Shoots against the odds...

Last weekend Messymayhem towers was open for business to do three new shoots. This is the story of those shoots and the events leading up to them....

The week running into the shoots was going well. The supplies had been bought, the gunge had arrived from Dunk Tank Dave and I’d even withdrawn enough cash to pay the girls. Only one model had cancelled and a replacement for her had been found. I was so organised I had even pre-cut the bin bags dresses ready. Things were going well...too well!

                On Tuesday night at approximately 4am I was woken by the noise of a circular saw. After ignoring it for a time I got up to investigate. I discovered that there was a digger at the bottom of the drive slowly excavating the pavement outside my house. The water main had burst. I returned to bed but couldn’t sleep, not just because of the horrendous noise of the machinery but my brain was racing. Would the water be back on in time for the shoots? If it wasn’t there was no way they could happen. Even if it was would they still be doing repairs on the road? If so we could never expect to shoot with all the background noise. Things were not looking good, however they got worse...

When I got up for work to no water after only four hours sleep and a digger working away outside I heard an alarm...upon further investigation it turned out that the fridge freezer had packed up. I was forced to empty it an entrust all my cold food to next door for safe keeping until a solution could be sorted. I was then off to work, tired worried and wondering where to start. Part of me started to think the best idea may be just to cancel the shoots. I can’t have been functioning very well so decided not to make any rash decisions and decided instead that I should never have children as on this evidence the sleep deprivation would undoubtedly kill me!

Then things took a turn for the better. I managed to contact the water company whilst I was at work and had it confirmed that water was again flowing (from taps) at home and they didn’t think it would go off again over the weekend. This gave me hope and banished the thought of cancelling the shoots. When I got home I set about the fridge freezer problem. If I didn’t get that sorted then there would be no tea or cheese on toast for the shoots and that would mean a cranky Annabelle! I first contacted the manufacturer who told me it was no longer under warranty and they wanted £249 to come and fix it. Even worse they couldn’t get anyone to me for over a week. The man I spoke to was clearly a moron, he told me the food would be find as long as I kept the door shut. The fact was that inside the freezer was approaching room temperature and also what is the point of a fridge freezer if you can’t open the door to get stuff out or put it in? I elected to buy a new one, Tesco direct was my saviour. New fridge freezer £189 including delivery and they could get it to me for Friday. This was the day of the first shoot. Admittedly it would be a pain if it arrived whilst we were shooting but I decided it was a risk worth taking.

On my return from work on Thursday there was more good news. The pavement outside that has been dug up still when I left for work had been filled in and resurfaced. This dispelled my fears that we might have roadworks outside making a hell of a din as we tried to shoot. The WAM gods (or at least some luck) were with me. With vigour I began the process of setting up, moving furniture, getting out the paraphernalia of Messy Mayhem, buckets, gunge powder, inflatable bondage chair, tarp, lights, tripods and our old friend the squeegee! I got text confirmation from both models saying they would be in attendance for the shoot the next day and one from Annabelle saying she was coming too. I made good progress on the setup. Against the odds somewhat it looked like we were on! This was the scene that greeted me on Wednesday morning.

I got woken by a text in the morning, it wasn’t good news. Annabelle was suffering from a migraine and was going to have to take things east. She was still coming but plans to do an extra video with her friend Annie would have to be shelved. I was just dozing off again slightly concerned when I got another text. My heart sank, I felt sure this was going to be Annabelle saying now she couldn’t make it at all. It wasn’t however it was Tesco Direct confirming the new fridge freezer was going to be delivered between 10-11am. This was good as it didn’t clash with the shoot. I got up and set about work on the tarping. The fridge freezer arrived and was plugged in. Then a slightly weak an wobbly Annabelle turned up. However after a bit of cheese on toast and ribena she perked up a bit and set about mixing the gunge. She is somewhat of an expert at that now and it came together wonderfully. We had a relaxed setup as the girls had got stuck in a traffic jam and were running twenty minutes late. It felt strange having everything ready and waiting, especially after the chaos of the previous days. I couldn’t settle, I was just waiting for something else to go wrong. This got me told off by Annabelle and fortunately nothing more did go wrong.

Soon enough the girls arrived. They were Annie a cute girl with tattoos and red ends to her hair, she’s from Manchester and is a friend of Annabelle’s. Also Ezi a tall, loud and shapely Geordie a friend of Annie’s who she called when the other model I had booked cancelled two weeks before. Ezi was so keen to do the shoot she had got up at 4am to travel down from Newcastle for it. She had tweeted that she was stood at the coach station in her tracksuit eating Nutella from the jar, she was clearly a nutter but a totally loveable one.We got on instantly and the banter between the two girls was great. There were lot of giggles not just from the girls but from Annabelle, myself and Annie’s boy friend off camera as well. At one point we were laughing so much at something Ezi said we had to stop filming for a minute. When it came to getting gunged there was no messing about, the girls had no worries about getting totally covered or covering each other for that matter! It was a great shoot, very funny with an unexpected ending to one of the videos. Annabelle did brilliantly considering she was feeling under the weather. When we were done the girls got clean and got going both saying they’d had a great time and would love to come back Annabelle helped me get the gunge down the loo and washed the buckets, then she got off to recuperate at home. I finished off the clean up and ordered some pizza. The most amazing calzone was delivered and I tucked in. I love my local pizza takeaway, cheaper and tastier than Dominoes any day! Things had gone well, I was content and happy. Now enjoy some photos from the shoot, some of which you will have seen if you were following our live twitter feed from the shoots. 

