Within about an hour of this morning’s post, I get a phone call from the UPM of the other thesis film that’s been shooting since last Thursday asking if I’d like to be an extra because a bunch of their extras didn’t show. “Suuure” (I was also kind of hungry and wanted to score some free craft services).
It was actually pretty cool. They were able to get the fire department to set up their ladder to shoot water down on an entrance way for some very realistic rain. Then us extras would walk in and out of the building under umbrellas while the main character ran through us. Talk about some nice producing.
On another note, I seem to have become the Black-Ops Grip Truck guy. When we went back to the film school last night, the loading dock where we would park and unload the truck was blocked. There’s a very skinny ramp to drive up to the next tier, but I don’t think a grip truck has ever gone up it (the faculty doesn’t even like it when a regular car parks up there).
The truck driver, the Key Grip, didn’t feel comfortable pulling up the ramp (understandably so, as the faculty likes to fill our heads with disaster stories costing thousands of dollars as we get certified to drive the truck). So somehow word went around that I’m “pretty good with the grip truck” and before I could comment the keys were in my hand.
It might have been the fact that I had been awake for 20 straight hours that led me to say yes, but a few minutes later I found myself in the driver’s seat pulling up the skinny ramp to unknown territory. It actually wasn’t as bad or as hard as I’d like to make it sound. It was a tight squeeze, but I made it up. The mission was accomplished and another piece of film school history was written.
