I only moved back to Toronto recently, and I decided I needed a means of gainful employment while I'm here. Can't live in the parents' basement forever, even if I legitimately am composing a novel. Or a screenplay. Or a comic book script. Or several short stories. Point is, I needed a job. I knew that despite my shopping about of my resume to all the likely retail outlets, times are tough right now, and not a lot of stores are looking to hire. And I also would ideally like a job that is somehow arts-related. No slinging burgers, thank you very much.
A couple of my friends had worked in background in high school, and the way they told it to me, the process is fairly simple. You find a background agent (as opposed to a principal agent, who works with the actors who, you know, get to say lines.) In Toronto, there are over 20 such agencies. All they need from you who is a headshot and a registration fee (plus a 10% commission once they start getting you work) and you're an extra.
So I got my friend, photographer Devon Jeffs, to take some headshots of me - one of which appears on this very blog. I printed off a few copies, and made some calls to the various background agencies in town. I trekked out to the boonies of Scarborough, filled out some info, took some measurements, and I was registered with an agent.
From there, I figured it'd be a few days before I saw anything approaching regular work. But not two hours later, I got a call - regrettably not soon enough. By the time I'd answered my phone, the opportunity had passed me by. But I was encouraged! I'd already gotten a call-back. And later that same evening, I got another call - this one I answered. And just like that, I had two days of background work on a TV show.
The one drawback was that this shoot was taking place in Hamilton. And I don't have a car. At least the production had a shuttle to transport people from Missisauga (on the edge of Toronto) the hour-long drive. Unfortunately, my call time was at seven thirty. Which meant I had to meet the shuttle at 5:30. Which meant I had to leave my house at 4:30. AM. Oy.
So I arrived at the production offices of the TV show in question. There was a people-carrier van - the kind that's halfway between a bus and a minivan. I was a bit early, but already there were a couple of crew members and fellow background cast piling into the van. An hour of half-sleeping later, and we arrived, blearily looking out the windows at the basecamp of the show. A whole parking lot filled with several trailers, cars, a firetruck, an ambulance, four or five police cars, plus one of those big black vans for the ERT (Emergency Response Team, the Toronto Police Department's special operations unit). So that was pretty cool.
A young woman, who I believe was the extras wrangler - though the credits will likely name her as 'background casting liason' or some such, told me I could follow her to 'holding.' Which turned out to be a gay dance club the production company had rented out for the purpose of having the extras have somewhere to go when they weren't on camera. There were fold out chairs and tables set up for the 85 people who'd likely be occupying the space. The bar was set up with instant coffee, tea, and all the fixins for a peanut butter sandwich. Also fresh fruit - but that went fast.
So I signed in, filling out a little slip so the production company would know when I'd signed in, and where to mail my cheque - and then I waited. As you'll discover if you keep reading this post (indeed, if you're still reading by now ...) my two days on set involved a good deal of waiting. As I did, various other people filled in - of all ages, shapes, sizes. Most were background. There were a few wardrobe, hair, and makeup crew as well, and one Assistant Director (the show had four or five) whose job it seemed, was to keep an eye on us.
We'd been told in the booking information to bring fall colours, and three changes of clothing. My agent had told me 'business casual', so I brought ties, dress shirts, etc. Of course, the first outfit I tried on for the wardrobe department was fine, and it ended up being the same outfit I wore for two days. So I lugged that garment bag out there for nothing.
There were a couple of featured background, who required specific costumes. Most of these were dressed as cops, ETRs, and one of them was the proprietor of a hot dog stand.
Then came a lot more waiting - an opportunity for me to read my book (Truth, an Australian crime novel, if anyone's interested). Finally the AD, a rather grumpy fellow, called out all background.
The first shot was of a paramedic buying a hotdog, and then walking up to the door of the bank. All the scenes we were shooting were outside of this bank, which over the course of the story became a crime scene. It was meant to be at Spadina and College - an intersection in Toronto. But the street we were filming on in Hamilton - leave us say the resemblance was minimal. The art department had redecorated a real Hamilton Bank as the fictional First Bank of Toronto - complete with advertisements in the windows and a banner with a logo on the canopy. The set was a block-length section of the street that the film company had taken over. Background were also placed in the park area across the street - but the public were allowed to walk through there, and cars were allowed to drive past.
The background artists were directed to various points around the set in preparation for the first shot - which was at 8:00 AM, more or less. I was placed in deep background, across the street, given a prop briefcase, and given an action by another AD. It was terribly arduous - my task was to walk down the street, miming talking to another BG performer. We crossed the street, passing the actor (one of the show's prinipal cast) who was meant to be purchasing a hotdog. Once we passed him, we crossed the street (once we were out of shot) and walked back up the other side. There were about 85 other background people, all given similar assignments, to give the illusion of a bustling urban morning scene.
