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01/07/2007: "Movies"
Standby! Rolling! Background! Action!
"Background" is the cue for extras to take off. The movie filming in Chicago right now is "Fred Claus". The scenes I did were filmed yesterday. After an 11 hour day of standing around or walking back and forth -- which is a lot more tiring than it sounds, at least for me, so far from my couch -- I'm glad I didn't agree to do the Sunday/Monday extras scenes, which is what they originally called for. I had to get up at 3:30 am, but other than that, the fact that it was in Chicago wasn't much of a hassle. Of course there was no traffic getting there, but even coming home, it was still less than an hour's drive.
There were two different walking back and forth scenes, on the other side of the street from the real action. One was near LaSalle and Monroe, the other near LaSalle and Washington. As difficult as filming on location must be, I was surprised to see that the streets and sidewalks weren't blocked off. So even though the extras were standing in position waiting to be told to start walking, random pedestrians kept walking by. Some of them might have even gotten into a shot. Of course, they weren't getting paid. 
For the third scene, all the guys changed to suits. There were a few different assignments for that one. I was in the group coming out of a building made up to look like the Merc. We came streaming out of the building, across the street, and into a crowd going into a "U Bet Your Life OTB", which was just a tiny abandoned storefront on the inside. As we went into the "OTB", Vince Vaughn was standing right outside the entrance, ranting about something.
The cold wasn't even too bad, low 40s, but that's plenty cold enough to get me shivering after an hour or two. Fortunately, there was an indoor holding area for the extras that we went back to a couple times. There was room in there for the 150 extras and all their extra outfits and whatnot. Although it was crowded enough that it was hard to get away from some of the chattering conversations some people can have even with complete strangers. I suppose if that's my biggest complaint then it was a pretty good experience. And they did provide a nice chicken and rice lunch. It smelled nice, anyway. I did without, much like I typically do on airplanes. Stupid body.