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Jade didn't get good sleep. Jade hated when she didn't get good sleep. Unfortunately, 24 credits and a movie production meant that good sleep was a luxury she just couldn't afford anymore. She glanced at her coffee cup. Jayde it read. Stupid girl and the counter couldn't even spell a one syllable name right. And this was shitty coffee.

The goth girl checked the time on her phone. 6:53. Another lazy Saturday. She thought. If she was lucky, she'd only be here for 12 hours. Of course, then she had to get up and do it again tomorrow, as they were starting to run out of weekends to work with. As for Dale… they worked around Dale. All Jade could hope for was that the arrogant director would take a more hands-off approach to the post-production of the film and let people with actual talent and passion handle that part.

Unfortunately for her, their glorious leader Dale Squiers just wasn't feeling the hands-off approach today. Perhaps to do a change of heart (or more likely a stern talking to from his father), the director had decided that he needed to take charge more, and start calling the shots himself. It was his film after all, wasn't it?

No. Thought Jade. This is not your film you silver-spoon prick. I will not let you destroy this film. This one belongs to me. Jade recited her little mantra in her head as she shot her counterpart an icy glare through her blue-green eyes. He failed to notice, as he was wrapped up chewing out some light techs for essentially no reason except to flex his authority.

It was no secret that effectively everyone on set hated the man. But that didn't matter, because every time there was a problem, old Jim Squiers came down and lied through his mustache in order to smooth things over. It made Dale more brazen. If there were no consequences for his actions, then he could do as he pleased, so long as daddy was happy.

And so, Jade decided rationally, if Dale was stepping up and taking charge, it could not have been his own doing. No, his father wanted his son's influence over this project to be apparent. And that was not something Jade could abide. This was her baby god dammit, and she was going to make it her own, regardless of a roadblock like Dale Squiers.

That was Jade's resolution at 7 AM. By 4, her motivation had reached its breaking point. Dale was ten hours in to a power trip, and he was beginning to wear thin on everyone on set, all of whom were acutely aware of the remaining three hours scheduled out.

Jade thought back to all of the times throughout the day she'd considered screaming in his face and/or punching him in it. There were three or four times where he'd shouted at the techs, usually threatening to have them all fired if they couldn't make something just right for him. Another time he got within kissing distance of Clancy, who had made the grave error of quickly adjusting a crooked camera shot without consulting his boss (Or so Dale liked to believe). Clancy had been so angry he stormed right off set, although he returned a half hour later seeming considerably mellower.

But now it seemed, that Jade had reached her limit on how much she could care today, or so she thought.

It was then that something erupted. That thing was the star of the movie: Sofia Zayn, who had been the most frequent target of Dale's micromanaging and snide criticisms for the last few hours.

It had started close to noon, when Sofia flubbed a line and Dale decided to cut and then proceeded to read the line out to the poor girl who'd only messed up that one time. Then, when she had tripped during a scene a few hours later, he'd gone out of his way to mimic her during the next break. Jade had nearly snapped at him then, but she kept her cool and focused on consoling her star.

But now it had been too much. Sofia had sneezed during a close-up monologue, and Dale was having none of it.

"CUT!" The director yelled, halting the recording process. He slowly approached the Romanian girl. "So, Sofia, a couple things," he said in a rather pretentious voice. "First of all, rather dry delivery I think, so maybe work on that, Two, You're supposed to be scary in this scene, and scared I am not, so, that's not good. And third, when you're halfway through a scene, maybe you should consider for one second that that's maybe not the best time to sneeze!" He finished sharply.

Natalia began to tear up. "I'm—I'm sorry." She stammered. "I'll try—I'll try harder."

"Yes, yes you will. Because this is my movie and my name is Dale Squiers and I say that this movie is going to be—"

"Oh my God, shut up, you pretentious idiot!"

As it turns out, Jade had finally had enough. She approached the director.

"What did you say to me?" He said accusatorily.

"I said, 'Oh my god, shut up, you pretentious idiot!', you pretentious idiot!"

"Pretentious?"

"Yes, pretentious, dumbass! You don't actually care about the movie, all you care about is slapping your name onto something successful, so you can 'grow your brand' or whatever stupid garbage reason you give yourself. You're only taking any kind of initiative because your daddy told you to!"

"How dare you! I'll have you know—"

"Please, please stop fighting!" A voice boomed from behind them. They turned to see the man they had just been arguing about, Dale's father, Jim Squires, his thick dark gray mustache just a little overgrown, making him look not unlike a walrus in a suit.

"Oh! Dad!" Dale faltered. "We weren't fighting, we were just uh, we were just having a small production disagreement is all."

Jim turned to Jade. The goth girl noticed Amanda slip out the door their boss had come in.

"Is that so?"

Jade grit her teeth. On one hand, she wanted to tell her boss like it was, about how his son was an incompetent director with no natural talent and an absolutely atrocious taste in horror completely unlike anything the original film was based on. On the other, her boss was the director's father, and he was overwhelmingly likely to take his son's side. If he wanted to, he could try to get Jade thrown off the project, and that was something that horrified Jade to think about.

"Now wait just a minute." Another voice said. Jade looked over and saw a man who appeared to have been transported there from the fifties, with Amanda at his side. He had slicked back black hair and a pencil mustache, and he wore a fine Italian suit. "Just wait a minute." He repeated.

Jim and Dale immediately stood up straighter. The man strode into the room with a swagger in his step, with the air of someone who was confident in their every action.

He approached the group of them and extended his hand to Jade, who shook it. "Jade West, I presume?"

"Uhm… yes sir." Jade replied, unsure of the man's identity but absolutely sure of his authority.

"I'm Jack Warren, the CEO here. My great-grandfather started the company."

"Oh! Mr. Warren, it's a pleasure to finally meet you."

"The pleasure is all mine, I assure you." He responded in a voice that Jade could not detect the sincerity of. He turned to address Jim.

"Jim, what's going on?"

"N-Nothing sir," the fat man sputtered. "Just a simple production disagreement."

"Really." Replied Warren dryly.

"Yessir."

"If it's just a so-called 'production disagreement', then explain to me why that girl is crying over there?" He pointed to Sofia in the corner, who in the commotion Jade hadn't noticed slink off to the corner of the set to quietly sob, who was now being consoled by a pair of makeup assistants.

"I-I-I, well you see—"

Warren held up his hand in order to silence the other man. "I don't really care what happened. All I know is that I've been getting complaints about your son for over a month now, and nothing seems to be getting resolved. But when an executive producer knocks on my office door in the middle of production to complain about the director and I come down here to this, I start to think, 'Where exactly did I fuck up along the way regarding this project?'"

"Well I think, sir, that you could um—"

"Shut up and let me finish." He turned to address the younger of the two. "Dale, it's obvious to me that you need some motivation. So consider this your final warning. If I have to come down here one more time, it's your ass. Shooting is wrapped for the day, and call tomorrow a half-day. And remember, I will be paying attention."

He turned and left, but Jade caught up to him before he could quite make it out the door.

"Mr. Warren!"

The man turned. "Hmm?"

"I just wanted to say," Jade huffed. "Thank you."

"No problem, my dear." Mused the man. "And please, call me Jack."

And that wraps up another chapter in the life of Jade the film director. Will Dale be able to work with Jade to make a superior product, or is this going to blow up massively? Only time will tell.

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Until next time,

/Yonz