As an amateur filmmaker, I'm always on the lookout for new opportunities to get my name out there, and while it's not always the most fruitful endeavor, I always make frequent posts on my social media pages about looking for related work, be it photography, videography, or just editing photos and videos together. What started as a desire to film pretty much anything got curiously focused however, by a DM I received through Facebook regarding my services.
The message I received was from a young woman who refused to tell me her real name until she was sure I was fully onboard. Apparently, she was working on a personal experiment and wanted it filmed so she could go back through for research and observation purposes, but was afraid of potentially damaging her camera if she attempted it herself. And again, she wouldn't tell me what the experiment was, and I almost turned it down, except that she offered me a hefty sum of money for taking the job. For that, I couldn't refuse. And for what happened afterward, I would never turn her down again. Needless to say I took the job and eagerly awaited the day we film this little experiment she had planned.
***
I arrived a the location we were to meet at with all my camera gear in the car. I happened to be familiar with the address from the start; apparently she prepared by renting a studio in the block where most of the local bands and artists did their rehearsals, I filmed some of them from time to time, so I was no stranger to that part of town. And for the fact that it was an experiment she allegedly came up with on a whim, she sure seemed interested in a professional setup. I opened the trunk of the car and pulled out my camera, a tripod, the good microphone, and an LED light, just in case. With the equipment bags on my shoulders, I approached the door and gave it a knock.
The door opened and I was presented with a young woman, couldn't have been older than her early 20s, who smiled at me excitedly.
"Hey!" She greeted, "You must be Ronnie." I nodded in confirmation. She held out her hand for a shake. "Thanks for coming," she continued, "I'm Lexa."
She was definitely a looker too, which had me more interested now. I've always had a theory that there are two kinds of attractive ladies: there's the ones that I consider pretty; the ones with the cute, wide eyes, that innocent look about them, usually quite shy, overall the kind of girl who could dress themselves down everyday in a sweat suit and still be the best looking girl next door. Then there's the ones I call hot. They're the ones with those ever mischievous eyes, the high cheekbones, the straight, professional looking hair and nails, that overall femme fatale look. This girl, Lexa, was definitely the latter. She had her black hair slicked back into a ponytail, with her eyes done up with somewhat of that gothy look. Then there was her outfit. There wasn't anything too special about it, just a tee shirt and a leather jacket, and some dark blue jeans; some impossibly tight dark blue jeans I might add. Of course, this shouldn't even have been crossing my mind anyway, I was her strictly for professional business and nothing more. Get in, film what she wanted, leave with my paycheck, that's all that needed being done.
"Welcome to my studio," She said as she led to modestly sized room. "You can set your stuff over there, I think that will give us the best light and angle." She pointed me to a spot in the room where a large beach towel was sprawled out of the floor. It was only then that I noticed a majority of the floor was covered by a giant, black tarp with a kiddie pool in the center. Weird.
"So, what exactly are we filming today?" I asked. Obviously, it was an 'experiment' that required a kiddie pool, but I still knew nothing more than that; not always the greatest way do decide how to film something.
"You'll see." She said. She was walking to a wash room in the opposite corner of the studio. Since, apparently, the only think I could do is just wait for more info from her, I decided to start setting up the camera. Based on the tarp, splashing was clearly a risk (probably why she didn't want to film it herself), so I set the camera back a bit from the tarp. I figured the action was probably happening in this kiddie pool, so looked through my selection of lenses for the one that would allow for the best shot. Surprisingly, the lighting in the studio was pretty good, I hate setting up lights, so no complaints there. I attached a small external microphone to the camera and began surveying the scene through the camera, trying to get close to what the best angle would be. I didn't think anything of the four 5-gallon pails inside the kiddie pool, but at the angle the camera was at, I could see that they were filled with something opaque. It was bright blue.
So focused on finding the proper place to start, I didn't even notice that Lexa had returned from the wash room. She nearly startled me.
"Hey," She said. She was holding a trio of... bathing suits...? "Which one should I wear?"
I was stunned. I didn't even know what to say. What the hell was this girl planning on doing that she wanted a bikini. And I needed to be professional here, the last thing I want to do is be hypnotized by a twenty something hottie in a bikini while she does whatever.
"Well?" She waited.
She was very forceful. Clearly, I was picking out her attire for this project, and there wasn't any way around it. I looked at the three options she held before me. The first was a black two piece suit with bright pink dots on the center of the top triangles, real subtle. The second was a plain pink top with a teal colored bottom, an interesting combo. The third was the one that stuck out most to me though. It was silver, like, really silver; kinda like those bizarre metallic ensembles I've seen around Halloween or at certain stores in the mall. I couldn't take my eyes off it, it was shiny, reflective, it just looked like it would be perfect on her.
"I think that one," I said as I pointed to it.
"I was hoping you might say that," she smirked and went back to the wash room, presumably to change into it.
While she was away, I decided to get a closer look at her little setup a bit. I wanted to know exactly what I was getting into. The rubber kiddie pool looked brand new, nothing unusual there. I stared at the four buckets in the center of it. Whatever was in it was bright blue, and looked very thick. If this girl was changing into a bikini, whatever the stuff was must not have been harmful to the skin. With that conclusion, curiosity took over and I stuck my finger in it. It was exactly as thick as I expected, even a little stringy, and slippery. Suddenly, it all started making sense; upon feeling the substance, my brain immediately began replaying images in my head of the good old days of Nickelodeon slime, and all that good, gross, fun looking stuff they did with that. Clearly this girl had some memories of that too.
"Snooping around, are you?" She said. Again, I didn't see her come back and I had a mini heart attack. "Yeah, that's slime alright. Twenty gallons of it." I stopped dead in my tracks and gazed at her in her new getup. Something about that shimmering, metallic bikini was just working for her. It was working for me too, I could feel my face turning hot, and I was struggling to focus on anything that wouldn't result in me getting a boner in front of her.
"I see you watched a little Slime Time here and there too, huh?" I said, trying to recover from my red face.
"Not really," she said, "When I was in college, the other girls in my sorority dared me to get dunked in a tub full of slime. I ended up enjoying it more than I expected."
"So that's your play here?," I said, "A nice, clean-cut, sorority good girl gets messy and decides she wants more?"
"I never said I was a 'good' girl," She replied with a stoic look on her face; a sexy, stoic look, I might add.
"So why film it?" I asked, "Seems to me like most people would opt to keep something like this private."
"When I got slimed for the first time, it was a sorority party with half the block in attendance and watching. There was something just... invigorating... about having an audience."
Interesting. So she liked being watched. That's why she wanted me here, not because she couldn't actually run the camera herself, she wanted another person present to watch her play. Nice.
