In The Movies

I did extra work on a movie this past weekend. I'll work 12 more days at various times during the next month and get about $1000 for it. Nice tipping money for having fun on a movie set. The scenes I shot this weekend were outside the Tulane University student center and the 30 extras the first day and 50 the second that were on set were based inside a portion of that building.
The movie work was interesting but time consuming. Every film I have worked on is different as to length of time spent on the site. Some days the scenes go quickly (the director has a set allotment of scenes to shoot each day and always does every one, then quits for the day) and other times it may be a 16 hour work day for many in the crew. Since extras are paid at an overtime rate after 10 hours they do not like to keep them much beyond that time.
This film, Welcome To Academia is a comedy set in a prestigious business university. The idea is that the dean reties and selects a replacement that causes a stir. Some of the faculty thinks the replacement is unworthy and a threat, one faculty member believes she was entitled to the position, and various factions among the faculty create plans to overthrow the selection and put their own candidate or themselves into the position.
The cast is unknown to me. Unlike the last film I did, Pride, this is a lower budget, independent film. But it seems well done and the director competent. I was told it is a film to be released in theaters, not TV and will be called 'Welcome to Academia". I am one of the 30 faculty members that appear in non speaking background shots. There are some interesting people playing the extra parts and of course, with my big mouth running full steam ahead, I socialized with several in the student center holding area between appearances on the set and on the set itself.
One fellow I met has an interesting hurricane background (we all chatted about many things including our hurricane stories, watched a football game on TV, ate the food provided for us, etc., when not on the set). His home had 10 meters of water that sat for weeks in the house. Still two years after the storm he and his family lives in a trailer on the property and wait for the house to be demolished so he can build another. For the first 6 months after the storm he and the family lived in tents on the property, nearly freezing in winter, fighting off packs of wild dogs, rats and various vermin, and thieves who preyed on the area and people living there. After the government provided a trailer, electricity and water was restored to his area, things improved and he is hopeful that a demolition crew will knock down his house sometime next month so he can start building a new one.
I asked why he would endure so much discomfort and he said that his wife , two kids and he loved New Orleans too much to leave, have other family members here, and want to give the city another chance. He feels abandoning New Orleans after more than 200 years of family presence would be difficult. I do admire his resolve and wish him good fortune. Oh, ironically, his uncle was a professor who taught me a class during my undergraduate days in my university.
I have 10 more days to work on the film in October and early November. One thing I know, it is a lot easier to be a teacher in a film than in reality.