And I did. Tuesday morning, up at 4:00, cab at 4:30 to get the shuttle to set at 5:30, dozing all the way to Hamilton for my 6:30 call time, and my first shot was at 8:00.
Tuesday was a sunny day, not a cloud to be seen. And I was doing pretty much the same thing I had done yesterday morning. They were filming the same morning scene as yesterday, the scene with the hotdog vendor - only this time, the series lead was on set (he hadn't been yesterday). The scene suddenly made more sense to me - he went into the bank and was taken hostage, and the other paramedic was his partner, buying a hotdog while his buddy gets involved in, like, crime!
So once again, I was walking down the street, or standing around in the park, or fake chatting with my fellow background people. (They don't want you to really talk unless you're far away from the mike - the mikes can pick up such ambient sound). Today, at least, we had far more frequent breaks in holding - but they were of much shorter duration.
One part of the whole process that I found a bit bemusing is that, on both days, for all the shots, they had a series of hoses set up to spray steam into the air. Now, one doesn't really see steam shooting out of the ground. We don't have the same sewer ventilation systems that, say, New York City has. The only time one might actually see smoke or steam rising out of the ground is in the dead of winter. Ah well - we'll just chalk it up to movie magic.
The most exciting part of the shoot - I missed. They blew up a van! (There was a bomb in it). I didn't even hear the explosion - but I spent the rest of the day reacting to it, in various parts of the crowd. This involved a lot of fake flinching, fake being blown back, fake reeling and clutching my ears.
I feel like I really committed to my performance.
They filmed this sequence from several different angles, so there was a great deal of re-deploying the cameras, and the extras, to make sure we were in the shot. This also accounted for the back and forth from holding to the set, and back.
After they'd filmed all they wanted to of the explosion, they filmed the aftermath scenes. Which was pretty cool, because they'd done up the van with fake burn scoring - and the pyrotechnicians had set up a system to fill the windows of the van with fire. And for a few shots, fake chunks of debris were put on the ground and set alight. But between takes, all this stuff on fire had to be doused.
Another oddity is, even though the shoot on Monday had been meant to simulate a rain-free day, it had rained. So on Tuesday, they had guys spraying the ground with hoses to make it look like it had rained! Presumably for the purposes of continuity. Irony, yo.
At one point, the main actors were filming a scene where one of the crooks is taken away in a stretcher. I was placed in background, directly behind the actors, facing the camera - and, as it happened, the lead. And I'm afraid I may have ruined a take when I caught his eye. For whatever reason, when I saw he was looking at me, I smiled - and he corpsed (which is when an actor smiles or breaks character during a scene). Woops! Then again, his character seemed a pretty genial guy, so maybe I didn't ... who knows. Anyway, that's my closest brush with TV stardom.
During the filming of the same scene, at least one more take was ruined. I couldn't hear what was being said, but everyone's expressions indicated the scene carried some serious dramatic heft - and then Bob Marley's "One Love" came blaring from the restaurant behind us. The actors exchanged some bemused smiles, and the director, looking understandably irritated, shouted "cut". This was towards the end of the day, and he was losing daylight.
Anyway, eventually "That's a wrap" was called. Once again, the mad line up to get our sign-in slips filled in. I made my way to the transport van. This time, it was jam packed with crew needing a ride back home to Toronto - perhaps the location in Hamilton was wrapped? I never did find out.
So long story short, I actually quite enjoyed my time on set. I was bone tired, true, and making my way out to Hamilton was a pain, but I met some neat individuals, nearly finished reading a novel, and got to learn a bit more about how a film set works. And I got paid for it. So that's a win.
I'm shooting something else, another TV show, on Friday. We'll see how that goes.
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