We Are Movie Geeks welcomes guest blogger Tony Fernandez, a production assistant taking us inside the underworld of indie filmmaking.

Sometimes my job has its perks. For instance, the time I worked on a grindhouse short/photo shoot with a Suicide Girl. I spent an entire day in a cabin with a naked chick. And she was shooting guns. Big guns.

It felt like that scene in Jackie Brown where Sammy J. is watching that video of ladies firing assault rifles while wearing skimpy bikinis. Except this girl was completely nude and fired a rifle that was much larger than her.

This sounds great right? Well what if I told you that the cabin was in the middle of nowhere, without running water and full of ticks? The kind of ticks that will bite you.

The day started off normally enough. I arrived on set, chatted with the make-up artist and got nerdy about comics with the director/photographer and the model. Then I met the gun guy and the owner of the cabin and property we were shooting on. Both were ex-mercenaries and had spent considerable amounts of time in Africa and the Middle East over the years.

The owner told the story of how he, at 30, retired from a notorious “security” group after getting “blown up.” He was working in Iraq and his truck was hit by an explosive device, the force of the explosion sent him into cardiac arrest. He had to have open heart surgery and now has a pace maker.

I helped one of the men unload cases from the back of his truck; the director came over and asked to take a look. The cases were full of guns. Not just rifles and handguns, but automatic kill-everybody-in- the-room guns.

And a small pink .22 that belonged to his daughter. Aww, the bond between father and daughter.

The gun man took the model out to a shooting range, which was on the same property, to show her how the guns work and how to safely use them. This was reassuring; all of a sudden this guy didn’t seem so scary.

I tried to stay as professional as I possibly could while helping the gaffer light our scene. I helped him tweak and shape light as the model stood before us. I played it cool as if I didn’t notice her, but inside I was jumping up and down over the fact that I’m lighting boobs. Boob lighting is probably my favorite thing. I’ve lit tons of stuff — but nothing beats boobs. Boobs will always win.

(.)(.)

The shoot went as expected and without any major hiccups. As we were packing up gear and loading out the owner told us to check our bodies for ticks. The crew and model checked themselves — nothing. I jokingly rolled up my pant leg to show off the fact that I also was tick-free, but I found one on my calf, just below the back of my knee. I pulled him off and the room filled with laughter after I made an ass out of myself.

Besides getting munched on and standing in front of men that could kill me without a problem, the day was awesome.