White Room

    All white background. Most of the Factory stars sat on a low couch. All dressed in white with sunglasses. Short people in the front while taller people stood in the back. The lights started up. Beck's "Gamma Ray" adds a Beach Boy 60's vibe to an otherwise bleak room. Nobody moves. Any slight notion of that would ruin the shot. No, that was the shadows' jobs to do the work. The people just had to sit there and not move. For close to three hours.

    The light experiment began. The shadows seemed to spin on the ground at their feet. The taller shadows did the same along the back wall. Everyone stayed still the whole time. Not a peep. Not even a smile. They all look like ghost devoid of any emotion. The white background had more life to them than they did.

    Then, the scene cut to some little white robots. These little buggers could only be summed up in two words: low budget. That's it. In fact, they looked like a fifth grade art class put them together. The robots were made out of cardboard boxes, tape, toilet paper rolls, and paper. But, Andy took them anyway and played with their shadows against the white background. The scenes between the stars and the robot army cut between each other so many times that it looked a flip book had come to life on camera. All of it kept with Beck's lazy-sounding voice in the air. If the stars didn't look pleased to be there, they sure didn't show it on their faces. No emotions, just stand there in their white background and do nothing. They were just the props really. The special effects were the only ones doing the work. They were the stars of the film, really. The stars and robots could be taken out of the film and it just look the same.

    Suddenly, it stopped and the white background ate up the foreground in one huge gulp. That was it. It was over. Done! Film over. The show was great. Goodbye, thanks for coming out here. You can all go home now. And everything else in between. White out.