Thursday, July 14, 2005
Better Luck Another Day
"Action" is a word that I didn't hear at all in the past two days. My attempt to be a movie extra was a complete flop.
The flopping probably started on Tuesday night when my sister took the car out for a joy ride. She told my mom that there was half a tank left when she came back, but somehow when I hopped in the car the next morning there was less than a quarter of a tank left. It made me a bit nervous when I got stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the highway for 15 minutes.
Given the unexpected delay on what should be a fast highway, time became a problem, too. I sort of lost my way, and once I got there people were already lining up to get on the bus. I parked in a frenzy and grabbed my backpack, Ipod, clothes. I yanked the keys out of the ignition and stumbled to carry all my stuff, lock the car, and run to the bus.
I was greeted at the line by a friendly lady who claimed to be the one who gave me the call-back. She checked me in and then I waited. The bus filled up and I had to wait a good 20 minutes until it dropped off the first round of people and got back to pick me up with all the other last-minute comers. That was my first introduction to "hurry up and wait."
The bus dropped us off right next to the theatre where the film was shooting, but to our surprise the staffers ushered us to a nearby building instead of directly to the set. They rented an entire floor with tables, chairs and a restroom and that's where we were to sit and wait.
About an hour later they called out numbers, "1 through 90!" The first lucky few people got to head to the set. Then they called another batch of numbers in which I was included. Excited, I lined up, quickly got approved by wardrobe and headed out to the set. When we got to the bottom of our waiting building, some of the staffers told us to hold on. Then they counted off some people and pulled us aside, "we need some people who can jump over chairs," they mumbled to us. That's when I got all excited, like dang I'm going to be jumping over chairs for a real movie? Sounds like some real action!
So we stood outside in the humid 90 degree weather waiting to be called on set. Five minutes later the staffers shouted to us to return back to the waiting room. "It'll be a while," they claimed.
OK, "a while," I was thinking it couldn't be worse than an hour or two. So we all went back to the massive waiting room and waited. Noon, 12:10pm, 12:30pm, 1pm, 2pm time ticked by, every second painfully slow. Luckily I got to chat with some nice people around me, but it's hard to hold up a conversation for hours upon hours. We were antsy, tired, and bored. We had nothing to cling onto except that "it'll be a while." Eventually, one girl I was talking to got hungry so I offered to go look for some food with her.
When we headed towards to the stairs we met two staffers sitting beside tables. They told us we couldn't leave for "security reasons." Well, we could leave, but they ensured us that if we left we would not be allowed to return. Resigned, we returned to our chairs to wait some more.
2:45pm. They announced a lunch break, we were free to roam around downtown for an hour, but had to be back by 3:45pm promptly. Eager to stretch our legs and leave what was starting to feel like a jail, I left with some of the people I was chatting with.
Break reinvigorated us with hope. We thought there was a reason for having the break now, and a reason to be back by 3:45pm. We got back hoping to be called up as extras soon enough. 3:45pm we were hopeful. 4:00pm waiting in anticipation; 4:45pm getting antsy; 5:45pm starting to wonder...
At 6:15pm a blonde staffer climbed on a table and shouted, "I have good news and bad news." After hours of waiting with no clue we drank her words like nomads lost in a desert. "The good news is that there's no more waiting!" Ahhh!!! Finally a chance to go on set! "The bad news is that they wrapped for the day." Oh. OK.
After over 7 hours of hanging around and waiting I was just ecstatic to leave. I've heard that being a movie extra entails a lot of "sitting around and waiting," but dang! That's such a euphemism!!! I thought I'd be waiting around an hour or two or three at most in between takes. I also thought I would do my waiting on set where there'd still be a little going on, where I could still soak up the excitement of the cameras and the movie-making process. Unfortunately reality once again disappointed.
I called later that night to confirm about the shoot today. (Un?)Fortunately they told me extras for today were cancelled. Oh well, after that intensely odd experience I definitely appreciated having the day off. I slept in till 10:30am and relished not having to check-in my freedoms at the door.
