We’ve already learned to suspect that command, but anyone whose dress is “not period” is being urged into hiding by calls of “Clear, please,” as a technician still working on his problem pushes to the limit. We extras go to our first positions.
“Rolling!”
The shout, “Rolling! Quiet please!” rises throughout the set and all fall silent.
Standing in my first position under the hot sun in shirt, vest, coat, wig, and hat, I bend my knees slightly, limber my shoulders and arms, let my face and mouth go a bit slack, and sink into my character, merchant seaman 547, ashore on a day off, a little drunk.
“Background action!”
I cross ten meters to the head of the dock, staying right at the edge of unsteady – don’t ham it up, now. A startled stop as I almost run into a donkey coming off the dock, then twenty meters down the dock, a couple times miss-stepping a quarter step to the side. You’d have to look to see I’m drunk. A merchant seaman of my age and character doesn’t fall down until he’s falling down drunk. But I do find a cotton bale to rest on, where a sweet village woman following me down the dock sympathetically strokes my cheek in passing.
Three prostitutes coming up the dock from the other direction pause to hassle me, but I’m already out of money. One pulls open my vest to confirm it. I gawk openly at their behinds as they continue up the dock, the back of my head to the camera (you Never look at the camera… and seldom know where it is). Then a really drunk swashbuckler (the extra, Dean) staggers up the dock, supported by his prostitute, and I watch them pass.
“Cut!”
The cry, “Cut!” echoes around the set.
“First positions!”
We return to our first positions, standing in hot costumes under the hot sun in case they go again right away. Then we begin to sink into nearby shadows to wait.
“Standby!”
Then we do the next take. Reread the above if you like – about a dozen times.
Extras are background. Part of my act may appear in the top left corner if the camera angle went that wide and the scene wasn’t cut shorter. Rick, with a nasty scrape across his nose and cheek that he got from Richard in make up, is a merchant seaman hanging out on the rail of a ship down the dock, closer to the camera and the real actors – including, today, Johnny Depp himself.
That was the first scene of our sixth day as extras. Aboard our yachts, anchored in a bay around the point from the set, we awoke under the stars, paddled ashore and walked to work for our 06:30 call time. Then breakfast, then waiting, then costume, then waiting, then hairdressing for my wig, then waiting, then make up for dirt, bruises, and wounds. Then to holding, where we wait.
Was it that afternoon that we first worked aboard the HMS Bounty, when I looked at a guy shouting directions at me? A director – standing beside the camera! The look he returned cured me, one time and done, of looking at anything outside of my character’s realm. Or was that the day of our big scene out on the bowsprit of the brig, Unicorn, when everybody in the shot had their back to the camera looking at the… at the… well, we didn’t see it, only the “target”. So, we’ll have to wait for the movie, too.
Rick and I are well into our own plot by now, day six as merchant seamen. In our first scene of the first day, we discussed things (take after take) in the background at the head of the dock, him sitting on a rung of a prop ladder leaning on a bale, me standing beside him. The next day, our walk down the beach to the water discussing the ship at the dock had expanded (to fill the time until “cut”) to walking down the beach under the camera position miming our thoughts. Rick got us aboard the Unicorn early on, and we are in with her captain and crew. Soon we will also sail aboard the Bounty. But to get aboard the Black Pearl herself, we need to become pirates.
We were discovered on our first day, right after our first scene. Tasha picked us out of the crowd. “You! You!... And you Two!” she said, “Come with me!” Another assistant gave her three more extra extras, and we all trooped to the far end of the beach. Tasha, a PA (Production Assistant), placed us along the way. By the time she gave instructions to the farthest out and worked back to us, Rick and I had figured out our bit. She said, “Great!” and hustled on to her next detail in the background. For the most part, we were used as a pair, and developed our own script.
Rick and I were determined to do whatever was asked as well as we could. (This also seemed to be the attitude of almost all of the professional crew who looked after the details of this incredibly complex process, who hid when the cameras were rolling, and whose prime directive was to do their part for the movie. Respect.) So, once finally finished with whatever our second scene of that sixth day had been, sitting in holding as the sun sank low, speculating that it looked like an early day (for a change) with the potential of a full night’s sleep, they asked some of us if we wanted to work late, night shooting. This became the day I call the humdinger – twenty hours for double pay.
Our part of the background was night watch aboard the Unicorn, now at the end of the dock… the camera and actors now being at the head (the other end) of the dock.
Now, walking lanterns back and forth in the distant background of a night scene may not sound very important, but the hairdresser who later took my wig off assured me it was. And Rick and I took it seriously. If you see us, we are standing our watch. And, now accepted as seamen aboard the Unicorn, we could do seamanlike stunts between dock and ship (the ship was anchored off a bit – the dock is a prop), first to get the fragile lanterns aboard, then to re-supply them as the takes went on and on. Between takes, we talked with the Unicorn's captain and crew, who were costumed extras but who had the night off and hid when we were rolling.
And we talked with the assistant on the dock who gave us our cues, and who told us we could be sure that we were going to have two days off after tomorrow night’s shoot. As draconian as an extra’s contract is (our only right is to be paid, and we are expressly excluded from all labor organizations), all the people in hiding who make the illusion work do have a union, which requires a day off with minimum specifications – which, after a night shoot, looks like two days off, but is about a day and a half. When the union workers are not around, there is no use for actors or extras.
Take after take our watch rolls on. We discuss and refine our performance, maintaining our vigilance. There are low lights on the ship, maybe enough so you’ll see us. Then, finally, one word over a bullhorn: “Wrap!”
Now we are no longer Unicorn crew, we are mere extras. Rather than swing ashore on the line hanging from the main course yardarm, as we have already done, we must wait for a boat to pick us up and for its crew to tell us when it is safe to step aboard.
We walk wearily through the darkening set, then up the road to the extras tent. There await the people who selected and hired us, who feed, water, and herd us, who costume us and make us up, whose work we wear, some of whom are here before we arrive and after we leave. As we straggle into the tent, these people give us a standing ovation.
On our seventh day (night) Rick and I donned swords and joined a group of pirates expecting to get aboard the Black Pearl herself. We didn’t make it, got cut short, returned to being merchant seamen, and sailed aboard the Bounty. Then, in the wee hours of our eleventh day, our last day (night), minutes before “Wrap!” it finally happens. Johnny Depp himself welcomes this motley crew aboard the Black Pearl – which isn’t actually there.
Caribbean Compass, June ‘05.