"Recommissioned!" (Episode 3)

This week we're showing episode three of "Recommissioned!" This update is bigger than the one before it because I had a little more time to work on the update itself (over ninety pics this week, plus a small video, and three updates to the League's BIO page.)

I was very happy with the direction that Vivian Ireene Pierce and I had undertaken for this shoot. Although I had never worked with Anna (I believe she now goes by the modeling name of "Laura Lee") before, I knew her through her work at Sleepy Soles (and a friend of mine had sent me a short video clip of her telling me incessantly, "You need to see this video! She's SOOOO hot!") VIP and I coordinated beforehand to make sure we both understood my hastily-scrawled second-draft script. Anna, whom I do not believe had done superheroine work prior to this, was a quick study and easily acclimated herself to the larger-than-life dramedy of the L.A.W. storyline. Her first words to me were "My costume doesn't fit right. It's riding up my ass, and my nipples are poking through this thin little costume." to which I replied, "Then you're wearing it the right way."

I wanted to do somewhat of a retired superheroine (in VIP's character) who did not want to necessarily BE a superhero anymore. Maybe what we wanted was a reluctant superheroine, like a 'Shane' of the comic-book era. Wonder Vivian doesn't WANT to be reactivated into service. What she really wants to do is kick back in her lawn chair, open the screen door to her deck, and watch the Pacific waves come crashing in against the surf every morning. She's happy at Imperial Beach, occasionally defeating the occasional mugger or carjacker. She just wants to be left alone. Vivian played this character with a bit more sadness in her than I would have wanted, but she definitely got the 'bitchy' parts right on the money after she gets affected by Doctor Vanderpenis' "Hate-Ray".

Imperial Beach, BTW, is a real life location located on the very southernmost tip of California. It's where The United States, Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean all converge into a single point of land. If you've seen the HBO series "John from Cincinnati" then you know the place I am talking about.

The scenes with the net were a nightmare to shoot. I reset my shutter speed to take a decent pic of the net in flight, but because the shutter speed was now set to 1/200th of a second, the pictures were incredibly dim because the shutter was only open for a fraction of its usual time. I had to increase overall lighting in the hall in order to compensate. Fortunately, Vesta was kind enough to assign me an assistant while I was staying at the hotel, so we have this cute little redhead standing just off-camera perched on top of a small stepladder with the net in her hands. We throw the net a total of nine times, and of those nine, I have five throws which are usable by me. VIP, always a professional, was a good sport as she had the net tossed on her numerous times, messing her hair and yanking her tiara off-center as it whipped down on her head time and time again.

The reason you don't really see the piano throughout most of the story up until this point is that I carefully cropped most of the pictures in order to get it out of the shots. Those final two pics with Anna laying on the piano bench are the only ones that I really 'allowed' into the shoot, but in the next episode we'll see them like normal. Anna, BTW, was more than happy to rest her feet on that piano bench because the boots we outfitted her with were a little out-of-size and they were killing her arches (Anna has the tiniest, sexiest little feet you could ever see. Her shoe size is a 6 and VIP takes a 5 1/2 sized shoe as well, both of them are blessed with teeny little feet.)

All in all, a very big update. As I said earlier, over ninety pictures on my side of the website, plus story text/dialogue. With Vesta's website, you certainly get value for your dollar. This week you get two photo updates, a normal video update, a smaller video update (1:45), three superheroine bios for you to read, and the occasional art update as well from time to time. All for under eighteen dollars a month.