 |
|
Somewhere in Time
Over
the weekend, scores of Capital Region residents scuttled into theaters to see The
Time Machine, the new adaptation of the H.G. Wells science-fiction classic.
Several scenes for the picture were shot in Albany, Troy and Schenectady last
winter, so the locals who worked as extras and production assistants hoped to
see either themselves or their handiwork onscreen. And while some of these
people have given cheery quotes to local papers about how thrilling their brush
with Hollywood was, not everyone paints as rosy a picture.
Joe Glickman, a 24-year-old independent filmmaker based in Albany, worked for several nights as an extra, checking in around 5 PM each evening and checking out around 5 AM the following morning, all for a princely $50 per day after taxes. He saw the movie at a sneak preview last week, and says the payoff for his efforts just wasn’t there.
“I
was anticipating a lot more than actually ended up in the film, because I recall
a lot more angles being filmed,” says Glickman. “But I enjoyed sitting there
just watching the Capital Region. I saw myself up there in an eight-
second wide shot. That was my big claim to fame.”
Glickman,
who works as a still photographer on low-budget movies in addition to directing
his own short films, says his Time Machine experience revealed the
financial waste inherent to big-budget filmmaking. “I knew that it would be a
very big undertaking for them to have to re-create the Victorian era, but I
recall it being probably the most disorganized film set I’ve ever worked
on,” he says.
“A lot of them didn’t know where certain extras were supposed to be,” Glickman says of the crew members working on the DreamWorks production. “There were too many chiefs. And some people were treating the extras pretty nasty. There were occasions where people would walk off. Despite what I read in an article, extras were not trying to come back. . . . I was only supposed to work two days, and what happened was so many people did not come back that they became desperate and had to call on anybody who would come out to [Schenectady’s] Central Park.”
While working in Central Park, Glickman saw that several pieces of lighting gear had been left in plain view of the camera. “It would’ve taken about five minutes to just take the stuff, gather it, and throw it behind a tree,” he recalls. “I could see the camera across the street aiming over in our direction. I grabbed one of the production people and asked ‘Aren’t they gonna move this?’ He was like ‘They don’t have time—they’re gonna remove it in post,’ ” meaning that computers would be used to digitally remove the anachronistic items.
“I’m
thinking ‘Wow, that’s going to throw the budget up there a little bit
more,’ ” Glickman says.
According to Glickman, other filmmakers can take several lessons from the Time Machine experience: “Never take the amount of money that you have to make a film for granted, because apparently if you’ve got millions and millions of dollars to toss away, you start tossing it away. . . . Also, make sure that your crew and your cast, regardless of whether they’re extras or whether they’re going to be onscreen or not, are treated properly.
“That’s why they lost so many people—because their crew members were treating PAs like dirt, and I saw crew members being treated like dirt by higher-ups,” Glickman continues. “I saw in the end credits that certain people in this area who worked on the crew for a month did not get a credit. . . . The people that ended up not getting credit were the ones that worked hardest—they worked harder than some of those big filmmakers who probably were on salary.”
—Peter Hanson
Copyright
© 2002 Lou Communications, Inc., 4 Central Ave., Albany, NY 12210. All rights
reserved.