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It’s around two degrees in the middle of the dusty quarry near Werribee. At 4am on a Saturday, you’d expect the place to be abandoned, but it’s filled with young goths dressed up and jockeying for best position in front of the cameras. By Rosanne Bersten.

This is the set for the famous concert scene in Queen of the Damned, and the most challenging acting exercise for the night is convincing the women in corsets to pretend we’re in the steaming heat of Death Valley, California.

The front rows are the lucky ones: they’re the official extras (300 of them) who are being paid about $1700 each for nine days of filming for the latest Anne Rice vampire film epic. They’ve also been provided with warm polyfleece blankets that they wrap around themselves between takes. Jessica, 24, confesses that the production crew keep referring to them as “gothics” rather than goths. This is her fourth night in the quarry, but she says the camaraderie and the fabulous breakfast served at 5 pm make it worthwhile.

The rest of the crowd were roped in with the promise of a free outdoor concert and the chance to point themselves out in the crowd shots when the film is released late next year (”See that guy with the red hair next to the crowd-surfing chick with the bat collar? And see the hand on his shoulder with the snake ring? That’s my hand!”). Most of them knew there would be filming, but judging by the grumbles around 10pm, three hours into it with no break and no dinner, few expected it would be like this.

The thousands of goth ring-ins have been bused from the Docklands, a bumpy, long ride. Mobile phones have been confiscated and some of the buses are lost in the middle of Woop Woop Central.

Melbourne has been referred to by the director, Michael Rymer, as the goth capital of Australia, but it’s doubtful Werribee has seen anything like this before.

Buses home don’t leave until 5am, but the crowd knew it was a lockin. The last of the buses arrives at the quarry just before sunset. Harried crew wave everyone into the corral, ready for filming. We seem to be behind schedule already. Helicopters take off and circle the crowd, filming from above. Richard Watts, a wellknown DJ from a variety of goth clubs around town, is MC for the evening, exhorting the crowd to wave their arms in the air and cheer for the practise runs. It seems no one told the director most goths dance a fairly restrained thing lovingly called the “goth twostep” while the energetic industrial goth dancer types require a lot more space than we have here.

A guy comes out on stage and the regulars start chanting “Michael! Michael!”. Turns out he’s the standin for main player Stuart Townsend as the vampire Lestat, rockstar god extraordinaire. Cameras on large booms swing down over the crowd as crew work out the line for this shot. DJs Helen and Wendi from the nightclub Abyss (usually on Fridays at Paladin in the city, but transplanted here for the night) play tracks to keep the crowd entertained. It’s fun for a while, but favorite songs are frequently cut short to the sound of loud groans when the real business at hand is ready to start.

Our first scene involves a song we’re all supposed to know - the plot here is that Lestat has an enormous following of pretty young things in black who don’t know he’s a real vampire. Yet. The song has a tacky chorus (”I see hell in your eyes … touching you makes me die inside”), which Watts leads us through. It’s actually a fine song that grows on us as the night goes on and we hear it 50 times. It helps that it was written by Jonathan Davis from Korn. One girl nearby, Jen, 19, throws herself into the spirit of the night: every time we hear the opening bars, she squeals loudly “oh, I LOVE this song!”.

The variety of clothing is astounding. For weeks the website has advertised that the best dressed will get the best positions, so there’s been Effort. Many of the outfits have been sewn especially, with PVC a popular fabric. Bright reds, deep purples and shocking greens compete with the overwhelming darkness of the blacks. Anyone in heels is seriously regretting it. There are some abominations: bad black wigs on people who are obviously not goths in their regular lives, although some carry it off. One, though, looks like he dressed for Detroit Rock City by accident.

Kale, 22, and Adam, 21, have flown from Sydney for the weekend. Adam has short blond hair spiked up and tinged with red tips. His irises are demonic red cateyes - contact lenses, of course, that cost him $600. Interesting eyewear is everywhere: others have pale contacts that only show the pupil, there’s a pair of reflective sunglasses with holographic green skeletons, and Garth Horsfield, the lead singer of Immaculata, has contacts that make his eyes entirely white.

Back in the thick of it, there’s a feeding frenzy as cases of Red Bull are handed out to fading goths. The softdrink is full of caffeine and taurine for extra energy. There’s no alcohol on set and surprisingly few people seem to have indulged in drugs to get through the night.

By 2am, we know the song pretty well. We’ve become familiar with the stunt-goths who are crowd surfing and the hooded-vampire types with capped fangs, we’ve done shots filming the stage, crowd shots, reaction to the band entering shots, and now we’re watching special effects set up for flying vampires. The people who expected a regular party night with some cameras seem to have skulked off to the food tents and the remaining people are enjoying themselves immensely.

It’s getting colder though, and Aaliyah (playing the gorgeous Queen of the Damned herself) is freezing in a skimpy, glittery outfit. A crew member flings a hefty coat over her swiftly every time the take is cut. Pillars around the set spurt flame periodically while we’re shooting, and the warmth is glorious. We even get to do some “shock, horror” reaction shots and hear bits of dialogue. Crow star Vincent Perez, cast in the role of Marius, appears on stage for a few minutes for one shot and is greeted with cheers. By 4.30, when we run through a band entry, Lestat entry and the whole song from start to finish, we’re so hyped we’re shouting and yelling for real. It helps that Townsend is stunning and wearing a body-hugging gold mesh shirt that leaves little to the imagination.

Finally, finally, Rymer tells us we’ve wrapped for the night. He tells us how fabulous we’ve been and we scream loudly again. Tired but happy goths then queue for the ride home and pick up showbags, with a fabulous surprise: a Tshirt reading “Damned” on the front and “The Vampire Lestat, Death Valley 2000″ on the back. Tour merchandise for a concert that never happened. Because we’ve proved we can pretend, right? That’s what it’s all about. We’re actors now. Just try to tell us we’re not.

© The Age