the life of a extra

Wow I'm really bad at this consistently blogging thing.

Well now to the title, yesterday I was a extra in a movie, and it was awesome so I'm going to tell you about it.


Last Sunday I applied to be a extra for a movie that is filming in January called chilled in Miami(not a very inspiring title if you ask me), but I got a phone call on Wednesday saying that they needed me for a movie on Friday, I didn't have a job so I thought to myself I could use the $100 that I will make doing this. So yesterday I went to be a extra for a movie called The Hessen Affair, I played a WW2 American soldier, which meant that I would be getting a little trim so my hair could pass for a 1950's crew cut.

So I get there at 3 pm talk with the assistant director, sign in, they send me to get suited up and everything. So I get shuttled to the main office to get all ready, they trim my hair, put some makeup on haha, get me all suited up, which takes about a hour, good fun, they hand out sandwiches yum. shuttle us back to the set, send us into a nice and warm trailer, with a trailer next door set up with lots of snacks and drinks. I meet the craziest person ever, he has all these ideas of metaphysics, has all these business ideas and tells us everything in business is all about logos and renting equipment instead of buying, I cant even explain the other stuff he was talking about because it was so crazy that I can't even begin to explain it . I move over to the trailer next door so I don't have to be with him haha, watch farmer vision tv for 3 hours, eat a buffet of supper, hang out with some of the big shot people in the film. go back watch tv for a couple hours, there were 9 extras all together, they give us these things called hot shots, little hand warmer things that surprisingly work very well.

it was at least -35 with the windchill at this point, my ears are exposed, and we are filming outside. my shot consisted of me walking into a building, think it was supposed to be a train depot or airport, then walking out with a different bag and walking with a other person, i had to take my glasses off for filming because they arent time appropriate, so i was basicaly walking around blind . they had alot of problems with the scene because they were using 1940's cars with really thin tires and they didnt have much traction on the slick snow covered pavement, and right after we did our scene all of them stalled out because of the cold. we shot this scene for like 1 1/2 hours, all the people working on the film were awesome, including the main actor in the movie Billy Zane(titanic,though im sure he would rather be known for something other than his 1997 film), all the people working on the movie were awesome, holding me ears trying to warm them up, i even think i had billy zanes personal assistant warming up my ears at one point haha im not sure, but it was alot of fun, I essentially sat around for 7 1/2 hours and froze my but off for 1 1/2 hours. it was a good time.

chad