When I heard they were casting for the first movie in the next state I was tempted to try to be an extra. How cool would it be to have a small part in the filming? I couldn’t get anyone to go with me so I wrote it off.
After the first two castings, the casting agency expressed an urgent need for adults. I already regretted not going to the first casting, so that was it I had to go. I took my own headshot, got the time off work and drove three hours north to the extras casting—sans map and GPS.
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| Me about to head out on the trip. |
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| I got stuck in traffic. I was parked on the interstate for an hour. So I braided my hair. Katniss, eat your heart out. |
The casting was in this weird little mall right next to Paramont’s Carowinds. The mall reminded me more of an indoor flea market. There was a food court, a hardware store, a boot store, a Mexican grocery store and this store that sold old-fashioned clothes. The line snaked around the mall. It was mostly mothers and their children and teens. The line attendant, who was handing out the form to fill out, kept saying that today they were mostly looking for adults. (They need 1,000 adult extras). I got the impression that they weren’t looking for teens and children at all, given work permit restrictions and the thousands they had already seen.
I stood in line for about 45 minutes. I was behind a mom and her two kids (who had gotten there pictures done in the mall photo book), a short marshmellowy couple who were extras on a nearby TV show set. Behind me was a 30-something lawyer.
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| The long line wrapped around the mall. |
I felt decent about my chances to be an extra. I’m not a teen. I have too many wrinkles in my forehead for that. I have waist-length dirty blonde hair and a very dystopian look. I’m thin and I thought it probably didn’t hurt that I look a little like the Prim they just cast. While I’ve not done big budget movies before, I’m often on camera as an extra for a journalism school video or a university-wide informational videos.
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| The front of the line. There were a lot of kids and teens in the line. |
The front of the line was in a dingy vacant room with tables set up. At the back of the room there was a table of around 10 casting employees. When they were open, they’d raise their hand and you’d walk over and hand them your form. (The form asked for basic info, height, weight, eye color, hair color, clothing sizes, special talents, contact info etc).
I walked over to a severe looking lady my age. She had raven hair and skin fairer than mine (I thought that was a feat!). She looked over my form, gave me a snide look, wrote a 2 on the top of my form and signaled that she was done. That was it. She didn’t ask me a single question. I didn’t have a chance to tell her how excited I was to be there. She waved me away. I put my form in the 18-29 basket and that was it.
“Did they ask you anything?” I asked a pudgy green-eyed girl who had been in line behind the lawyer I was chatting me.
“If I had any acting experience,” she said.
Oh well. That’s more than they asked me. I didn’t get chance to tell them about all of my church play experience or that awful middle school musical I was in. (I think I hid the home video.) Or that I was in marching band in high school and am therefore excellent at standing in place for hours at a time and moving to other spots in a given time.
I felt like the casting employees were just form checkers. Did you look like your picture? Did you lie about your weight?
They specified that they wanted to see you in person, but I’m not sure what my trip accomplished that an email couldn’t.
Maybe I was expecting something more like American Idol. “You’re perfect. You’re thin, look like Prim and have period air.” Or “If you lost 10 pounds and had blue eyes, you’d be perfect. Can you get contacts?”
I was just expecting more. More than nothing. I felt like I got nothing. I drove three hours. Can you at least say: “Thanks for coming?”
And I know I’m not the only person to get a null response.
I don’t know what happens next. Maybe they’ll call me for a fitting? Maybe I’m not what they want. Who knows.
If I can be an extra, that would be fabulous. If not, at least I tried. I’d really regret it if I didn’t try.
