On The Edge Of Edge Of Darkness

My building is surrounded. There are people of all sorts on all sides. In front there is a giant dinosaur-like camera crane thingy, there are people on the roof with huge lights and screens. Cables neatly run all over the place. Workers on walky-talkies are milling around. Many folks are standing around holding coffees. Lots of people have laminates hanging from their necks. Then there are the civilians standing around watching.

When I got here I ran into Monte, Kelsey, and Scott from WRSI and spoke with them for a bit. It was kind of like being at the fireworks or something. You run into friends and hang out for a bit. Maybe it's more like there was a fire alarm pulled and we all filed out and now are standing around waiting.

You see they are filming this movie "Edge Of Darkness" here today. Massachusetts recently revised it's tax codes for film makers so more and more production companies will probably be heading here. It's pretty fun. There's an excitement in the air, kind of like backstage at a concert I guess. But bigger. And much better organized.

Inside, they filmed a jury of extras walk down the stairs about a thousand times. They'd yell "quiet!" then a bell would ring and the jurors would walk down the stairs. Over and over again.

Outside a Mel Gibson stand-in look-a-like rehearsed a scene in which he walks down the front stairs with another guy. They did that a few times, too. Rehearsing walking down the stairs seems to be the order of the day.

You know, I walk down those same front stairs every day and I never once got a rehearsal.

There's another guy in the front lawn raking up leaves and then picking up a few handfuls and carrying them over to another section of lawn where he distributes them more evenly. You know to make it look more natural. Even though it was natural to start with. It just didn't look it, I guess.

Ooops. Now they are rehearsing the jurors going down the stairs again. I have to type quietly.