Friday, June 4, 2010

Surviving Amateurs

Date: December 2009.
Job: Surviving Georgia
Location: Warburton

An independent feature film called Surviving Georgia is being made in our area and they're looking for local extras who are prepared to offer their services for free. My daughter and I volunteer by email and I make sure they know I have 'experience'. We turn up at the golf club for a wedding reception scene along with a heap of locals, mostly retired people because it's a week day. The young man we've brought with us is selected to be the groom because the suit doesn't fit the person they had in mind! He has to come back for another day and do the ceremony. All unpaid. Anyway, after hours of waiting around on this cold morning, a small group of us is selected to do an outdoor scene. We are told to mingle, sip wine (apple juice) and mime conversing with one another. So I 'chat' brightly with my co-extras and act like I'm the queen of the party, while Holly Valance and Shane Jacobson do their scene. We mime saying 'peas and carrots' and 'Auntie Mable's got cancer'. An old lady that I've never met and I kiss each other and act like we've known each other for years. They yell 'cut' and the DA comes over and tells me to 'tone it down a bit'! I realise I've been overacting, as if I'm on stage, and probably compensating for the fact that I can't talk. I feel a bit stupid. But fortunately I get a chance to redeem myself.

I come back to do a hospital scene. A baby is being delivered. The scrubs don't fit the person who's supposed to be the doctor so I get the part. Cool! But all I have to do, after waiting for a while trying to make conversation with extras who seem to think they know more than me, even though they are amateurs, and hearing a crew member rave on about the plight of Australian movies, is walk down a corridor, away from the camera, as Pia Miranda walks past. Hope my bum looks good in scrubs. We do a take. I've been told to walk with purpose. So I walk like I'm at work. (I'm a teacher and always in a hurry. Except when I'm on yard duty.) For the next take I'm told to start further back and walk more slowly. More slowly? This is hard to do, to find the balance between purpose and casual self assurance. This is not walking with purpose as I know it. I have to really concentrate. I think of Stanislavski and muster my acting skills.

Somehow, I manage.

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