Levi must be insane. That's the only thing that can possibly explain why he's hanging around at a university he's never going to attend, waiting to meet a complete stranger. This is the sort of thing he never does.

Trying new things is completely overrated.

He's leaning against one white wall, trying to ignore how his stomach seems determined to crawl out his throat. He always gets nervous like this when he's waiting for something. If he weren't so enthralled by the idea of getting a job that might be fun and might make him rich, he never would have shown up. As it is, he's planning on leaving if no one appears in the next minute.

He wouldn't even be here if it weren't for a friend pointing out that he should have an enjoyable job.

It's probably good that no one's here. They'd probably laugh him off campus-- he doesn't have any acting experience. (Or experience with anything besides flipping burgers, for that matter.)

He's only in it for the money...

The door handle rattles and swings inwards, admitting a huge black film camera being carried by something as colourful as a two-year-old’s birthday candle. It’s kind of grunting—the camera can’t be light—and then swings around to reveal a face.

Jason A. Wallace, 23, graduate student in film at Keaton University, is a huge poofter. Admittedly his pants aren’t always girlpants (they tend to have more give in the ass than he needs), but he has nonetheless managed to be dressed in pink and perfectly coifed. His shirt’s a deep, hot Barbie pink with white pinstripes; his jeans are white but smudged with wear rather than pristine. His fingernails are all filed and rounded to the same length. His hair is an intense gold that doesn’t match his more mundanely brown eyebrows, and there’s a big streak of lime green in the front of it.

He’s smiling, though, and when his eye alight on Levi, he adjusts the weight of the camera and extends one slim and somewhat stereotypical hand.

“Hi.” He’s got a broad, lightweight kind of voice, good for acting. “You must be Levi Jones—right? I’m Jason—“ he breathes out as he shifts the camera again. “—Wallace.”

We’ll call the grin dazzling, because it is; it’s also shallow. It does not invite Levi in.

Ethan was not far behind. He'd been following Jason at a distance, mostly because he didn't want to be spotted and asked for help with the camera. Heavy lifting just wasn't his thing. It was a bit hard to being inconspicuous, especially since the circles he belonged to generally had less light than a university building. There seemed to be a smoky haze that followed Ethan around everywhere, like he carried around a bar atmosphere. There was no cigarette in sight, however, and he didn't seem to notice the haze. It was one of the side effects of too much greasy, unseemly magic. He wore his big black coat, a few books and papers peeking out of various pockets. He wore a plain sky blue tshirt with a white collar and dark green pants with white criss-crossing lines. The curly hair was positively not his decision.

He stood just around the corner long enough for Jason and the camera to make it into the room and then waited an extra two minutes. Certain that enough time had passed, he made his entrance. as he opened the door, he nodded to both of them. "Hey," he said lazily, habitually crossing his arms.

Now Levi's even more nervous-- he has to act professional and try not to look clueless. That's in addition to not staring at the explosion of color that is Jason Wallace (and trying not to be obviously trying not to stare).

He straightens up and shakes Jason's hand, praying that he doesn't look as nervous as he feels. "Yeah," Levi says with a twitchy sort of nod. "Nice to meet you." That's a lie; he would rather have just left. This whole thing is stupid and out of his usual routine.

He ought to tell Jason that this is new to him, in case he doesn't know, but instead he just stands there awkwardly. His eyes (electric blue, today) dart to the doorway when Ethan enters, but otherwise he hardly moves.

There’s a camera stand at the back of the room, squatting in a corner like some kind of bizarre spider from a terrible mechanical dystopian future. Jay gives Levi a firm handshake (limp wrist doesn’t mean weak fingers) and then pulls away to drop his load onto the tripod.

“Oof.” He turns and flashes that same flat&shiny grin at both Levi and Ethan. Ethan especially, since he hasn’t got one yet.

“Ethan!” There’s a little line of worry between Jay’s eyes, but it’s there because half of his mind is whirring away on the business of thinking about his work. This leaves all of his pleasantries slightly hollow, but he’s a director, a film student—people should get used to him being distracted.

“Good you’ve made it. Levi, this is Ethan; he’s a special effects whiz. Don’t worry about what he’s doing, you’re just here to act.” Grin grin. “Ready to act?”

He says it with a happy clap of his hands, like a teacher asking “who wants to help teacher erase the blackboard?”.

"What are we gonna start with?" Ethan asked, pulling out the bits of paper and books and a piece of artist's charcoal from his pockets. He set them in piles around the room and made little marks next to them to help him remember what they were.

As he walked over to Levi, he pulled out a piece of string. "Could you hold your arms out for me?" he asked, pulling the stright taut from the top of Levi's pants up to his neck and making a note of it.

Ready? Well, no, not really, but he's not going to say as much. Instead, he justs nods mutely and forces himself to smile.

Jason makes it sound easy to just ignore what Ethan's doing. It's not. Levi obediently holds his arms out, but he can't help but wonder why a measurement of his torso is relevant.

Compared to this, fast food is almost pleasant-- at least there he knows what he's doing.

“Well,” and it’s obvious who he’s talking to from the way his gaze floats right over Levi and lands on Ethan, “I figure we’ll start with Mr. Jones pacing back and forth, frustrated—“

He switches his attention back to the actor momentarily; “You’ll be waving your arms over your head, looking inward, all right?”

And back to Ethan: “And I’d like you to do a big sort of light slowly engulfing him. Not flames, mind; light.”

If Levi asks ho Ethan plans on doing all this—well, chemicals and things, surely. Smoke and reflective surfaces.

“I don’t care about colour; we’re filming in black and white. Just keep the tone more or less even.”

He smiles and steps back to behind the camera, letting Ethan—and presumably Levi—prepare.

Ethan nodded, measuring Levi's arms, around his chest, and the circumference of his head from top to bottom. He made a few more marks, and then retreated to a pile of books just behind the camera. Opening the top one, he skimmed the index, flipping pages noisily.

He started muttering and looking around the room, pausing every few seconds to check the string for one measurement or another. The smokey haze around him seemed to grow a little bit denser.

Levi is fascinated by Ethan-- since when do special effects require measurements and books? He has always assumed that special effects are done after everything's filmed, but apparently that's not how they're doing things.

It's amazing what he can learn when he bothers to step outside of his comfort zone.

It takes him a moment to realize that Jason's talking to him-- when he does, he just nods before turning to watch Ethan. Levi can pull off frustrated; he feels it often enough.