The characters breathe life into the movie. Setting background, whether it's the homeless or the 19th-century Irish immigrants in Martin Scorsese's Gangs of New York, is as important to the fabric of a film as peasants in a Brueghel painting. Wright and the costume designer looked them over to make sure they had the "Skid Row look." "In terms of the template of the film, if something was screaming orange, then we'd do a quick shift," says Heffron. The ADs would pick up the homeless background actors as early as 4 a.m. "They were beyond wonderful," says Castaldi, who worked closely with them. And the cast and crew bonded with the homeless. Over a two-month period, The Soloist crew employed anywhere from 10 to 350 homeless extras ranging in age from 14 to 80. Wright and the ADs, along with the background casting professional, culled the homeless from the Los Angeles Men's Project and rescue missions, consulting with advocates about which people could handle the task. And finally they place them on set, and wait for the 1st AD and director to tweak what they've done. They work long hours creating the"extras breakdown"–which details what the production requires–selecting the extras, and then shepherding them through hair, makeup and wardrobe. But it's the 2nd ADs who are primarily responsible for setting the background that the director envisions. The director is like the coach and the 1st AD is the quarterback. But Wright depended on the ADs to make it happen.įrom preproduction until the day shooting wraps, creating realistic background action requires close collaboration among the director, the ADs and the department heads. That was what Joe was after," says Heffron. It was director Joe Wright's idea to use real homeless people as background actors. It was the 350 homeless people who helped recreate the milieu where Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez (played by Robert Downey Jr.) discovers Nathaniel Ayers (Jamie Foxx), a homeless, Juilliard-trained violinist. It wasn't the burned-out cars or the debris that gave The Soloist its grittiness. And it didn't take long for 1st AD Eric Heffron to see that the extra selling crack pipes in the scene would be able to repeat the same action for multiple takes. A man thought he was from outer space, so when Castaldi suggested that his spaceship was about to arrive, the man smiled. One woman said she liked to dance, so 2nd AD Chris Castaldi set up a boom box and she danced wildly for three hours. On a mock Skid Row set east of downtown L.A., these extras played themselves. The background actors in The Soloist didn't need an acting coach to get into character. The mid-19th century draft riots in Gangs of New York. OLD TOWN: 2nd AD Chris Surgent (left) and 1st AD Joe Reidy used up to 400Įxtras in Rome's Cinecitta Studios to create an authentic background for
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |