Hey folks, Harry here with what seems to be a fella that had no idea what a working film set is supposed to be. I know most of you good people understand that when you are on a set for a day, you might very well only witness perhaps 45 seconds of what will end up in the final film... and maybe a scene that will be cut all together... That stunts are done over and over and over until the director is satisfied... and masses of extras? Well, they are SCENERY, albeit scenery that they try to please and make as happy as they can, but basically... you are an old style slave on set. I remember my first bit of extra work in the Merchant Ivory film, BALLAD OF THE SAD CAFE... On the BIG EXTRA day there was about 150 people in a church... out in the middle of Willie Nelson's fake city in August... It was a 108 degrees that day with 75% humidity.... And from early in the morning till near sunset we had to sing CHURCH HYMNS.... and we were getting HALF scale for extras. About a third of the way through the day the church was reaking of sweat... heinously smelly. There was no showers, no fresh change of clothes... in fact my face was smeared with vaseline so that the sweat would BEAD up... looks better on camera... oh and they vaselined my hair so it would lay flat... they wanted the sweaty look, this was depression era Georgia... But ya know what, though there were no superheroes, no friggin mass destruction of action and panick in the streets... even though we were sweating to death while our skin couldn't breathe while being forced to sing "WHAT A FRIEND WE HAVE IN JESUS" about 30 friggin times... I loved it! Why? Because I was in a film... A movie, even if just a tad, my voice was contributing, my presence was there and right with the rest of us was Keith Carridine, Rod Steiger and Vanessa Redgrave... And while someone like this guy below bellyaches about not getting to just sit back and watch it all... DUDE!!! You are someone that is one of those moving panicked types as the fucking GREEN GOBLIN attacks Time Square and fights with Goddamn SPIDER-MAN!!!! Get a fucking sense of perspective.... You were not just some fan.... YOU WERE A PART OF IT!!! Relish that for crissakes!
Call me ... zengamer.
Wanna know about the Spiderman movie set? Well, in a word, It Sucked. (Ok, in two words.) BTW, here there be spoilers. My girlfriend (Perky Goth) and I got there pretty early. We were very excited. The set looked pretty cool. There was this huge balloon above a stage where Macy Gray played earlier in the week. We were all given buttons and balloons and pennants to wave around. (PG and I managed to smuggle a couple of huge buttons off the set, but I'm not telling you where we put them .... :P)
The day started pretty well. We were told we would see the World Balloon break the stage, then the Green Goblin would throw Mary Jane off a tower, and Spidey would come in and save her. That all sounded exciting, so I was amped all day.
So me, PG, and 1600 of our closest friends gathered around the stage, they yelled action, and we all ran different directions. Beautiful. The balloon dropped, the stage dropped, and they got all the angles they needed. They set us up differently so they could destroy the stage from a different angle. The balloon dropped, we ran, and the balloon got a hole in it. We stood around for two hours while they fixed the hole. During that time, they had some freak contests (I won one by being able to audibly pop my ears) and they trotted Spidey and the Green Goblin out to be gawked at. I missed it, as I was impressing 2000 people with my incredible stage presence, and hugely amusing ear-popping. We went to lunch.
Lunch was fine, and afterwards we recorded some ambient sound for the scenes we were doing by standing around a light post and screaming at a guy with a microphone. (Have you ever realized how easy it is to talk when you aren't supposed to, and how hard it is to say something on demand? They told us to murmur like a crowd ... silence. We got it right eventually, but I found it ironic.)
So, we got back from lunch, heady with anticipation, looking forward to a All-Spidey, All-Afternoon Film-Fest. What we got was ... More standing around the stage running in fear. As the ball dropped. Again.
Ok, as an aside, I know this is a film set, and I know they aren't there to make ME happy, they are there to make a movie; all that aside, they should not have told us how great the special effects were going to be that day, and all the cool things we were going to see if there was any possibility that none of that was going to happen, not even a little bit.
Anyway, we ran, and we stood, and we ran, and we stood, and the stage and the balloon crashed to the ground amidst a few large booms and some sparks. It was kinda cool, actually, and I enjoyed being a part of that. So, as we started thinking this was gonna be a cool day after all, and we were gonna see Spiderman and the Goblin fight ... they said "Reset!" They had to pull the balloon up again, reset all the pyrotechnics, rebuild the sawhorses they smashed, pull the stage up again, and put new parts of the stage on to be crushed again. This took about 2 hours or more. Finally, they got it done, and we set up. The scene started, we all ran, and it went well. So well, in fact, then when we looked back after running out of frame, the balloon had split in half, and was floating to the ground. I'm pretty sure that wasn't the effect they were going for, but it will play beautifully on film.
By this time it was around 4. They brought Spiderman and the Goblin back out one more time so we could see them close up. Not the stars, mind you. Stuntmen. They mock-fought for about a minute, then hugged, handed out a few autographs, and went away. We set up for our last round of shots. The Goblin was going to streak across the sky, and blow up part of a building. We had to pretend to watch him, and then ... yes, you guessed it ...... RUN IN TERROR! Wow. I know someone has to do these things, but when you put out a call for fans, and tell them this is the BIG DAY, you should be prepared for it to be the BIG DAY. Dress up a bunch homeless people, give them lunch, and have THEM run in terror! You have a great scene and you fed 2000 people for the day. Then, let the FANS come in and watch the COOL stuff, like the fight scenes they filmed a few days before we got there, or the Goblin crushing a cop car, which they filmed a few days before we got there, or the Goblin flying in for the first time which they filmed a few days before we got there, etc ...
Finally, it was a wrap for the day. They came around and wanted all the props they had given us BACK. After all that disappointment; from the huge build-up in the morning, to the extreme heat of the day standing on tarmac for 10 hours, to a passable box lunch, to not seeing ANYONE famous, not even the director (!), to ruining the Green Goblin costume (it looks like a reject from a live action version of "Dragonball Z"), they wanted a handful of shitty pennants back.
Fuckers.
They had a raffle, and we checked our tickets on the way out. I was four numbers away from a TV. That's ok. It was probably broken, anyway.
zengamer
