Filming in Bizerte

Have you ever wanted to be an actor?  Have you ever been in a film?  Are you a future film star?

After a few auditions at Sindbad Productions,a local Tunisian film studio company,this morning I finally got to be in a film! In fact I ended up in a short scene in an episode of the documentary series 'Locked Up Abroad',relating to Susan Hallam,an American woman ,whose husband,Roy Hallam,was kidnapped in Iraq during the Gulf War.

It was an early departure,8am,from La Marsa to Bizerte on the north west coast of Tunisia.
We arrived at a house on the outskirts of the town,upstairs there was a film crew preparing for the day's filming.The house was being used as Susan Hallam's ' home' in the USA.

For the scene that I was involved in,a group of us played the part of photographers and journalists turning up
at Mrs.Hallam's 'house' and bombarding her with lots of questions seeking answers to the kidnap situation.

The other people playing the 'Press' were an American woman,a young half-English half-Tunisian girl and three Tunisian men. The director prepared us with sets of questions which we had to use for the scene,but we could do some improvisation if necessary.

There were at least five takes for our scene and afterwards we individually recorded our particular lines so that the lines of dialogue could be edited into the scene if necessary.

There were two American guys also there who were going to play the part of FBI agents.

Before returning back to Tunis I found out from Philippa Day,co-owner of Sindbad Productions that the actress playing the role of Susan Hallam,was an Australia woman -Paris Jefferson , a good name for a future film star!

Today was the last day of filming and one of the final scenes was to be one of 'Susan Hallam' trying to relax by her swimming pool.However,the weather wasn't co-operating,with gloomy grey skies and rain showers.
The sun which earlier had threatened to break through those clouds didn't seem very likely as the rainy downpour continued thoughout the rest of the day! Lets' hope the filming wasn't a washout!

Patric