Thursday, July 1, 2010

Opening day (before...)

Today, July 1, is the opening day for the feature film release of "The Last Airbender." While I normally don't write about movie premieres, or even about movies a lot in general, this one is an important one because I was a featured background performer in the movie. (For those of you not in the biz, that means a glorified extra.) I spent four days in North Philly doing military and combat training, and then I spent almost a solid month last spring shooting large scenes for the film. I had a kick-ass costume, got to wear a helmet that almost killed me more than once, played with a sword, and pretended to fight my friends for money.

The shoot lasted a lot of long days, where I had to get up around 4:30 in order to make it to the set by 6:00 for my costume/makeup call. Then we'd usually sit around for a few hours while the crew arrived to set up the equipment and get ready for the first shot. Then we'd work until 5 or 6 at night, and maybe even until 9pm if we were really lucky. Most of our days were sitting around and waiting to be put into shots, and then we'd work for about half an hour doing different takes, before sitting around again.

I was also lucky enough to be working with some good friends on the film shoot, so I was spending all this time with people I liked hanging out with. We played cards, talked, discussed our careers, and even created and wrote a short film. It was a good experience, and we're gong out tonight as a gang to see the movie. I'll write more about it when I get home from seeing it, and I'll also try to post some entries this month about what it was like working on the set.

Go see the movie!

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