The flopping probably started on Tuesday night when my sister took the car out for a joy ride. She told my mom that there was half a tank left when she came back, but somehow when I hopped in the car the next morning there was less than a quarter of a tank left. It made me a bit nervous when I got stuck in stop-and-go traffic on the highway for 15 minutes.
Given the unexpected delay on what should be a fast highway, time became a problem, too. I sort of lost my way, and once I got there people were already lining up to get on the bus. I parked in a frenzy and grabbed my backpack, Ipod, clothes. I yanked the keys out of the ignition and stumbled to carry all my stuff, lock the car, and run to the bus.
I was greeted at the line by a friendly lady who claimed to be the one who gave me the call-back. She checked me in and then I waited. The bus filled up and I had to wait a good 20 minutes until it dropped off the first round of people and got back to pick me up with all the other last-minute comers. That was my first introduction to "hurry up and wait."
The bus dropped us off right next to the theatre where the film was shooting, but to our surprise the staffers ushered us to a nearby building instead of directly to the set. They rented an entire floor with tables, chairs and a restroom and that's where we were to sit and wait.
About an hour later they called out numbers, "1 through 90!" The first lucky few people got to head to the set. Then they called another batch of numbers in which I was included. Excited, I lined up, quickly got approved by wardrobe and headed out to the set. When we got to the bottom of our waiting building, some of the staffers told us to hold on. Then they counted off some people and pulled us aside, "we need some people who can jump over chairs," they mumbled to us. That's when I got all excited, like dang I'm going to be jumping over chairs for a real movie? Sounds like some real action!
So we stood outside in the humid 90 degree weather waiting to be called on set. Five minutes later the staffers shouted to us to return back to the waiting room. "It'll be a while," they claimed.
OK, "a while," I was thinking it couldn't be worse than an hour or two. So we all went back to the massive waiting room and waited. Noon, 12:10pm, 12:30pm, 1pm, 2pm time ticked by, every second painfully slow. Luckily I got to chat with some nice people around me, but it's hard to hold up a conversation for hours upon hours. We were antsy, tired, and bored. We had nothing to cling onto except that "it'll be a while." Eventually, one girl I was talking to got hungry so I offered to go look for some food with her.
When we headed towards to the stairs we met two staffers sitting beside tables. They told us we couldn't leave for "security reasons." Well, we could leave, but they ensured us that if we left we would not be allowed to return. Resigned, we returned to our chairs to wait some more.
2:45pm. They announced a lunch break, we were free to roam around downtown for an hour, but had to be back by 3:45pm promptly. Eager to stretch our legs and leave what was starting to feel like a jail, I left with some of the people I was chatting with.
Break reinvigorated us with hope. We thought there was a reason for having the break now, and a reason to be back by 3:45pm. We got back hoping to be called up as extras soon enough. 3:45pm we were hopeful. 4:00pm waiting in anticipation; 4:45pm getting antsy; 5:45pm starting to wonder...
At 6:15pm a blonde staffer climbed on a table and shouted, "I have good news and bad news." After hours of waiting with no clue we drank her words like nomads lost in a desert. "The good news is that there's no more waiting!" Ahhh!!! Finally a chance to go on set! "The bad news is that they wrapped for the day." Oh. OK.
After over 7 hours of hanging around and waiting I was just ecstatic to leave. I've heard that being a movie extra entails a lot of "sitting around and waiting," but dang! That's such a euphemism!!! I thought I'd be waiting around an hour or two or three at most in between takes. I also thought I would do my waiting on set where there'd still be a little going on, where I could still soak up the excitement of the cameras and the movie-making process. Unfortunately reality once again disappointed.
I called later that night to confirm about the shoot today. (Un?)Fortunately they told me extras for today were cancelled. Oh well, after that intensely odd experience I definitely appreciated having the day off. I slept in till 10:30am and relished not having to check-in my freedoms at the door.
