i-rant

I don’t know if any of you guys watch that show Vegas, I don’t. Well,
I can tell you in an upcoming episode there is this scene where Josh
Duhamel is walking in a plaza shopping mall thing and some other guy
has a gun and “Danny” hits him with his forearm and knocks him down,
steels his gun and takes some money belt off of him with jewels
inside. I know this because I just watched them film the scene.
Basically, it happened to be done across the street from my hotel
here in Marina Del Rey (L.A.). I had gone out to dinner with a
friend and he said he thought they were setting up for something. So
after dinner I went over and watched from a balcony overlooking the
scene. It was interesting but I got bord after while and left. It
took them an hour and a half to film less then 2 minutes of the show.
They had to coordinate all the extras and then they shot it twice,
the second time will probably be used for some way-cool slow motion
close up shots.

You know it was cool. It was interesting to be above it looking down. From the 20something extra who took a picture of me being a “watcher” to the 7 takes to get the scene right to the high tech equipment you know I was totally into. It wasn’t just 75 minutes of watching a 2 minute scene it was the action around it, the fact that there were people there just to circulate lists of people to do stuff. People to bring water. The actor crossing the street to greet the girls volleyball team looking on and them all taking pictures with their camera phones.
But only after someone else did it because they were too shy to at first. It was the hyperactive gaffer girl running around with tape and cables. The assistant to the assistant director telling “background” or extras to walk a certain way. The real director noticing that the light was wrong on one guys hair or the angle of the forearm hit was too low. So much unimportant stuff made important.