Hey, I'm Autumn Dae.

I've been writing fanfiction since January 2009, in third-person only. It's how I roll. I write mainly NCIS fiction.

Okay, before we go on, the most important thing about me you need to know is that I'm a born-again Christian. I don't deserve the mercy God has given to me, but I am so thankful to Him--I owe Him everything.

I blog at http://. Drop me a note. :)

I'm pretty conservative, so you won't see sex, drugs, or excessive consumption of alcohol being promoted in my work.

Now, more personally, I live in Southern California in this desert where it never snows and hardly ever rains. It's quite sad. But the silver lining to this sad tale is that I live in the town where they film NCIS, which I think it pretty awesome. The soundstages are fifteen minutes from my house, and the rest of the show, well, 70 of it is filmed in the rest of my town.
On that note, I've actually met and hung out with the cast of NCIS. It was so awesome. The story about how that happened is below.

I'm a high school student--homeschooled for the past few years--no I am not sheltered. I've got big plans and dreams that involve a plane trip to Boston and a fabulous life doing... well, I'm not sure yet. But it'll be fabulous.

My writing is almost always inspired by a song--maybe its lyrics, or the tune, maybe both, or maybe just the name. Keep an eye out for which song in the author notes.

Favorite shows:

NCIS
The Office
Bones

Favorite Ships:

NCIS: Tony DiNozzo/Ziva David
Bones: Booth/Brennan; Hodgins/Angela

.G.K. Chesterton wrote: "Fairy tales do not tell children that dragons exist. Children already know that dragons exist. Fairy tales tell children that dragons can be killed."

10 things that make Autumn terribly happy

1. lying on the ground watching the stars with a good friend
2. plies in ballet class they're the first thing we do, and they always calm me and make me feel beautiful
3. a good cup of coffee on an overcast morning
4. taking walks with my darlings
5. singing Michael Buble songs in the car with my dad
6. lying in bed for a little extra while, just looking about my room and thinking of nothing important
7. putting on my fabulous red shoes
8. taking pretty photos for me and no one else
9. watching the city lights
10. flying.

Technical notes:

.My NCIS fic For You was inspired by this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CGXhl6564EM It's completely incredible and makes me cry.

So I’ve had a million questions on when I got to see the filming of NCIS.

To make it easier on all of us, I’ll make it simple.

Who: I (And my younger sisters and mom) got to meet the cast of NCIS. We spent most of our time talking with Michael Weatherly (SWOON) and Mark Harmon, but we got to meet Cote de Pablo and Sean Murray as well.

What: I got to watch the park and outdoor scenes of Hide and Seek.

Where: The filmed at the YMCA I’m apart of and my grandma’s street. They filmed the exterior shots of the house at her neighbors’ house, and so I got to see the crime scene and everything.

When: They filmed the shots I saw on February… 7th? I got there are about 9 I think, but they had been there since 6:30. I stayed until they wrapped up shooting.

Why: They were using my grandma’s garage for storage, and we wanted to see as much as possible.

Okay, here are the details.

We got there around 9, like I said, and they were shooting the scene where Gibbs called out to the two kids. We were directly in MH’s view; he was practically staring at us, which was cool and intimidating. You know his stare. J

So we watched them film for a few hours. In that amount of time, they filmed several scenes. Each scene was filmed multiple times. They would improvise a little, changing the words until they got what they wanted. It was fascinating. We got to talk to a guy who works on crews for different shows (He kinda did odd jobs, but was still sort of a set manager sort of guy) who worked on 90210. He talked about how the atmosphere is so different between that show and NCIS. He talked about how on 90120, the cast isn’t as friendly or welcoming, whereas on NCIS, everyone really loves each other and gets along fantastically.

We continued to watch. They had us move whenever we would be in the background, and they were totally nice about it, much to my surprise and happiness. They had a sort of set director who coordinated these things, which was nice. We got to stand “backstage”, which was basically everywhere they weren’t filming.

At one point we approached Mark Harmon for a photo, and we got into a discussion about UCLA (My sister was wearing a UCLA sweatshirt, so that made him very happy) and other various things. My mom was lamenting the poor UCLA season but he responded in such an optimistic, positive way—it was refreshing. He seemed to be sort of quieter and thoughtful, but a very nice and friendly and open guy. It was mentioned that I wanted to be a photographer, so he got the Director of Photography, William Webb, to come over and talk to me. And let me tell you, that was amazing. Truly awesome. He talked to me about how he got into photography and about the importance of learning about color and light and some different things. It was an awesome experience. We got pictures with Mark Harmon and talked some more and watched them film and such.

