Can I do anything for you?

On the morning of Sept. 19, I threw on some clothes I had miraculously remembered to lay out… On the morning of Sept. 19, I threw on some clothes I had miraculously remembered to lay out the night before, brushed my teeth and hair and ran like a crazy woman from my apartment to the Frick Fine Arts Building, making it there just as my watch clicked 7:30 a.m.

And as “the industry” is wont to do, there was absolutely no work to be done. I slapped on a nametag and waited helplessly.

I was up at that indecent hour to help out the touring crew of the CBS daytime drama “As The World Turns” for the day while they filmed some scenes at Pitt.

I had no idea how I could help the crew, or what scene we were shooting that day, or even, truth be told, who the dramatis personae of “As The World Turns” are. But I managed to figure out something of the day’s storyline: blond Alison, Lucy, the brunette, and Aaron (the guy) are all on the run from the police (why they are, I still don’t know.) They run from college campus to college campus gaining notoriety, stopping at Pitt and ultimately crashing a cocktail party that takes place on the lawn of the Frick Fine Arts Building.

While Jessica, an ATWT crew member, took attendance of the day players, Eldo the makeup guy and Deborah, the wardrobe mistress, patted pancake makeup onto men and women alike and fussed with the white shirts and black pants of the students who were playing servers at the cocktail party. Hair was pinned and teased into submission, eyeliner was smudged to perfection and all the on-camera talent assembled themselves on the mushy lawn for the first misty shot of the day: a wide-angle shot of the cocktail party.

When the cameras rolled, I found myself standing silently near an angular man wearing a “Pitt Athletics” T-shirt. The enormous headset and intense demeanor led me to believe he was the director. That, and the fact that he was the guy shouting “Annnnd … action!” before each take.

After another take, a three-shot of Alison, Lucy and Aaron walking toward the Frick fountain, the director sat for a moment and thought. He murmured, “I loved it. I loved it.” Then he somehow snapped himself back into reality, shouting, “OK! Next scene!”

All of a sudden, a diminutive woman clad in black pants, a walkie-talkie and a giant Kipling backpack rushed over to me and grabbed me by the arm.

“Clare, right?” she said.

“Yes, I’m Clare. What can I do for you?”

“Today, Clare, you’re going to be working for Chris, the director. You’ll be his assistant today, OK? Stick by him and do whatever he asks you to do.”

My interior monologue went, “Oh. My. God.”

“So the first thing you can do, Clare,” the woman said, “Is go get him a Diet Coke from the cooler in our bus. Can you do that?”

Of course I could.

And so my day finally began.

Between takes, when I wasn’t taking half-eaten tea sandwiches from the talent – Jessica Dunphy, Peyton List and Agim Kiba, the actors who play Alison, Lucy and Aaron – and keeping his can of diet Coke full, I tried to make small talk with Christopher Goutman, ATWT’s executive producer. The man’s an Emmy winner, so it consisted mainly of “Can I get you anything?” and “Here, let me take that from you.” After a few takes, I got up the nerve to say, “Your mother directed me in a play once.”

This caught his attention. I told him how his mother, Mrs. Goutman, directed my fifth grade play: it was called “Alice” and I was a tree. He said he’d taught at my school for a year after he finished his graduate work at Carnegie Mellon University.

That little break over, it was time to get back to work. Chris worked fast; blocking out a scene, running it through and shooting with the efficiency of a line worker at a meat-packing plant. Despite the yucky weather and occasional gawking onlookers heading to class in the Frick building who stopped to stare and thereby ruined the take, he’d pounded out all of the exterior shots before noon. He dismissed all the day players with a round of polite applause and we moved everything inside to the courtyard of the Frick.

I could hear his directions to the two cameramen better inside the cool sanctuary of the Frick building. “Follow Lucy … Stay in the two-shot … Hold the two … Good, good, good. Nice move.”

We were finished shooting in the relatively controlled environment of the Frick building in about 40 minutes. It wasn’t even 12:30 yet.

Carole, the senior producer, and Pat, the production manager, thanked me for my hard work and told me I’d done a great job of keeping up with Chris – and even without a walkie-talkie.

I ate lunch on the steps of the Frick with the cast and crew, collected my things, peeled off my nametag and walked home.

What a day.

Watch for Alison, Lucy and Aaron to crash a cocktail party at the Frick on CBS’s “As The World Turns” Nov. 11.