They filmed the same scene a few different ways. Each take took maybe one minute to film. The wait between takes was easily 10 minutes each, I would say. usually more. And this scene seemed fairly simple. So there was a great deal of standing around, waiting to hear "Background action", in which I chatted with my fellow BGs, and with one of the ADs, who was no older than me, and quite a cheerful fellow.
Eventually, the angle of the shot changed, and I was told to cross the street ... and basically do the same thing - walk down the street and cross it. Once you were off-camera, an AD would usually direct you to walk across camera again - the goal, I suspect, being to create a sense of movement and population.
So THAT scene went on for a while. At some point, the shot was complete, and while the crew set up for the next one, the ADs called "Back to Holding", and my co-workers breathed a collective sigh of relief.
My fellow background artists were a varied lot.
I met a young man who had come to Canada by way of Bristol, Paris, and Cameroon, and who was earnest and positive about his desire to become a serious actor. He was just as adamant that his agent not book him as background on Degrassi, a popular high-school soap opera that shoots in Toronto, and who is always on the hunt for background to play the population of the school.
I met several people who had been doing this for a long while, and who had been on the set of the Total Recall reboot that is shooting in Toronto. (One related to another co-worker, in tones of relish, her scene with Colin Farrel.)
I met a guy who had gotten into the biz after he and some friends had driven for hours to film a stadium scene in Pittsburgh for The Dark Knight Rises.
I met quite a few actors who were slumming it as background in order to make some cash.
There were quite a few retired people, and at least one stay-at-home Dad, who worked background to make some extra money while his kids were at school.
Some of these had a certain air of been-there-done-that, and I had to wonder if they were so jaded about the whole extras gig ... why did they still do it? There are certainly easier ways to make a living.
(Okay, it actually doesn't get easier than literally being paid to stand around ... but there are certainly jobs that offer more reasonable and consistent hours ...)
As varied as all our backgrounds were (no pun intended) there was a certain cameraderie. People greeted each-other with smiles, hugs, and backslaps. Everybody asked: "how long have you been doing this?" "Who's your agent?" "What do you do when you're not doing this?". For the most part, my fellow background people were a friendly bunch to work with.
At some point, we went back out to film more coverage, of extras walking around. And then lunch was called. We ate in the basement of a very nice cathedral a few blocks away. There was one buffet line for the non-union background artists - and another for the ACTRA extras, cast, and crew. One was probably better than the other - but the food we lowly peons got was still very good! Once lunch was finished, back to holding we went.
Anyway, it seemed like only ten minutes had passed before we were called out of holding to the set. Now the firetruck, the cop cars and the ambulance were all there, lights a-flashing. Police barricades were set up. We, the background people, were positioned at the barricades, cast in the role of rubberneckers at the scene of a bank robbery turned hostage scenario.
(The irony, of course, is that the scene attracted no shortage of real life rubberneckers, begging the question "Don't you people have anything better to do on a Monday morning?")
Here began the long series of shots in which my job was literally to stand and point. The director decided that he wanted one of the principals, a cop, to walk through my section of crowd. And since I managed to position myself near the front of the barricade, I'm sure that at the very least, my forearm appears in one shot.
Once we were all assembled outside, of course, it began to rain. And then pour. And this was pretty much the theme of the day. Various scenes and moments were shot - the ETR guys approaching the bank, a wounded hostage being taken out of the bank, grim looking police detectives discussing the hostage scenario ... and in all these scenes, there were a bunch of us background folks, standing in the rain, pretending to look concerned or interested. However, very quickly, most of us just wanted to get back inside. Because the scene was intended to be taking place on a clear day, we weren't even allowed to be under umbrellas. We could have them out between takes - but not once action was called. Towards the end of the day, a lot of the extras were getting pretty fed up and bored, which led to some chatter and smiles during a take, for which they got a stern talking to from an AD because they ruined a take. I warned a couple of my co-workers to cut the chatter when I heard the AD call the start of the next take - and I got a stern talking to from one of the other extras.
"Careful," she warned me. "Some of these people [the other extras] won't like you doing that. I mean, I don't mind, but ..." I could only shake my head and laugh. I could get in trouble for not wanting people to get in trouble. ...
At last, we were told that the day of shooting was wrapped! There wasn't a cheer from the background people - but there might as well have been. Everybody lined up in front of the background liason and the AD who was in charge of us, and they marked on our slips when we had wrapped, so they'd know how much to pay us - background artists are paid 11 bucks an hour in Toronto - but they're paid for a minimum of 8 hours, no matter how long you're actually on set.
I was pretty much bagged - made my way to the shuttle back to Toronto, and split a cab with a fellow co-worker to get to the TTC, and got home at a quarter to ten. Secure in the knowledge that tomorrow, I'd be doing it all over again.
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