Arctic Air (Working #2)

On Thursday I spent from about 4:30 p.m. to a few minutes after midnight working as an extra for the CBC TV show Arctic Air (details on the website at http://www.cbc.ca/arcticair/). I had applied back in September, in response to an ad in the Yellowknifer - and while I had had one phone call asking to see if I could work as a driver (no: not without a class 5 license), nothing further had materialized and it had all quite slipped my mind. However, when the opportunity arose, I took it - why not, eh?

Our instructions were to marshall at the YK Airport Extras Holding Area - the old airport firehall just adjacent to the main terminal building. "Old airport firehall" is of course a typical Yellowknife way of identifying a building - only infrequently its current use or name (e.g. "Boston Pizza"), more often its context ("by the Boston Pizza"), and equally often its former use ("where the Boston Pizza used to be"). It does help a newcomer learn some Yellowknife history! Anyways - around 50 of us marshalled there and sat around chatting or reading or whatever, while we waited for the costume folk to check us over and - eventually - for the call to action to be sounded. Here we are waiting (one of the two costumers is the woman with the red sweater in the rough centre of the shot):

While most of us had to bring our own wardrobe - basic winter travel, a suitcase, no reds or whites - two young women got costumes as airline ground personnel in red jackets and matching shirts:

Many extras had really cool winter accessories, such as Brandon and his hat:

A shot that took us the longest, and that we had to do over and over, was waiting in line at security. At first I was immediately behind one of the main characters (plot line: main character about to board motions those in line behind her to pass by), but had to cede my place to a fellow in a beautiful moose hide jacket with traditional beading - and rightly so. In conversation I learned that the jacket had been designed by clothing artist D'Arcy Moses. Moses is an internationally acclaimed (New York, Montreal, Germany) fashion designer who some years ago turned to other ventures and his roots in Wrigley NT, about 750 km northwest of Yellowknife (for a sample account see http://www.wrigleyhotel.com/wrigley-dene-beadwork-fur-fashion.htm - although Moses seems to have moved on since then). That's the beauty of being an extra with lots of waiting time: you meet people you wouldn't normally meet and learn things you wouldn't normally learn!

Here are a few pictures of the action, or possibly lack of it, involving the roughly 50 extras, what seemed like almost that many filming crew members, and three characters with actual lines. The shots: lining up for security; the security fellows taking a break; the film crew setting up for a shot (note the fellow in a grey boiler suit, who was obviously dressed for the morning outdoor film work but found it all too hot indoors); setting up for the final shot in which we all walk industriously up and down the length of the terminal.

 

 

 

Of course we got up to some antics as the boredom set in: I tried my hand at being the "ground personnel at the gate" for both First Air and Northern Airlines.

 

I must say that while it was fun, I don't think I'll quit my day job, such as it is. The pay is decent - a flat $200 for whatever the time turns out to be - but by midnight I was quite worn out, as were most of us. And no, we did not get fed - on shoots that might be short no food is provided, and we were instructed to eat before we came and to bring snacks. One thing I did learn in the process - that my car will still start after 7 hours out in -29 degree cold without being plugged in. It protested a little, but started. Needless to say, I was grateful, and equally grateful to be back in my bed by 12:30.