my life as an extra

Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Check-Check-Checking the gate!

Those magical words are music to every background actor's ears. I believe this term refers to actually checking to see if anything has contaminated the lens during filming, but to those on set it means we're done shooting the scene (or at least that angle of the scene) and it's time to move on.

It's silly but you get pretty excited after carrying the same plate of food 12 times in a row. "They're checking the gate!" someone will exclaim and everyone sighs in relief because we'll be walking back and forth again but at least the scenery will be different.