Extra Extra
Extra Extra
So I realized that I never blogged about my experience of being an extra in a movie.
I was waiting for my friend that hooked me up with the gig to send the candid photos from the set of us in action. OR I was waiting for word of when the movie was going to come out. I figured I’ll just do an update blog when that happens, because if I don’t blog this now… I’ll completely forget what happened! Well, ok I’m not a goldfish… so I won’t COMPLETELY forget. But I’ll at least get a little hazy on the details.
So here’s the run down on how it all went down. SO then you’ll know what’s up… and you’ll be down with being up. Got it?
Ok. Here goes. So here’s the “Call Sheet” from that day. They make one of these every day to know what’s going on in the filming and who’s needed on the scene and what kinda make up is needed and effects. And wardrobe… and also what the weather is going to be. Etc. etc. It’s EVERYTHING you need to know.
I made it low res because there’s some personal information on there so I didn’t want the public interwebs having like Parker Posey’s cell phone number. Actually I don’t think her number is on there, but there’s some other numbers on there and I have no idea what half the stuff really means or is… it COULD be top secret! And since the movie isn’t out yet I want to be all on the up and up and not leak anything that might not want to be leaked. Ca-peche? SP? Quiche? No lie, I just looked over to the food case here in Barnes and Noble where I’m typing this to look up the spelling of quiche… they have a yummy looking spinach and artichoke quiche that looks mouthwatering. I may have to get it. Just might. For now… I’m going to keep writing.
So I basically got this gig through a family friend. They needed extras… he was advertising it on facebook saying that he needed headshots. So I sent him one of my spring ’10 photoshoot photos. The one of me in the black shirt with the guitar looking at the camera holding the guitar upside down. You know… the one that makes the girls swoon. Hmmm… Or, so I was once told. I don’t know if girls really swoon over me. Sigh…
Anywho… so… yea. I sent him that picture. Well he liked it. And so he sent an email back… and said: “Rockin photo… Can you be here in NYC one day next month?” I said “YES!”
That was in January.
In February I took the day off. Hopped the train from the metro park station in NJ to Penn Station in NYC. When I got to the metro park station it was COMPLETELY FULL! I started to panic! Where am I going to park? What am I going to do??? I was like oh no! What now?!?!?! Then the attendant motioned at me to come forward to the LOT FULL sign and he moved the cone to the side. I rolled down the window and he said… “I can fit you in over here on the side… I don’t normally do this but you’ve got a pretty small car… so I’ll let it slide this one time”
Wow… yes.
I then took the F train to Brooklyn. The filming was at a neat little bar pub restaurant in the basement where the club is.
http://www.waterstreetrestaurant.com/
SO… as you can guess… It was a club scene. I showed up wearing some hopped up clubbing clothing. I had on my most expensive pair of everything… shoes, shirt, and pants.
When I got there I was sent down to holding with the rest of the cast and we all just kinda hung out and joked around and talked. It was super interested to hear all the people’s stories! Some were aspiring actors and actresses. Some were just there for the heck of it. Some just doing extra work to pick up some extra income for the day.
Oh I almost forgot the best part. When walking the few blocks from the train station to the actual location it was mega windy. I had my backpack on and there is a little elastic thing in the back. Well, at the exact SAME time as a giant gust of wind coming in my face I also hooked onto some random pole that was sticking out…
I thought the wind was blowing so hard that it was holding me in place! Then the wind stops blowing and I realize I’m caught.
At the exact same time a kind new Yorker girl unhooked me… she was doing all she could to stop from laughing.
How embarrassing. I just said… “Thanks.”
She giggled and said “no problem” Then she walked into the fresh market store with her giant reusable shopping bag.
So the first scene I wasn’t in. It was just people sitting in the bar in the background. Now they actually add music and talking and everything but the main characters and their lines AFTER. So everyone had to be SUPER SILENT while the scene was run and just mime everything.
It was weird at first. After a while you get the hang of it. They ran that a few times and got a good take fairly quickly. The scene was pretty entertaining and I was content just watching the actors and actresses do their thing.