Later we got to Michael Weatherly—excuse me, one moment-- swoon --alright, moving on. He was totally friendly and nice. Very much like Tony, only more mature. He talked to us about his very first acting job (a hilarious story) and about how he worked with Peter Falk (Columbo!) and some other things. He was hilarious and funny and enthusiastic about everything. We got our photos (My icon… oh swoon…) and that was awesome.

Filming ended for lunch break and we then got our pictures with Cote de Pablo and Sean Murray, both very nice and willing. Cote even did the “model pose” for the pictures, which was kind of cool for some reason.

We then went across the street to the neighborhood they use for almost all Naval base housing. The other “Naval base” they have is probably 2 miles away, previously used now and then in JAG. Some specific examples are Dog Tags and Murder 2.0. Anyway.

We got a tour of the house used for the crime scene from the owner of the home, my grandma’s friend. Almost everything in the entire house was props. They’re actually pretty awesome about how they work this: They pay you to use your home, you store everything you own that will be in the rooms they film in, empty it all out. Then they have a crew come over and set up the props (From couches to the fake mail on the counter) and they cover the carpets in plastic and any columns with cardboard. We also got to see the huge jugs of fake blood. Oh yeah.

Quick fact: They actually had the majority of their storage over in the mall parking lot that’s just down the street. This is the same mall that they filmed the crime scene in Dead Reckoning, the outdoors parts of Cloak and Dagger, the parking garage in, well, almost every scene there’s a parking garage, and more. It filled up half of the parking lot, probably more, which was kind of amazing. It’s also where they kept the casts’ trailers.

They began to truck things over from the YMCA, setting up in the multiple garages they rented out for the day, one for snacks (the catering truck was at the end of the block, out of view from cameras), 2 or 3 for equipment storage, and one for the screens they watch the filming on and the cast and director chairs. The head prop guy was riding around for a good fifteen minutes on the awesome tricked out bikes that the 2 boys were riding at the park, and that was pretty entertaining. I got about a million shots of The Car—it is as beautiful in real life as it is on the show. The crew was calling me “The Paparazzi” which cracked us all up. We chatted with the crew while we waited for the cast. They encouraged us to go get some food from the catering truck, but we didn’t. We did, however, eat some of their snacks. They had everything—nuts, candy, baked goods, fruit, water, soda, chocolate, coffee, hot chocolate, granola, granola bars—the list goes on and on. And that was just the snacks.

They then drove the cast over in a couple of big white 14-passenger vans. While they set up for filming, which took well over an hour, maybe 2, we got the chance to talk to MH and MW swoon again, and even a bit to Sean Murray (who is extremely tall, by the way.) That was awesome. We brought around my grandma’s dog and everyone, the cast, the crew, MH, MW—they all adored her. They played with her and it was just so amazingly cool. We hung out with them and chatted for a while more, MH and Sean just being very funny and cracking us all up.

We watched them film again for quite a long time. The house they used for the crime scene and for the exterior shot of talking to the mom were actually the same, and the house Tony and Ziva went into to find the second indoor crime scene was just four houses away.

Some cool things:

-As the light faded, they added these ginormous (Think, 5 ft by 5 ft or larger) lights to the windows to light up the interior of the primary house “naturally”. They were covered in these plastic sheets that were golden tinted to give is a more natural glow. We watched the crew unroll some of it from a wrapping-paper sort of roll, then cut it to fit.

-One of the crew (I’m thinking he was a writer—he had a copy of a script and a pencil on his chair. The script had a line from Tony that read something like, “That’s all we got on him?” Any ideas what episode this could be from? I forgot to keep an eye out for that. It was all I could read from the script without picking it up, lol.) had a Caf-Pow sweatshirt. And authentic, zip-up, grey hoodie with the colorful Caf-Pow! logo on the back. I was very jealous.

-The next day they filmed in a canyon for the forest scenes. It’s 15 minutes from where we were that day and the same forest they use for the majority of forest scenes on TV. Numb3rs and Criminal Minds, most notably. “Mind Games” from season 4 was also filmed there, as well as likely Ravenous.

-This isn’t cool. This is actually the opposite. But on a more personal note, I was so starstruck that I was unable to ask any questions or anything. But at the same, it felt so normal and comfortable, as if I did it every day. And yes, after that experience, I totally want to work on the crew for the rest of my life.

-I have a 4 year old sister, and one of the crew guys went over to the catering truck and got her some hot chocolate with whipped cream (everyone, ooohh and ahh here) and some red licorice. I have the utmost respect for them.

I would list all the episodes that they’ve filmed in, but pretty much if you picked out any individual episode, I could find a part where they filmed in Santa Clarita and tell you where. They’ve filmed all over, and yes, it is totally incredible. How many people get to watch their favorite show be filmed, not to mention meet the cast and hang out with them? It was one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me.