Matt and I spent a day as movie extras during filming of “From Within,” a psychological thriller being produced in our town of Havre de Grace, MD. The local media put the word out that they wanted several hundred local people to be extras today, July 14th, 2007, so we decided to participate.
We parked at the Havre de Grace middle school. A bus took us over to the high school. We had to wait in line to sign release forms and get our raffle tickets. They were giving away several prizes sponsored by local businesses as an incentive for people to participate. After we signed our forms, we were led into the school’s auditorium.
The crew directed us to sit in the 7th row from the stage. The stage itself had a pulpit with a cross and flowers in the center, a bandstand looking area to the right (as we looked at it), and a choir area on the left. It became obvious right away that we were going to be the audience at some sort of church scene. There was a huge projection screen behind the pulpit. The crew was still setting up the stage when we arrived at our seats at 9:45 AM.
A man who looked a lot like Jake Weber (the actor who plays Joe Dubois on the TV Show “Medium”) was standing at the podium as a stand-in. I learned later that Mr. Weber is in fact in this film, but I cannot yet be sure that was him acting as the stand-in. They were taking light measurements from his face, the podium area, and the audience area where we were sitting. One of the camera operators looked a lot like Clay Aiken, but I’m pretty sure that wasn’t really him.
The main actor for the scene was Stephen Culp, who played Rex Van De Kamp on “Desperate Housewives” among other roles. He played the role of Pastor Joe, and he was to give a sermon from the pulpit for this scene. Our job as extras was to be church attendees, and we were told to watch him as he did his sermon and to say “Amen” when he prompted us to. They did a short rehearsal at first, and then the cameras went live.
Each take started with the director calling out “Pictures up.” That meant the cameras were starting. These cameras were very large, and it took 2 large men to lift them on to the shoulders of 2 even larger men during the hand held shots. The directors then called out “Very quiet all around” as our signal to be quiet. Then he’d yell “Rolling Sound.” The other crew members would echo by yelling “rolling” from around the auditorium. The people with the little clacker board things would announce the scene and the take number, and the director would then call out “Action.”
Pastor Joe started the sermon and after about 3-5 seconds the director would yell “cut.” The camera was behind him on a dolly and would move up and then over his head. Apparently it took a few tries to get that right, since we had to do that part 7 times. There were no “Amens” in this first part of the sermon, so we did not have to do anything except look at him. The director told us not to look directly into the camera because it would look bad on film.
The next several takes included the rest of the sermon. Pastor Joe would walk in front of the podium to continue his speech. At first we just sat and watched and said “Amen” at the selected times. The director then asked us to stand up during the prayer, so we did, and then we sat down when the music started. After that take, he told us to keep standing, so we did another take where we did not sit back down. Then they wanted us to clap along with the song. We did this a few times and then we were done with this part.
The rest of the day was filled with different camera locations and angles for the same sermon. One series had the camera right in the front row, apparently doing close ups of several actors’ faces. Another had the cameras behind us, shooting over our heads toward the stage. The girl in charge had us move around a few times to make sure the right groups of seats were filled up based on the camera angles.
They pulled raffle tickets during each camera change. Matt and I did not win any of the prizes. The shooting was over at about 3:05 PM. It took about 5 hours to film maybe 3 minutes of the movie. It was an interesting experience, and it was neat to see how a movie is made from close-up, and it was neat seeing some Hollywood actors up close and in person.
I took several photos of the set with my cell phone camera, but I am unable to email them to myself to post. I found a couple of other filming locations on Friday, July 20th. The first location was outside of Havre de Grace High School. It looked like they were filming a TV news report. The woman in the green jacket was the reporter. Note the microphone in her hand.
The second location was a grassy field near the Lock House museum by the Susquehanna River. They were just setting up, so I have no idea what scene was being shot there.
