Videos for the Arlington Diocese teen video competition are due February 26. A few teens from St Mark Church in Vienna, VA, have gotten together with me over the past month to put together the script. The diocese requires that the idea for the video comes from the teens. St Mark’s video is about ninja sheep. I don’t think I’ll have any trouble convincing anyone that this story was not my idea.
The story takes place on a field, represented by a grassy area near St Mark School. I dressed all in off-white with socks safety-pinned to my head for ears, along with a few teens who also played sheep. I really would have liked to have heard what the parents were thinking when they saw us with chairs and desks in the grass as they came to pick up their kids after school.
Now, I hope I’m not giving away any secrets of our story to those who are looking to steal ideas for the next Hollywood blockbuster, but we had a Teacher Sheep, a Wannabe-Ninja Sheep, and a Bully Sheep, along with a Ninja, Dog, and Wolf. Like a bad cartoon, played by real people.
So we started by shooting Brad, also our video editor, wearing a black knit hat pulled down over his face. Brad, dressed all in black, flailed around with wooden swords that Liz, the Wolf, had in her possession because her uncle had found them lying on a beach.
“Did I look stupid?” Brad asked.
“Well,” Tom the Teacher Sheep replied, “at least nobody could see your face.”
At some point, Tim, St Mark’s Youth Minister, went to his office to get a black T-shirt. He seemed to be gone a little too long, so I looked around and saw him wandering around the parking lot talking on his cell phone.
“Who is he talking to now?” I muttered to the teens. Geez, he’s as unruly as the teens. It’s like herding ninja sheep.
When he came back to the set, Tim said, “I just talked to Randy.”
Um, why was he talking to my husband.
“I thought I was calling your cell phone, but I must have programmed your home phone number into my phone.”
Ah, yes. My husband was home this afternoon because he works for the Virginia Department of Transportation and was scheduled to work overnight to prepare for the snowpocalypse.
“I hope I didn’t wake him up.”
We tried shooting a scene of the sheep running away from the Wolf. Liz played a running sheep. At our next shoot, she’ll wear a mask and play the Wolf. Tim played cameraman.
As we ran past our sheep school desks, baaing, Tim said, “That was perfect! Do it again, except this time, I’ll press Record.”
Unfortunately, it was getting dark before we finished shooting half the footage. I was exhausted and Tim, being the sweetheart that he is, gave me a ride home because my household car is at Randy’s office. (Randy drove to work on Tuesday – instead of his usual bus commute – so he could volunteer to do people’s taxes at the library.) We refuse to drive our own car in the snowpocalypse. If Randy has Snowpocalypse Duty, he’s driving a state truck.
I just hope we can shoot the rest of the footage before the contest deadline.
