There was an advertisement in the newspaper looking for extras (background actors) for the Disney movie called College Road Trip. I sent in an email and ended up being selected. Here is the story of my experience and what I learned from being on the set of a movie shoot.
I was number nine and had a call time of 7:24 on Thursday morning. I arrived around 6:50 and the parking lot was full of trailers and tracker trailer trucks that had brought all the equipment to the location. I waited for a while until the school cafeteria had filled up with tons of kids. Eventually, around 8:00 I was sent down to wardrobe where I was given a cranberry sweater vest and was told to change into my khaki pants and white shirt. Then I sat around for another hour and a half, met some people and was called around 9:30 for a shoot.
First, they had a bunch of us just walk across the hallway as the re-shot the scene many times. Next, we went outside and did another scene. This time I sat on a bench next to a lady and a man was standing up talking to us. We were there to pantomime (move your mouth without any sounds coming out) to each other and in middle of takes we talked about there careers and what I was planning on doing with my life. The man was a retired electrician from Brooklyn who had been doing this for about two years. He had been a background actor with some famous actors. The lady had started off in the theater and had been doing this for twenty years. She was recently the neighbor of the murder victim on Law and Order and lives in Manhattan.
Once this shot was done we headed back to the cafeteria and had lunch. The food was really good and all of was made on location. They had hug trucks and tents that the food was cooked and served in. We had chicken, fish, pasta, corn, full salad bar, cake, and more. The actors and the crew got even better food. The around 1:00 they took groups of us to the next set which was in the gym. They had it set up as a court room and had a set of bleachers pulled out from the wall in which we were sitting on. There were two table in which the main actors sat at and we were behind them. The cameras faced us the entire time and I will most likely be in the shot.
Now let’s break it down on how the shoot works and how everything happened as I was sitting there.
First, let’s go over who was there, from the stars, to all the different jobs the crew did. For well known actors we had Martin Lawrence, Raven-Symoné, Margo Harshman, and if you have kids or are a kid you might know Lucas Grabeel, and Brenda Song. They all said hello to the crowd but we didn’t really interact with them on an individual level. Martin Lawrence was always laughing and the younger actors just chilled like normal teenagers when they weren’t being shot.
Now for the crew, there were a ton of jobs that I observed including the camera men and their assistants, the people who pushed around the camera equipment carts, the guy who put tape on the floor so people would know where to stand, the guy that measured the distance from the camera to the actors, the people that controlled the extras, the photographers that photographed the props and us so that if we had to re-shoot we could put everything back in its place, all the important people who sat in those foldable chairs and watched the monitors that displayed what was being shot, the makeup people, all of the lighting people, the behind the scenes camera man, the sound guy that held the microphone over the set, the director and the assistant director, the body guards, the hair guy, the clapper board person, and so many more people.
Now that I got all of that out of the way, these are the procedures that everybody went through before the camera started rolling and in-between all of the takes.
So there are four cameras shooting the whole time form all different angles. The assistant director tells us what to do, Basically, we were either in listening mode, clapping mode, standing, clapping and cheering mode, or surprised mode.
Then there were the commands and prompts that the assistant directors, director, and other people who were in charge yelled out before anything could happen. First came THIS IS A PICTURE, which meant that this wasn’t a rehersal and it wsa going to be filmed. Then they yelled LOOK OVERS, which was when the makeup and hair people came in and took care of the actors and actresses. Then sometime they would yell RESET which meant people went back to their original positions or they yelled POSITION ONE or they just siad what line we were taking it from. Then they yelled SOUND ROLLING and that’s when you had to be quiet. Next, they yelled BACKGROUND which is when any background movement started. Finally, they yelled ACTION which led to the camera man saying SET and after that people started acting and moving. And when it was all done they yelled CUT. Even better was when they yelled CHECKING THE GATE which meant they were seeing if they got the footage they needed. If they did they yelled the GATE IS GOOD.
It was over around 6:00 and I headed down to wardrobe to give them back there items and change back into some normal clothes. Then I handed in a piece of paper so they could pay me and the long day had come to an end.
(If you are wondering where all the amazing photos I could’ve taken are they didn’t allow cameras, sorry. And that had to be the longest post that I have ever written, thanks for reading if you made it this far!)