Who was in it? Well here’s the biggest names you might recognize:
Parker Posey: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000205/
Eric Mabius: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0531095/
Cheyanne Jackson: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2091145/
Actually here’s the IMDB for the movie. This wasn’t up the last time I checked but that’s pretty sweet there’s a IMDB entry for it now!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1845849/
That makes it officially official!
So the next 3 scenes I’m in. The first one is leaving the club and a fight breaks out. I’m walking out and you probably will only see the back of my head. I’m wearing a blue shirt with the sleaves rolled up.
The next scene we did was a band playing and I’m in the crowd standing near Parker. We’re all just jamming out to this soft rock song. This was probably the most mellow song I’ve ever heard. It was actually pretty hard to dance to it and make it believable that you were ALL about this band.
Basically they played this song on loop. And just kept rolling cameras. We had to stare at a GIANT X on the wall and make believe that was the band. We had fake drinks in our hands that looked like real alcohol but didn’t smell or I imagine taste anything like it. I didn’t drink from the drink. It was probably not a good idea to put the glass anywhere near your mouth. Movie set props probably shouldn’t be ingested. At least I think?
So they just had this song on repeat, and after about the 5th time through we started to memorize the chorus of the song. So the director said feel free to sing along or mouth the words like you know the song.
It’s REALLY actually interesting. They do scenes multiple times because you start to get into it each time. The first time you run through a scene everyone is kind of stiff and awkward. Then as you run through it more and more and more…. You start to really GET INTO THE PART! It’s amazing. This happened with live theater the few plays I’ve been in.
I think as well this is similar with friendships and relationships. Things are always awkward the first few times… and then after like the 4th or 5th time you really start to get comfy with the person and then things start to really become awesome because you really learn what each other needs from the other person.
I don’t know, sometimes it does happen right off the bat the first time. But usually it takes a few run through to get into the motion of things.
Relationships AND movie scenes. The more you do something over and over the more comfortable and better you get at it. So… the moral of that is…
Don’t give up after only 1 or 2 or even 3 tries… keep at it a little while. I guarantee it will go somewhere once things get comfortable.
The very last scene was all the extra’s hanging out inside the door of the club as the main characters were entering. This time we actually had to talk loudly and make it seem like loud music was playing. There wasn’t actually any music playing but we just had to pretend it was a big crazy club scene.
After all was said and done we went upstairs to wait for the cashola we were to be paid for the days worth of work. While waiting I got to meet miss Parker Posey herself! We even said hello and talked about some random things.
She’s super chill.
I was with some other people so it wasn’t just me talking. But it was still fun to be like wow hey how are you?
I was kinda starstruck.
So I got paid and then went on my way back to catch the train. I decided to stop off for a burger and a beer at Tir Na Nog…
That’s across the street from Penn Station in NYC. It was soooo freakin good. The bartender was an awesome fellow who was actually from Ireland. So I felt like I was in another place entirely and not just in NYC.
While I was enjoying my burger and beer a fellow sat down beside me and we started chatting. Turns out he was from the same area in western PA where I went to college. So we talked about that. He also did IT work so we started talking about that!
He was a consultant for NBC in NYC. We exchanged tech IT guru stories and ideas and secrets. It was pretty awesome. He gave me a card when he left.
I need to get one of those business card things. That’s on my list.
Well so the secret he gave me was gold. I’ve already used it at work to fix a few issues that seemingly are unsolvable.
He told me of this website which is really a group of sites together.
It’s gold for IT people. There are a TON of sites under that one site and you can ask and answer questions. I’ve been using http://serverfault.com/ which is for networking and IT stuff. But they have A TON of topics to get help on from Cooking to Physics.
There’s even one for Photography! So if you are into professional photography… check out:
http://photo.stackexchange.com/
Anywho I left the bar, a little tipsy… got on the wrong train… got OFF the train just before it left the station… got on the right train… was sober by the time I got to my car and drove home.
It was an amazing experience and I’m so glad I did it!
Well, I’m being kicked out here at Barnes and Noble. So I hope everyone has a fantastic night. I’m going to hit up the grocery store for some food stuffs and then maybe hop down to the local pub for a quick brew and to mingle with the locals and see if I can have another interesting convo like I did in NYC.
Then bed time for me!
Until tomorrow. I hope everyone has a good Saturday night!
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