On Friday I fulfilled one of
my lifelong dreams that I did not expect to check off in Senegal, but it
happened anyway, I WAS IN A MOVIE. About
25 other students and I decided to be extras in a Senegalese film entitled Des Etoiles (The Stars). One thing I have to say about the day is that
the life of a movie star is not all its cracked up to be, or at least the life
of an extra. I spent more time at the
Dakar airport on Friday then I ever planned (12 hours total) and have no desire
to be back in two months now. The first
scene we filmed involved us waiting in line to go through customs where instead
of “acting” my friends and I discussed our future weekend excursions as the
director kept calling “action” and “couper” (cut). We then had about a 4-hour lunch break, where
as movie stars should we got free food.
The
rest of the filming for the day involved my friend Bridget, Brian and I waiting
for arrivals outside the airport surrounded by other extras, our goal, which we
decided upon, was to look for our “dad.”
Instead we spoke some Wolof with the guys next to us and people-watched
all of the travelers actually coming to Dakar and awkwardly finding themselves in
the middle of a movie shoot. By far my
favorite part about my day as a movie star was watching a man we donned “Boom
Guy.” This old French man spent all day
carrying around a sound boom while smoking a cigarette and awkwardly standing
alone. By the end of the day we decided
that he probably didn’t actually even work for the film but instead followed
the rules of BYOB and showed up to the set of Des Etoiles with his own Boom.
For
those of you who are wondering the film will be in production for the next 8
months and then whoever would like to join me can grab some popcorn, a
French-English dictionary and watch my film debut which will most likely be
about a 30 second scene scan, but still I can now say I have been in a movie!
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