PA: There's always a first time for everybody.

I still have a couple of pending blog entries that I haven't gotten around to posting.

Anyway, in all my years working backstage as stage crew, assistant manager, stage manager and dresser, last Tuesday was my first time ever to actually be a PA, haha. Roan had once asked if I could be a PA for one of her shoots, and I said I'd accept if there's no schedule conflict. So there, I was hired to be a PA for an AVP shoot which was scheduled last Tuesday.

When I asked what other stuff Roan needed prior to the shoot, I couldn't help but laugh at the beginning of her text. "Mga sinaunang panahon..." Mostly retro stuff from the 1970's and 1980's. Hahaha, "sinauna" talaga eh. I managed to find a whole bunch of clothes as well as jewelry from my junk as well as from my mom's.

Early call time on Tuesday. It's been ages since I had to leave the house at an early hour, so I had to switch buses at a different stop, and I had to ride an ordinary fare bus because I didn't want to be late. It was tough enough that I was lugging around a huge paper bag containing clothes, a curling iron, and costume jewelry. It was a stupid choice to use a paper bag instead of an ordinary bag, because I was getting rope burn from the handles. Walked to the gas station which was the designated pick-up point that Roan gave me, and sat inside the convenience store. I texted Roan to let her know I was already there (because it was only about 5 minutes before the agreed-upon time) and waited. And waited. And waited.

As it turned out, Roan and her friend were running late. They were preparing and packing the food for breakfast and lunch (and apparently woke up late, which they only admitted later that day), so they couldn't pick me up yet. Instead of waiting for another half hour (I was already sitting there for an hour), Roan gave me the address of where they were and I headed off there. I arrived just in time, when they were loading their stuff into the AUV.

Roan and I boarded the AUV along with her friend, Yas, and we headed for the Sta. Ana location. Settled in at the house and had breakfast. Met Dom and Tess, the director and the AD, respectively. After some breakfast, some of the cast started trickling in, so we started prepping up. Roan and I sorted through all our combined clothes together to see which is alright for which scenes, then we set off to work on the actors' hair. Haha, for the life of me, it was the first time I ever set someone's hair on curlers, because I've been so used to someone doing it on my own hair. But apparently, Judy's hair, despite how short it was, was really as stick-straight as mine so it went flat as soon as we had left for the other location.

Off to Bagtikan in Makati to shoot the office scenes. We turned the little conference room into a temporary prod room where Roan, Yas and I stayed while the rest started filming in one of the offices. I was only called in to add more powder to one actor's hair (to age him), or to retouch Judy's make-up. Other than that, I did a lot of sitting around.

When Yas was tasked to buy rice for the lunch they had brought, I was told to go with her because she wasn't wearing her glasses (as it was being used by one of the actors). During our little errand across the street, that was when I found out that she was the same Yas I read about in Lara's blog, ahahaha. The world keeps getting smaller every day. Anyway, we took a lunch break, then we had to fix up the little conference room because they needed to shoot the scene with the jewelry right there.

We had to go back to the Sta. Ana house to shoot a montage. Roan and I had to bring out all the clothes that was put together so they can be approved by Dom, and laid everything out on the dining table. Once we started filming, it was one costume change after another for Judy and Nilda. Hahaha, we even once made Nilda wear my huge chain of pearls (one of my favorites in the whole bunch of jewelry) for the very last scene.

I've always wanted to work with Roan again, but not with us as actors, and this was a pretty good opportunity. Thanks, Roan. Hope this won't be the last.

I've been quite a delinquent blogger lately. That's another first for me, hahaha.