7th Heaven

I was a suspect, a perpetrator and I absolutely loved it. I’d done a similar role on The Division at least a year ago and it was such a fun departure from my usual–extra-work-wise and personality-wise.

I misjudged traffic for getting all the way down to Culver City, so I ended up about an hour or so early. I was thankful I’d remembered my book…I read many chapters throughout the day.

Wardrobe had me change my shirt 4 times. I’d brought three shirts. The last change happened when she was doing her continuity shot of us suspects and discovered we were all in dark solid colors. The shirt I wore when I arrived was dark grey tie-dye, so she decided I should change back into it. She apologized and all, but I just thought the whole thing was funny. It seems that lately, I’ve spent more time changing than actually on screen. Weird.

Anyhow, this crew was amazingly nice and since they’ve been working together forever, shooting was at lightning speed. It was great to learn that they don’t do overtime. It’s a family show, so they stop on time so they can all go home to their families. –Way to practice what you preach, although overtime is where us extras make our money. Oh well. It’s nice not to have to be somewhere for 12 or more hours.

When us extras were herded near the set, I got picked to work in the first group. I was assigned to a police officer. It was her job to grab my arm and sorta push me past the principle actor’s desk. As we got toward the end of our journey, I turned around and sort of gave her a dirty look, which she replied with a good cop sneer. It was great. We did it the same every time. I had a lot of fun and kept reading my book in between shots. [BTW-I was reading Dime-Store Magic by Kelley Armstrong]

I sat out a few shots and then had one of those annoying background actor moments…

The AD told me to sit on a bench, count to 9 from Action and then get up, cross to the phone, pretend to make a call for another 9 or so and then go back and sit down.

All that sounded great to me. I listened for Action. I counted to 9. Then, when I lifted my ass from the bench, it made the nastiest creak I’ve heard in a long time. There was nothing I could do about it. I crossed to the phone. I did my business…and then realized that I’d have to sit down on the creaky bench again and was terrified. Thankfully, I made my call last long enough that I didn’t quite get my ass down onto the bench when I heard, “Cut!”

Whew!

But then I had to do it again and again and I couldn’t keep the bench from creaking. I tried leaning forward, going slower, going faster, but nothing worked. At that point, I figured that if the sound man heard me, I’d be told not to bother with the bench again.

Sure enough. The AD told me not to bother with sitting on the next take. I breathed a huge sigh of relief. I hate being in a position where I might screw up a take. I’ve never done it solo. I’ve screwed up takes as a group, but never by myself…or at least not that I was sure it was me that ruined the whole darn thing.

All in all, I hope I get called back to work on that show. It was great. I wish more were like this one.

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