Lights, camera, mayhem!

I came home for Christmas and found myself living on a movie set.

Our son, Conor-the-film-director, has transformed our city loft in the furtherance of his art. I had plenty of warning that this was happening. His “werewolf” movie has been in the planning stages for months now. But at Christmas?! I was hoping to wake up to “Messiah” choruses, not a soundtrack of otherworldly growls and screams.

A steady stream of actors occupy our halls. There is Lauren, the otherworldly beauty—an actress who is a dead ringer for a younger Jodie Foster with red hair. And Jessie, the ghost, who pads around in bare feet and a filmy white frock looking ethereal. Dave, as the werewolf/boyfriend, Matt, is often bare-chested though not hirsute. This is not your average werewolf movie, whatever that is.

It’s not your average family home, either. With thousands of square feet of open space, the loft can be made to look like anything. But it is hard to make it look like our home-for-the-holidays when you have to worry about “continuity.”

Continuity, in film parlance, requires backgrounds to be consistent in every shot—even when shots are filmed days or weeks apart. In other words, “there is not supposed to be a Christmas tree in this shot, Mom!” So we waited until we couldn’t wait any longer to get a Christmas tree.

When I thought all the indoor action had been done, I proceeded to paint the front door— something I had been planning to do since last summer. I had even primed the door in June. Now I covered it with a fine silver glaze, keeping Feng Shui principles in mind, as always. When it was done, our daughter’s friend Kiki said it looked like a drunk monkey had painted it, and she was right.

But the worst part was when Conor-the-film-maker walked in and threw up his hands in exasperation. “Now I’ll have to re-shoot!” he exclaimed. “Everything?” I replied fearfully. No, just the first scene, it turned out. I offered to let him re-prime the door but he demurred. “Too busy,” he said brusquely as he left with his actors for a lunch break at the local diner.

I have been careful not to feed this monster. I have been told once you start feeding film people, they never leave. Instead, they litter the place with takeout containers and pizza boxes while I prepare stews, roasts and fricassees for the rest of the family. We recently dined on a Rigatoni Ragout at midnight to accommodate the shooting schedule.

Film people don’t keep family hours. They seem to like dim light, like dawn, combined with megawatts of fill light. And they eat extension cords for breakfast. My reading light was recently commandeered for film duty along with all the power strips in a 12-block radius.

There was the day my husband and I returned from Christmas errands only to be relegated to our bedroom for the evening, with the dog, who was admonished not to bark. And the day we weren’t allowed in our bedroom because it was also the bedroom of the heroine. God forbid I change the sheets and they need another shot. There goes the continuity!

My husband thinks all this activity is good. He thinks our son is learning more on this project than he would in film school. But in film school, I tell him, he could be working on a set, not our living-room. Then he reminds me what film school costs, and I relent.

As I write this, there is a giant “green screen” tent over the breakfast bar, a microphone stand and a tripod flanking a counter stool that is supporting a “Happy Lite,” dozens of electrical cords snaked across a hallway, a skateboard “dolly,” and a couple of actors on the fire escape, smoking.

I guess I should be grateful for the Christmas tree, even if it does mean they may need an extra day of shooting for continuity.