13 Going on 30
After watching this on DVD, I remembered that I’d been in it. Of course, the shot I was in got cut, but there was enough for me to remember that day.
This was before I wrote out all my experiences and posted them to Ashleigh Raine’s Fake Reality yahoo group.
Anyway, here’s what I can remember of one of my shortest and nicest days on a set:
It was a night shoot in downtown LA, but not the kind of night shoot that’s supposed to last all night…just the kind where the crew is doing a sort of split day where they’ve got stuff to shoot during the day and stuff to shoot once the sun goes down. We were told ahead of time that there’d be no food because we were coming in at the end of the day.
But when we got there, they offered us boxed lunches. That was so nice of them. It really was.
Then, us extras were herded over to wardrobe. I was supposed to be a nondescript pedestrian, but there was also a ‘hip and trendy’ category and I think the costumers got confused because they chose my hip look over my ND look. Fine with me…I’d rather wear the fun stuff any day!
From there, we were shuffled through hair and make-up all the while being told there was only one quick shot to get with us. Yeah, right. That’s what they all say. “One quick shot” usually means fourteen hours doing the same exact thing every take.
At some point, we were herded out onto the street for positioning so that when the camera crew got there, we’d be ready to go. That was pretty cool. I’d never been on a set where they’d done that before. I was assigned two friends and we walked away from the camera up the sidewalk. No big deal. We all went back inside and waited for the crew to finish their company move.
Once again, they all said, “One quick shot and you’re all outta here.” Yeah, right…uh-huh…sure.
I recall doodling in my little notebook and talking to Jen on my cell phone. I can’t remember what about, though. I just remember having to hang up on her when it was time to go outside and do the uh…”one quick shot”. She’s used to me having to hang up on her by now!
Anyway, once outside, the rather cheerful camera crew was ready to go, Mark Ruffalo [an absolute su-weetheart] got to his starting position, and we did three takes, complete with a little bit of banter and jokes in between.
The director was happy. We went inside kind of in a line…
…And found ourselves being signed out.
What was going on?
We all looked at each other, scratching our heads, completely dumbfounded.
I was on set for a total of about 4 hours, got paid for the full 8, and wasn’t lied to. Pleasantly strange…
And by the way, the movie’s great! I absolutely loved it and hope I get to work on more like it.