Here's the part where I tell you that from the moment I saw the set, I was self-conscious and giddy. I am not a video girl and I am anything but "video ready." I was nervous about what I looked like, what I could do to make it better, what I was doing in that moment to make it worse. I began to dwell on how the whole thing would come off and thinking about all this made me hyper-aware of the entire process from start to finish and how little control I had over any of it, raising my anxiety level to an all time high, a sensation I definitely wasn't used to. When had I ever been that wound up about anything? Probably never.

Film is so... permanent.

With that thought, I realized that if I didn't take it down a notch, I was going to have some kind of a meltdown. I decided to focus on everyone else instead of myself and my feelings. Before I stood on my mark, I got rid of the gum in my mouth, which was making me look like a gun moll. I kept making the crew laugh, which made me relax. I had a stool to sit on in between shots, which chilled me out. And Esther brought me things to nibble on while they were setting up the shots.

As we began, I watched the crew roll the cameras around me on all kinds of hitches and platforms and what not. I recognized them in part because of Carrie's descriptions that were sounding off in my head whenever someone walked by with a certain piece of equipment or lit me in a particular way. "That's backlighting..." "That's a medium shot..." "You remember what dollies are..." On and on Carrie went, as the crew laughed and Monica conferred with the DP on the next shot, and Esther snapped away unobtrusively in the shadows on her camera. I sat there on a stool with my shoes off, listening intently to what Carrie was saying until I couldn't hear anyone else. Carrie. Carrie. Carrie. Are you really gone? Or are you on location somewhere, where I can't reach you? It's hard to believe that you're not here when you're filling me in so thoroughly, telling me all kinds of details that I need to hear...

When they set up the shot, the stool disappeared and I stood up and peered into the camera with insouciance. There was nothing to fret over. Everything was fine.