[Rocky]

I’ve watched the filming of several TV shows and movies on location, and there are a lot of people just standing around all day. You know they’re getting paid, but it’s hard to see what they’re contributing.

[Free_SJersey]

I get work occasionally on movies and TV shows. I'm not in the union but get scale wages when I do. The start of my favorite call was meeting the lighting director at 9AM and he told a group of us to go hang out in the canteen (great food) until they called for us. At two in the afternoon, ten of us were herded into a van and taken about two blocks to a refinery. Inside a trailer we were shown a fifteen minute safety film about working in a refinery (which was shut down for maintenance) and then hung out until about six when the generator truck and the lights arrived. For the next two hours, we ran cable and positioned lights on the the cracking towers and such. When we were done, a pickup truck brought out dinners and we were told to keep out of sight. At eleven thirty, we were told the sequence was being filmed and at eleven forty were told to wrap. Cables, lights and various paraphernalia we on the trucks in forty-five minutes. At 1AM a van took us to the staging area where we waited until two for another van to take us to our cars. I made almost $700 for the day.

Here's the kicker. The refinery was 3/4 of a mile from the primary shot, was visible in two shots of the movie for a total of 15 seconds and was just a slightly out of focus background.