consideringly for a long uncomfortable moment. I pointed at my neighbouring home, "so anyway, I'll be getting back to bed now."

"Why don't you come inside for a moment, Bas?" She cocked her hips, my eyes instantly dropped back to her mound. Her panties had shifted slightly. I chanced the wispy hairs of her pubes peeking out from the side of her plump vulva.

"I don't think that's a good ide-"

She latched on to my collar and pulled me up into her domain. "I insist."

"... Okay."

Two steps in, and I flopped on to the springy mattress of her bed. "I really am sorry about the ruckus, though. My scenes are all done, so I've got little else to occupy my time with these days. Truth is, I've been going a little stir crazy." She turned around and sashayed deeper into her abode. I didn't know there were Hello Kitty branded thongs until today. 

"I'm surprised you're still here, then. I thought you'd have picked up another project or something."

She shrugged as she stepped. Her butt jiggled more than it already was. "I'm waiting on a few call backs. My contract obligates me to stay until shooting wraps, so I take advantage by staying here. Saves on rent."

She bent over and flashed the expansive, naked skin of her toned, tanned ass. Like suddenly waking up after a full night's sleep, my mind was wide awake and my mouth was desert dry. "I see."

I caught her smirking at me over her shoulder. "You do." She flicked on a music player and the sultry sounds of Spanish guitar swallowed the room. "As for me, I have two more months with nothing to do but listen to music." She twirled on her feet, threw her hands up in the air, and hypnotically began swaying her body in rhythm with the music.

All the blood in my body rushed south. With every pump of her swaying hips, and every wiggle of her bouncing breasts, she teased her way over to me. 

Her silky, voluptuous thighs caressed the outside of both my legs as she parked her soft mound on my throbbing member. She curled her arms around my neck, dropped her full weight on my lap, and trapped me under her rocking hips.

I had no intention of escaping. "Are you seducing me, Nat?"

I raked my nails up and over her juicy legs. The palms traveled over the rising gooseflesh of her ass till I dug fingers into the cleft of her cheeks. Ungh! She moaned and pressed her heaving chest over my face as one of my fingers ran over the ridges of her asshole.

"No, I'm not, ooh Bas." I stuck my finger inside her backdoor. "I'm just allowing your fumbling attempts at seduction to work on me."

"Didn't you say, you wouldn't be caught dead with me in public?"

"Does this feel like we're in public?" She clawed my hair and titled my face up. After months of flirting, I finally savoured the flavour of her tangy lips. She pulled back and heaved her warm breath in my face. "Now, fuck me, will you?"

Didn't have to tell me twice. I clenched her ass and lifted her up with one hand while the other reached over and pulled her panties to one side of her swollen pussy. I felt a dribble of her warm arousal swipe my finger. 

She yanked my penis out over my waistband, grabbed my rigid shaft, and lined herself up before plunging straight down. 

"Fuck!" I sunk into her slippery folds effortlessly. That rapturous first friction of my cock head spearing into her sweltering, squeezing flesh nearly drove me straight to my final destination.

"Don't come yet!" she desperately moaned while grinding her cunt on me. She scraped her pulsing clit across the bottom of my navel with every squelching swing of her hips. "I'm not on birth control at the momen- right there! Spray it outside."

"That's too bad." I smacked her ass. She tossed her head back and screamed at the roof. She attacked my lips again when she came down from that. I yanked her shirt over her head and threw it to the side. My mouth latched on to one of her pebbled, pink areolas and sucked her in. I lapped at her erect nipple, relishing in that special metallic flavour of her skin. 

Not to be outdone, Natalia rose off her knees and planted both her feet on either side of my pumping pelvis. "You've got such a lovely cock. Girthy- hnng!" She groaned at the change in angle. "It's tearing me apart, and all I can think about is riding it into oblivion." She slammed down as hard as she could. I felt my head bump against the deepest part of her as she arched her back in uncontrollable pleasure.

She'd lost her fight. And with her coiling depths choking me, I would not last much longer either.

I picked up the pace. I dug my nails into the pliant pillows of her ass in a bruising grip. 

We thrust and fucked into each other with the staccato of plap! after plap! As her leaking arousal drenched our battling waists in rampant lust. 

The sight and smell of the cream of her climax coating me sent that final shiver down my spine. I grabbed her hips, popped myself wetly out of her suctioning cunt, and erupted over her belly.

I collapsed on my back. Natalia's gasping, sweaty figure draped over mine. I felt my eyelids droop.

The pulsing rush of satisfaction was interrupted almost immediately when Natalia snaked down my torso and swallowed me before I could even think about shrinking.

My hand tangled in her hair as she pressed herself down till her throat flexed around me and her nose tickled the trimmed thatch of hair on my groin. Her tongue flattened against my shaft and she noisily slurped every bit of jism staining my rod. "I cleaned the cum off your cock. I hope you don't mind, but I need another round." She straddled me again.

This was going to be a fun last two months.