Features / extra
Life as an extra: On the set of Golden Years
Last March Pamela Parkes spent a day as an extra on Golden Years, a new feature film which was filmed at The Bottle Yard Studios and across Bristol. The film is due for release at the end of April.
Seven in the morning on Redcliffe Wharf and I’m surrounded by police and armed response officers – well not quite.
One of the snipers tells me over a coffee that he was a zombie a couple of months ago, danced with Demelza in Poldark and just missed out on being a cyborg in Dr Who at his last audition.
is needed now More than ever
This is the world of extras – or supporting artists – as they now like to be known.
Downtime as an extra or ‘supporting artist’
I’ve joined them as an extra on the set of a new pensioner heist film Golden Years, which was filming in Bristol last year.
The movie sees a group of pensioners trying to raise the money to save their bowls club, by holding up banks using cucumbers as fake guns. The banks are chosen based on their proximity to National Trust properties and the getaway car tows a caravan.
Bernard Hill stars in the film Golden Years which has been filming in Bristol
Starring Lord of the Rings star Bernard Hill and Born Free actress Virginia McKenna, as Arthur and Martha Goode. Brit-pack luminaries Alun Armstrong, Sue Johnston, Brad Moore, Simon Callow, Una Stubbs, Phil Davies and Mark Williams also feature.
Writer and director John Miller, lives in Henleaze and wrote the script in his local cafe: “Some of the characters are based on real people I saw in the cafe and it was inspired by the threat to my local bowls club.
“In the film, the club is at threat of closure as developers want to build a supermarket on the site, and the actual bowels club I based it on is having a similar situation at the moment, but with a school.”
The centre of all the action – the dining buses based on Redcliffe Wharf
Life on set is not glamorous. So far I’ve glimpsed Bernard Hill wandering around the filming base at Redcliffe Wharf.
I’m slightly disappointed – the last time I saw him he was King Théoden of Rohan defending Helm’s Deep from marauding orcs. Today he just looks like a man who needs his breakfast.
Luckily I resist the urge to say hello to him in the queue for bacon and eggs, thereby making the classic “newbie” mistake, according to Lee Asquith-Coe who has been a full-time extra for the past three years.
Lee has been in Fury with Brad Pitt and Monuments Men with George Clooney: “I died 14 times in that movie – I was typecast as a dead German”.
He loves the job because “there is lots of hanging round,” so he can work on his own film script and network with other cast and crew. “Even though agents say don’t do it, it’s about making connections – it’s madness but in a good way,” he said.
Actor Susana Gordon and BBC Bristol presenter Martin Evans
Susana Gordon is a Shakespearean stage actor, but she’s travelled from London to “see what it’s like on set and if it’s something I want to do”.
She’s been cast as one of the press pack and we are joined by an army officer who plays a television reporter.
“I am an investor in the film so I was given the chance to play an extra,” he tells me.
BBC Bristol presenter Martin Evans makes up our press quartet and he passes the time being arrested by almost every ‘police officer’ on set and taking selfies with them.
The area around the former Bank of England building is transformed into a film set
Finally, almost seven hours after turning up on set, we get ready to shoot our big scene outside the former Bank of England building by Castle Park.
Star of the scene is Brad Moore who plays Inspector Stringer, “the nasty, corrupt metrosexual copper” on the trail of Arthur and Martha Goode.
Moore has only been an actor for the past four years. It’s a far cry from his previous career in finance: “I was approaching 40 and thought I had to be brave and go for it,” he said.
It seems to have paid off as he is starring alongside some of the UK’s best known actors. “They are such a talented ensemble and all classically trained actors,” he says.
“It’s a traditional comedy which harks back to the Ealing comedies and the likes of the Full Monty.”
Will we make the final cut?
It’s time for action and we jostle for position against a police cordon and shout out questions to Inspector Stringer.
Except we don’t – we have to mime the shouting, which is harder than it sounds.
Over and over the scene is re-shot from every conceivable angle. At last we get to yell out our lines: “Quote for the press Inspector Stringer?” and “Are there hostages?”
The army officer is chosen to record his question being shouted out for the take – we are all ever so slightly jealous.
And that’s it – it is all over.
12 hours on set, probably 10 seconds on screen and desperately hoping we make the final edit.
Golden Years will be released in cinemas across the UK from April 29 2016.