Extra, extra: Read all about my day on the set of Brockmire

So you think you want to be an extra?

A few weeks back I saw the casting call for a new TV show filming in Macon. A friend wrangled me in to sending in to be an extra this show Brockmire, which features the hilarious Hank Azaria and absolutely stunning Amanda Peet.

I imagined it was going to be like skipping a day at work to go hang out a Braves game all day. Who wouldn’t want to do that?

In reality it was more like skipping work to serve my community service sentence.

Here’s how it all went down:

I get an e-mail that my call time is 6:45 a.m. Woof. I’m an early bird anyway, so I wasn’t too bothered. Especially if an early call time means I get off set earlier, right?

I get to Luther Williams Field ... errr ... I mean Morristown Field and find the one person I know in the crowd. She has two friends with her. They don’t know it yet, but this is my squad for the day.

There are about 200-250 extras on set Friday. The crew sort of treats the extras like lost sheep, but if I had to direct that mass of people every day, I’d probably do the same. Every kind of person you can imagine is in the crowd. I met a former football coach, repeat extras and people who traveled from afar. Some people really went all out with making their own costumes to support the baseball teams in the show. I assume these are the veteran extras.

The crowd starts our day with prop distribution. I am assigned a beer and a corndog. They said it best channelled my energy.

Okay, they didn’t say that. And that tasty looking brew is just a warm ginger ale. But let me tell you: that corn dog was my signature piece. Look for it when Brockmire releases on IFC.

After we are all set with our fake beers (sorry if I’m giving away the movie industry’s biggest secret) and ball game snacks, the filming begins!

We film this one scene. And then we do a second take. And a third. And a seventh.

And then we film the same scene from a different angle. And then from a second. And then a third. You get where this is going right?

It probably only took an hour or two to shoot one scene, but it felt so much longer. And in the Middle Georgia scorching heat. With fiberglass flaking off of a seat into the back of my baking arms.

I can whine. And I still will while it’s fresh on my memory. But I have to hand it to the umpires and ball players on set. And Amanda Peet rocking a skin-tight denim dress. They are the real heroes of the day.

We do a few scenes where we run on the field. All I can say about that is look for the corn dog in the air. The hand attached to that is mine.

Now that we are all thoroughly cooked from temperatures reaching upper 90s, we get lunch. A hot lunch. As a recent college grad, I try to never say no to free food. But it was so hot that the only thing I went for was the watermelon.

It’s about 2 p.m. now. We’ve been here since sunrise. We must be close to wrapping up, right?

No! The show must go on! (And on and on and on.)

To be fair, they told us to have all day free. I just didn’t realize they meant a whole 24-hour time block.

The afternoon was full of more bleacher-sitting, pantomime-cheering and field-rushing moments. But see, by the afternoon, we were smarter. One of my new friends made water-soaked paper towel scarves for us to wear. We were more shaded, as the sun creeped over the covering at Luther Williams. But man, oh man, we were getting tired.

If you have ever had to do anything outside in Macon in the middle of summer, you know that deep body exhaustion that sets in. The kind where you stare into a cup of ice and wish you could shrink down into it. I was beyond that. And I had no idea when we were going to be set free.

But every time they called for the background to be ready, I grabbed my corn dog and did my best pantomime.

And the corn dog was the star of it all. It survived the whole thing.

We were done filming around 7:15 p.m. and released from set circa 9 p.m.

I know that I didn’t sign up for face time on the camera, but that is a 14-hour day for maybe two out-of-focus appearances on a TV show. Cheers.

I don’t think my acting career is going any further than Friday.

This story was originally published July 9, 2016 at 9:44 AM with the headline "Extra, extra: Read all about my day on the set of Brockmire."