Last weekend, I was an extra in a movie. That was a pretty interesting experience that I never want to go through again.
3:45 AM - Hubby crawls into bed after coming home from a night of fun. Zzzz.
4:30 AM - Alarm rings
5:10 AM - Showered, 'hair and makeup ready', drive to the film location at the airport
5:45 AM - Crack of dawn. Wander through a maze of trailers into a huge warehouse/hangar with cafeteria tables. Sign-in. Surveyed the table of hot breakfast for the extras, fixed myself some coffee.
6:00 AM - Lined up like cattle (or convicts?) along the wall to show Wardrobe our 3 outfits. I got a quick stamp of approval. Carry on.
6:30 AM - People still streaming in, bleary-eyed. Some people look like they're in whatever they wore to the club the night before.
7:00 AM - Spotted a group of pilots. Ridiculously good-looking pilots. Impossible, in fact... and sure enough, they were extras too, in clever copies of the real pilot uniforms. I've a serious thing for uniforms, but somehow, knowing they're fake, they lost their appeal.
7:30 AM - Decided nothing was happening for a while, so I whipped out my Sudoku.
10:30 AM - Kicked Sudoku butt. Still nothing, although the hangar got colder and people are getting restless. Craft service offered pretzels, bubble gum, hot beverages, chips.
10:45 AM - Production crew gave stern announcement about no smoking on federal property, the consequence of doing so being no less dramatic than prosecution, wrath of hundreds, and shutting down the movie for good. Random thought that camp counselors would make excellent production crew leaders.
11:00 AM - Finally! Called into action. Hustled onto a coach that drove across the tarmac, with airport authority escorts, to the set. The scene: a live air show.
The air show was probably the coolest part of the whole thing. Even on the coach, while waiting for the approvals to clear so we could drive 100 ft to the film location, we saw raptors tearing through the clear blue sky, flip, dive, and hover. When we got to the set, which was a small-scale replica of the real air show booths (fake drink stand, radio sponsor, snacks, gift shop, etc.), we were strategically positioned around the filming crew clutter and told to wait for instructions. There was a cargo plane open for tour; it was huge in a surreal way, like a beached blue whale. Every once in a while the roar of an F-16 taking off in the runway in front of us would hold everybody's attention, our eyes following it until the barking orders resume from the director's tent and snap us back to the task at hand.
Very quickly, like trained lab rats, the extras learned to listen for the right cues. "Rolling" means we should be in our places, poised at the starting line. When they yell "background", we start walking across the camera casually and pretend we're really at an air show (which was the truth). No talking - pantomiming. No zombie faces either - act lively, just be quiet. During one of these silent walks, I happened to stroll past the main actors and caught some of their lines. All I can say is, what an idiotic movie. It's produced by Dreamworks, but it's going to be one of those corny teen romance flicks. And you know, when you watch a terrible movie and wonder how the guy in the background didn't wince or break out into a hysterical laughing fit after hearing a stupid line... that was me, that 'guy', trying to keep a straight face.
1:30 PM - Lunch! Due to security constraints, we couldn't be schlepped back to the warehouse/hangar, so they brought lunch to us. The box lunches could've been a nice dinner served at a wedding - rosemary chicken or beef tenderloin, asparagus spears, roasted potatoes. A+ for presentation. But we were standing on the tarmac with styrofoam boxes and plastic forks - I stabbed at my chicken for a good few minutes before I got anything. Got tired of eating after 10 minutes. C- for practicality. They were very, very anal about every piece of litter, for good reason.
Being one of only 2 Asians, I walked up to the other (who was tall, slim, gorgeous) and introduced myself. Turned out she's from China - a model - and we started chatting in Mandarin. She's one of those sickeningly perfect and chipper girls you'd love to hate but can't. I will never forget how the still unit photographer, a pervy older guy, hung around her, and when she introduced me to him, he completely and utterly ignored my existence. It's like I was invisible. She was pretty enough to be worth the attention, and I simply wasn't. I define myself by way more than my looks (maybe anything but my looks), yet that was a pretty ego-crushing moment. All of a sudden, I craved to be around friends, hubs.
4:15 PM - No end in sight. Started getting antsy to go home.
5:30 PM - Crew person noted she hadn't seen enough of me - for the next scene, she placed me behind the group of main actors. Yay! Maybe you'll see my face for half a second. Caught more retarded dialogue... tried not to snicker.
At one point, as I was standing near the group of ridiculously good-looking fake pilots, I overheard their conversation and someone was struggling to recall something. I offered an answer - they thanked me, and one of them actually made a joke about how their collective IQ didn't help them. I appreciated the self-deprecating humor.
7:00 PM - By now, we're masters of pantomime. Exhausted and slap-happy, some of the extras have become really creative with their bit roles. A stranger and I conjured a routine where we pretended to be friends meeting up in the middle of the fair. Made gestures towards the planes in the sky, walked towards the fake snack shop. Pretended to buy a bag of chips. Ran into another group and said hello (silently). Maintained conversation while walking... shadow gossip, if you will.
7:45 PM - Lined us up in a row (again - there's a theme here), thanked us for our time. Showed us the way back to the warehouse/hangar and we walked. (No coach?)
8:15 PM - Turned in paperwork to get paid, said goodbyes to my friends for the day. Drove home.
The next day, we had some friends over for dinner. Told them about this bizarre experience, how cool the actual air show was, and the people - the vain wannabes, the production nazis, the sheep. After a normal dinner conversation about normal things with the ordinary-looking but extraordinarily intelligent company, we sat around and watched the telly. Of all the things they picked from our DVR, we ended up watching an hour-long PBS documentary about Jaglavak ants. Ah... it's good to be home.
Haven't been paid yet... the 14 hours of standing around earned me a pair of shoes, perhaps.
5/30 EDIT: Got the check in the mail! Instead of shoes, I went with this baby for my office. Sweet.
Speakers from the $ made that Saturday