Next morning I was up bright and early. The tarping and the background went up with little hassle. Annabelle text me to say she still had her migraine but would still be coming. I also had a text from the models who were travelling together to say they were underway. I set about making some pies from custard, shaving foam and dream topping. Things were set for another good days shooting but it didn’t quit e go to plan.

The models were Sophie, a gorgeous brunette who had the week before shot with Messy-Jessie.com and a rather special mystery guest who I have wanted to work with for a while now. Her identity will be revealed at a later date. We got going but it soon became clear that Sophie had a bit of an attitude problem. Whereas the day before everything had been very light hearted both when we were shooting and between videos, now things were decidedly more tense. At first Sophie was just a bit snappy and dismissive in conversation between videos. However she then got gunge in her eye and we still had some videos to do. I agreed with her that she could avoid getting messy for the next couple but she would still need to get messy for our final game which was Extreme Rock Paper Scissors. As regular viewers will know it is sometimes necessary for me to adjudicate during this game. This case was no different as our special guest managed to lose four rounds in a row. She went on to appear to lose the next so I decided to step in an adjudicated that Sophie had not afterall played rock, she had in fact played a screwed up piece of paper. This has happened on many previous shoots, the models tend to laugh it off or moan but in a banteresque way. In this case neither happened Sophie just refused to shoot anymore and stropped off set! I have never had anything like it. Myself, Annabelle and our mystery guest were left in shock. Luckily our mystery guest was a great sport and allowed me to tip a load of gunge over her as an ending to the video. I felt sorry for her as well as she would have to share a car home with sulky Sophie! I called her later to apologise and invited her back to shoot again in future, hopefully with a more fun and easy going model. We were just lucky to have her otherwise the shoot would have been a total disaster, she was a little star and I’m sure you guys are going to love her.

I reflected as I tucked into my Indian takeaway,  reward to myself after the clean up. The video footage we had got from the day was good. Our mystery guest had exceeded all expectations and been totally fantastic. However the main reason I do Messy Mayhem is to have fun. Sulky Sophie and her stinking attitude had sucked some of the fun out of the days shooting. I’m not sure if she was in a bad mood or if she hated getting messy or maybe she just was offended by my shirt. What her problem was I don’t know. Rather than a feeling of contentment I had the night before I was left with a feeling of relief somewhat that it was over. However I was determined one bad model wasn’t going to ruin the weekend. Tomorrow would be better and at least I could take pleasure in looking at the photos of Sophie and know that she hated every minute of it. I invite you to do the same!

 

After the previous day I had high hopes for out third shoot of the weekend. The models were  the gorgeous busty Michelle who was have shot many times before. Joining her was another special mystery guest who I was very excited about just meeting never mind to be shooting with! The stage was set for a great shoot and it didn’t disappoint!

The relaxed and fun atmosphere was instantly back as soon as our special guest arrived. Michelle was slightly late despite living ten minutes away and also forgot the house number despite having been here three times previously! She took some teasing from me for that, then we were off! It was great both girls were totally up for it and we had amazing fun. The Friday shoot had been good but I think it’s safe to say this was one of the best shoots we’ve ever done for the site. It was over far too quickly. The only slight problem we had was there was a slight misunderstanding with Michelle and she went to leave before we had done the final video but she was only too happy to get back in the pool and d one more. We finished off and then the long process of cleaning up and getting the house back to normal began. 

That night I fell into bed with a smile on my face. The shoots had happened somewhat against the odds! Two of them had been triumphs. Lots of fun had been had and I had sixteen new videos to put up on the site. It only remains for me to thank the utterly fantastic Annabelle for soldiering on despite not feeling too good and still being brilliant. Also a big thank you to all of the models (apart from the obvious!). They were all gorgeous and great sports. The identities of our special mystery guests will be revealed in good time. Thanks to Dunk Tank Dave for supplying some very fine gunge. Finally thanks to everyone who followed us on twitter and sent us messages of encouragement. If you like what we do then please pop over to the download stores and consider buying something. It will help me fix the rather large hole left in my bank account and enable us to do more Messy Mayhem. Thanks for reading and look out for the new videos soon. I leave you with the photos from our final shoot.