Tuesday, October 7, 2008

Mel Gibson

This morning before I headed off to do a shoot of my own I took a detour to Northampton to get a glimpse of the filming that was taking place. There was a lot of activity taking place. People running around, extras taking their place, film crews setting up the scene, and the heavy presence of police were a majority of what I witnessed. The longer I stood watching, the thicker the crowd grew, as people came out to see the star make a public appearance. Below are a few of the photos I snapped while I watched the crew work hard to set up for the clip they were about to film.

Could it be? Is it really him? NO! It is his "body double" shaking hands with one of the film crew members. The man to his left is an actor he was rehearsing the scene with.
















The film crew working to set up the massive arm that holds the camera. It is like a massive tripod that has a robotic head.




























The camera hanging high over the side walk.






This man has an important job of lowering massive tripod as the camera is controlled remotely.















The camera angled towards the future scene of the movie.













Some important guys sitting on a bench.







This woman was overly excited to be standing there watching. And by overly excited I mean she was standing as close as she could get before being removed from the crowd. Just out of the shot in front of her to the left was a guy standing there making sure no one walked onto the set. I was waiting for her to just rush past him and run up to Mel first chance she had.



This woman happened to look over as I was shooting the guy with the camera. For every one person I saw, there were twice as many cameras. Some people were holding cell phones, cameras, video cameras, video cameras strapped to cell phones. Every time I made a move to a new spot another photographer was right there behind me hovering over me. I made it a point to move around quite a bit.





And finally we come to the end of the photos. Here we have the two actors rushing down the stairs in what appeared to be a scene of anger and frustration as the "body double" made physical contact and gestures of irritation with the fellow actor.

As I was walking away I caught a glimpse of Mel's "body double". This man was standing there smoking a cigarette. His body language and the way he just stood there with the cigarette in his mouth would have made you believe that it was Mel Gibson himself standing there. It got me thinking of how much of this "body doubles" life is spent being someone else. I couldn't fathom just how much work it would take to spend your life being someone else and trying to act and carry yourself the way someone does.

Am I disappointed that I didn't get a shot of Mel? Not at all. I was more impressed with being there on an actual set than I was concerned about getting a shot of Mel. It would have been nice to make a photograph of him, but, at least I got a photo of his "body double".

COPY RIGHT JEFFREY BYRNES

1 comment:

KB Fitness and Nutrition said...

what?! that wasn't mel? that's a lie looks exactly like him LOL