“Camera 1, ready? Camera 2? Okay, quiet on set, and three, two, one ...”
Gracelyn gazed into the viewfinder on the camera. Ty stepped into frame with the clapboard. “Scene 52, Take 4,” he said and pressed the thinner clapper against the chalkboard.
He stepped out of the shot, and silence fell, except for the munching noises of cows engrossed in their dinner. Hay shifted about, sounding like a breeze.
It smelled here in the barn. It was so hot it was almost unbearable. Gracelyn had already stripped down to her undershirt and tied her overshirt to her waist.
But the shot was perfect. The golden glow made by the lights the crew had set up – the cows themselves, standing just so – the hay, a nice pile in the center – a background of corrugated steel and hay bales – it all came together, and it looked satisfying on camera.
There were a dozen people in this barn, all watching the cows, all suddenly very still, as if no one existed here but the cows. Gracelyn knew she was the only one who heard the music. She was certain, too, that she was the only one who could see the cellists. They were all in the shot, but she knew that the director wouldn’t see them on the monitors, and the cellists would be invisible in later viewings by the editing team and then by the farming documentary viewers.
“The muses,” Gracelyn mouthed.
The one on the far left, the one closest to the cows, pulled his bow from the strings and gave the camera – and Gracelyn – a wide, cheeky smile. He was one of five, a quintet arranged in a quarter-circle, all of them dressed in tuxes or dresses too fine to be worn in a barn. The male muse next to him seemed to be lost in the music, peering at nothing in particular. To his left, a female muse in a blue dress made a face, as if she, too, had trouble understanding why she was here to inspire cows, and the two female muses to her left shared a glance with her, as if they agreed.
But the cows weren’t the object of their inspiration; Gracelyn was. Gracelyn, who was filming the shot that seemed almost too perfect and too beautiful for such a mundane, unglamorous scene.
**
Image Source: 125 Picture Prompts for Creative and Narrative Writing
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