I am sure from the last few posts about my job (refer to “Two Words” if unclear) it may come as no surprise to you when I say that extras casting is a miserable job.  However, I am done with it.  The story in itself is long and I have plenty of little side stories to go with it, but right now I am going to keep it simple. Partly because it’s a bit to traumatic to relive just right now and the other is I need to get it all sorted in my head. I think I will be sitting down to personally journal it all and then make sense of it and post it here as it becomes a bit more coherent.

The entire job was a bit of a mess. By no fault of my own. I am generally a very organized individual (as those of you who have worked with me know) but I can handle chaos. But it seems that this gigantic, cluster F*&% of a job was a bit more than others involved could handle.  It wasn’t very organized, not just at our end but in other departments as well. Last minute changes like “Oh, we don’t need three hundred extras for Tuesday, we need 600. Oh, it’s Thursday and we’re telling you this? Sorry.” Or other things like saying “We need the social security number for every extra coming to work at the airport for Homeland Security Clearance and then coming in the next day; “Oopsie, we need the date of birth as well.” But to make a long story short, the originally casting director quit, a “recovery” one came in (I enjoyed working with both), the assistant casting director quit and with the recovery casting director only being there for a two week contract another casting agency in town took over. So in the midst of all this shuffling, drama and generally madness, I said my goodbyes.  I didn’t cry.

Regardless of the bad things that happened, am I bitter? Moi? Of course not. I actually met a lot of great people that I had a fun time working with and learned a lot (one thing being I don’t want to work in extras casting).  Do I wish the pay had been better? Of course.  Do I wish I had gotten more sleep? Of course. Would I go back and have never worked there? No.  It was great to see this side of movie making and to get a bit deeper in the inner construction of it all. Now I just hope I can watch this film without cringing too much remembering what I went through. But by golly I’ll be able to tell you most of the names of the faces you see in the background!