I personally have not had what I would call a really horrible experience thus far. My worst has been having to stand out in 30 degree weather for a couple of hours straight. It felt like my toes were going to fall off. I couldn't feel them anymore no matter how much I stamped them on the ground. People assured me I couldn't get frostbite this way and that I would be fine once I was in a warm place again. All the same, I was pretty worried about the long term well being of my toes.
Others I talked with definitely had some disturbing stories. One woman told me she was playing a kidnap victim in a dungeon scene. She said Location had done too good of a job in finding a dark, cold, dank, dirty place for the dungeon scene. This extra told me the shoot lasted for 15 hours, much of the time she and others had to be in that dungeon. She said it was really tough and the only thing that kept her going was the thought of earning overtime pay.
Another woman told me that she was filming for The Knick in the peak of the very cold winter last year. The problem being that what was being portrayed for the scene she was in was the hottest day of the summer. She had to be outside in a flimsy linen dress with not much ability to wear many layers underneath. The shoots were taking hours at a time over a three day period. She said she was absolutely freezing those entire 3 days. She also described that the street scenes were very muddy and the hems of all the women's dresses were caked in wet mud--going to the restroom was a very messy affair with mud getting all up there legs and bottoms as they tried to hike up their dresses to go to the bathroom. "Other than that" she said it was a great experience to film on the Knick and accepted their invitation to return for filming on Season Two.
Another guy told me about filming really late on Halloween night in one of the most well known heroin ridden neighborhoods in the Bronx. The location scene was cordoned off with police officers stationed around the entire set. A car approached the set way too close. The driver was pulled over and when police investigated, they found heroin and 3 loaded guns with the driver. They had to fight him down to the ground with all the extras witnessing this. Could've turned into a really bad scene for sure.
Another woman told me that extras were stationed in a condemned building that was so toxic, it sent one person to the hospital because of profuse bleeding from the nose and mouth and other extras were also bleeding but not as profusely.
I'm not really looking for this level of extreme "Extra-ing" but you just never know what's going to happen. I have to say, the more I get into the work, the more layers of complexity and intricacy I discover. It's definitely way more that what anyone might think at the surface level.
Others I talked with definitely had some disturbing stories. One woman told me she was playing a kidnap victim in a dungeon scene. She said Location had done too good of a job in finding a dark, cold, dank, dirty place for the dungeon scene. This extra told me the shoot lasted for 15 hours, much of the time she and others had to be in that dungeon. She said it was really tough and the only thing that kept her going was the thought of earning overtime pay.
Another woman told me that she was filming for The Knick in the peak of the very cold winter last year. The problem being that what was being portrayed for the scene she was in was the hottest day of the summer. She had to be outside in a flimsy linen dress with not much ability to wear many layers underneath. The shoots were taking hours at a time over a three day period. She said she was absolutely freezing those entire 3 days. She also described that the street scenes were very muddy and the hems of all the women's dresses were caked in wet mud--going to the restroom was a very messy affair with mud getting all up there legs and bottoms as they tried to hike up their dresses to go to the bathroom. "Other than that" she said it was a great experience to film on the Knick and accepted their invitation to return for filming on Season Two.
Another guy told me about filming really late on Halloween night in one of the most well known heroin ridden neighborhoods in the Bronx. The location scene was cordoned off with police officers stationed around the entire set. A car approached the set way too close. The driver was pulled over and when police investigated, they found heroin and 3 loaded guns with the driver. They had to fight him down to the ground with all the extras witnessing this. Could've turned into a really bad scene for sure.
Another woman told me that extras were stationed in a condemned building that was so toxic, it sent one person to the hospital because of profuse bleeding from the nose and mouth and other extras were also bleeding but not as profusely.
I'm not really looking for this level of extreme "Extra-ing" but you just never know what's going to happen. I have to say, the more I get into the work, the more layers of complexity and intricacy I discover. It's definitely way more that what anyone might think at the surface level.
