The Big Think

Had a good time today on the set of Friday Night Lights as an extra. We worked from 3:30 until 9:30 (actually on set from about 6-9). If you watch the show look for me in the background of both the breakfast and the dinner-time scene of episode 8. I’m wearing the brown fabric baseball cap in the b-fast scene and a generic blue t-shirt (no cap) in the night scene.
Fun! My friend Zach, who I worked with a few years ago on the 48 hour film festival, was pulling focus for camera C. I caught up with him briefly after we were done. He’s been working on the show for its whole run so far. Good on him.

I also observed that they run a very tight audio ship, which is typical (20 crew for the camera and visual side of things and three for the audio side). All the actors were wired (yikes!) and the boom supplemented for a couple of tight shots. Very efficient and fast moving set.

I hadn’t eaten much when I got to the extras holding area and I just missed the food being served, so I was pretty hungry. When we got to the diner they put our breakfasts in front of us and said “eat!” so I dug in gratefully. I was almost finished and a set decorator said “oh, you’re almost done. I’ll get you another one so we can do the scene again”. So I had to eat some more.

Thirty minutes later they picked me and one of the female extras to sit at the same table for the dinner/nighttime scene. This time they plopped down a couple of cheeseburgers and said “eat!”. By this time I was getting full, but I took a few bites. Same story. “Oh, your burger looks bad. Here’s another one. Eat!”.

No wonder everyone exercises so much in Hollywood. *burp*

It’s getting closer. Here’s an overview.

I’m going to open up comments now and hope the spammers don’t invade. Post away if you’re in the mood.

Attention, please. Attention! This means you.

Let it be known that Sean McMains is a real mensch, which my Jewish friends assure me is Yiddish for “great technical brain”. Sean has managed to wrangle all of my old content from the pre-move site into this here installation. This involved having to do a complete reinstall of an old version of WordPress (the software that’s running this blog), converting all 2600 or so old posts over, and reposting them here (hope you had a batch script, Sean).

I’ve been wanting to do this for about two years now, and had honestly given up hope that it would ever happen, but Mr. Brainy went and tackled the job. No doubt he had to postpone his anniversary, neglect his children, shun the advances of his wife, and almost get fired from work, but he did it anyway.

I declare today officially Sean Day. Everyone please join me in raising a glass.

Thanks, Sean!