Up In The Air

Katie and I spent Tuesday on set as extras in the upcoming George Clooney movie, Up In The Air. I can’t say much about the movie itself given we signed confidentiality agreements but I will say the scene we were in takes place at a conference where Clooney’s character, Ryan Bingham, is giving a speech. That’s all I can offer regarding the film’s content. Sorry.

Movie making is tedious, terribly tedious. We arrived a little after 8am to check in, dressed as conference-goers. We were among 400 others, all playing the same part. The check-in process was well organized but still took hours. Our hair, faces and clothes were checked, and if something didn’t fit the bill, crew were available to help us become camera-ready. We were herded into a conference room packed with tables and chairs, a room we shared with the cast and crew. This is where everyone took breaks and ate. Production assistants periodically came in giving us updates on when we’d be needed and called on a few people who’d been selected for additional scenes. We were given instructions on what to do and how to do it in pieces, but our jobs were pretty easy – sit in a room while Clooney/Bingham delivered his lines.

Two dozen. That’s at least how many takes there were for a scene maybe two minutes long. Different camera angles were tried. Some of the takes included the entire scene while others just focused on Clooney’s character or just on the audience – us. The entire ordeal was impressive. A hundred crew, all focusing on different nuances of the production. Some were involved directly with the shooting while others took care of things behind the scenes. It took hours. We even broke for lunch in the middle, around 2pm.

Most of our time was spent waiting. I almost finished The White Tiger and answered emails for work and pleasure during our down time. We met a bunch of interesting people. Some were nice, some were annoying.

Clooney seemed nice enough. He’s a much smaller man than I thought. He walked right by me when we were lined up for lunch and he’s probably one to two inches shorter than me, so 5′ 10” tops. Can’t weigh more than a buck seventy either. Of course he was impeccably put together and very unassuming. In between takes he joked with the audience but was on his game whenever Jason Reitman yelled, “Action!” He “ate” with the crew, who ate with us. While the extras and the cast and crew were separated by sections, we were in the same conference room for lunch and everyone was fully visible to each other. I put ate in quotes because I’m not sure I ever saw him actually eat anything.

I’m not sure if we’ll make it into the final cut but I’m glad we went.  That being said, I’m not sure I’d do the whole extra thing again. Learning about the production of the film, and being a part of it was very interesting. But, I’m not a hurry up and wait kind of guy and I despise waiting and standing in lines. Maybe I’d try it again if the scene were smaller. There’s a lot of repetition, a lot of waiting, a lot of repetition . . . Our scene being easy also made it a bit boring, from the extras’ perspective at least.

I’m very happy St. Louis is attracting big budget film production. Thank you Missouri Film Production Tax Credit. This movie is the first by a major studio in decades to film the majority of its scenes in STL. But, I wrote some 15 months ago in a piece called Acting A Fool that movie production is horribly unsustainable and abusive to the environment. Clooney even got some props in that piece. Of course it was in reference to him mating with Al Gore but props is props. Here’s to more movies being filmed in my hometown, I just hope the productions become more sustainable.