I was a movie extra... (1 Viewer)

[Stan]

Recording "Vision Quest", not a great film, quite forgettable, and definitely aging myself, think it was 1983, but I was an extra in it. No lines, but quite a bit of screen time. Most of the extras just had brief screen time in crowd scenes or they were way off in the distance, just live bodies filling space. Some of then were cut, and in the scene I was in, the camera never even went to the portion of the bar where the filming was done. I'm off to the right in the scene, but always cropped out until DVDs started appearing. Now with HD, can see if I'm still there. I rented it once and I was, but certainly not worth purchasing.

I was in the bar scene with Matthew Modine and Madonna. During breaks, actually played video games with Modine and even talked with Madonna, she was very nice at the time. This was before she became "Madonna". Also met another guy, he'd been in "The Thing" the previous year and a black guy that I think had been in "An Officer and a Gentleman". Just regular people like the rest of us.

Learned a lot about the movie making process. Incredibly tedious, things took forever. Spent almost four days filming what was maybe five minutes of the movie. I always thought the acting process took loads of memorization, but watching these people film the same scene over and over and over, reciting one or two lines, obviously not a lot of brain power required.

Odd things I also learned. Madonna never sang her songs during the filming, just lip synched, guessing she had something in her ear so she could match to the final edit when they added the music. Guess that's pretty obvious, but interesting to see. The extras dancing had absolutely no music to dance to, they were just going through the motions. And fake movie smoke to give it "atmosphere" is awful. Just reeks.

It was a fun experience and made a few hundred bucks, but something I'd pass on if it ever came up again. Although people in LA or NY can make a decent living as full-time extras.

 

[Sam Posten]

Neat!

 

[Stan]

Some of then were cut, and in the scene I was in, the camera never even went to the portion of the bar where the filming was done.

Just rereading this, not only a typo but it doesn't make any sense.

What I meant to say was "Some of them were cut, and in the scene I was in, the camera never even went into the other section of the bar, filled with extras. They weren't edited out, they were never filmed. The camera stayed in the area of the bar where I was, and I was actually seated at the bar."

 

[sleroi]

I was a p.a./extra for a few days on born on the 4th of july. It was fun, I made $108/day and got extra credit in my rtvf production class.

The highlight was a crane shot in the parade scene. I was checking out the camera, which was on a huge crane, when an ad grabbed me and told me to walk down the street and high five a kid on his bike. As I approached the kid, with my back to the camera, I took a huge step to my left to avoid a collision and immediately heard Oliver Stone about a foot behind scream, "F#!$ing cut! God Damnit!" I kept walking, but glancing back I saw the crane had come down and i had most likely stepped directly in front of the camera blocking the whole shot.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

Were you "Second Tall Man"? That guy was great. I'm kidding.

 

[Stan]

I was a p.a./extra for a few days on born on the 4th of july. It was fun, I made $108/day and got extra credit in my rtvf production class.

The highlight was a crane shot in the parade scene. I was checking out the camera, which was on a huge crane, when an ad grabbed me and told me to walk down the street and high five a kid on his bike. As I approached the kid, with my back to the camera, I took a huge step to my left to avoid a collision and immediately heard Oliver Stone about a foot behind scream, "F#!$ing cut! God Damnit!" I kept walking, but glancing back I saw the crane had come down and i had most likely stepped directly in front of the camera blocking the whole shot.

$108 must be the going rate. I still have my paycheck stub, and I also got $108 a day. It's so weird to see yourself on screen, but overall a fun experience.

Watching the film, it certainly didn't do much for the city. Many times locations feature fairly prominently in the movie, the best parks, buildings, etc. This one seemed to go out of its way to stick to some pretty low class areas.