"The Ruby of Peril" and the Summer Storm

Started out another hot, hazy, and humid day with laundry. I got in a little earlier than I have in the past few weeks, around quarter of 11. I must have come in between spurts. I did see a couple of people, but most of the washers and driers were available. I was in and out in about an hour.

I began the next recorded disc as I put away my laundry and ate lunch. I took a film-making class during my last semester at Richard Stockton College in the fall of 2001. Two of the big projects for that class was making a music video and making a short film. I got around my lack of resources by using footage from some of the silent and early sound movies that had been donated to the Media Center a few semesters before and doing a silent comedy-themed video to the tune of the 30s hit "Happy Days are Here Again."

Doing the short movie proved to be a bit more daunting. I didn't really know anyone I could ask to appear in a movie, and I was scared to death of directing anyone. I didn't want to make people sign papers, either. I finally spent the weekend after Thanksgiving filming my "stop-motion animation" spoof of Indiana Jones-style action stories...i.e, filming stuffed animals, moving them around with my hands, and doing their voices in the background.

Of the "stars" of "The Ruby of Peril," I still have leading man Mint the Teddy Bear, leading lady Gigi the Beanie Baby Black Poodle, and two Pokemon beanies, dumb lackey Snorlax and law officer Psyduck. I borrowed a small stuffed penguin from a roommate to be Penny, Mint's partner, and gave a cameo that was eventually unused to someone's Spike the Dog from Rugrats. Talked my then-boyfriend into loaning me a Gengar ghost Pokemon beanie to be the head bad guy. (Neither I nor my roommates had stuffed animals that looked even remotely scary.) "Little Bear," the annoying kid sidekick, was a teddy bear keychain toy. Bartok the Bat, a Burger King kids' meal toy from when they were promoting the animated movie Anastasia, was the slightly smarter lackey. Little Bear and Bartok were donated to a thrift shop when I moved to Oaklyn.

The "sets" were whatever happened to be laying around the apartment that weekend. One of my roommates had a small fish tank, which became the backdrop for the villains' "aquarium" hide-out. Mint and Penny's "office" was the desk under my bed where my school textbooks and laptop were kept. The "ruby" itself was a costume-jewelry pendant I never wore. The bar used in the opening was the counter that separated the kitchen from the dining area. The "waterfall" where Gigi was held prisoner was the sink; she was tied to the faucet with stockings, the only things resembling rope that I could dig up quickly.

I still have all of the footage I filmed for "Ruby of Peril," along with the finished versions of "Ruby of Peril" and "Happy Days are Here Again." It took me a while to do both. I couldn't figure out how to use the editing machine at first. After that, I couldn't get the sound tracks to play nice with the video tracks, which you can hear in my introduction to "Happy Days." I dubbed my voice over a scene from the Marion Davies silent comedy Show People to give my hip college audience an idea of what I was doing, but the video doesn't kick in until a full two or three minutes after my dialogue begins...and then the song is nearly a minute late after my dialogue ends.

I did do better with "Ruby of Peril." I gave up trying to match the dialogue I'd originally filmed and just re-dubbed the entire short. This did create a problem when it came time to submit our scripts for the short films. "Ruby of Peril" had no script. I'd improvised the whole thing. I had to make a script up from scratch.

(Incidentally, I think I did get good but not great grades on both projects, reflecting their rather hasty improvised nature. I do think "Peril" came out well enough for what it was, and "Happy Days" at least had a good idea, even if I couldn't edit it well enough to come together.)

The clouds were getting darker even as I copied the "Ruby of Peril" footage to disc. The storm didn't start until long after I was already at work, though. Today's the beginning of the month, and we were really busy during the 4-6 rush hour. I had some annoying customers, too. One old lady had me chase after a big container of Folgers' coffee, insisting it was on sale. It wasn't. Only one kind of Folgers coffee was on sale. Did she want it? No, she complained. It's too weak. She'd take the original...which I'd already taken off her order and put away. I had people give me a hard time about bagging, too.

Otherwise, there were no big problems. The storm later in the evening cleared out the store. By the time I left, it was really quiet.