Yesterday, I was an extra for the show One Tree Hill. I'm hardly familiar with this show, but it's on it's 7th season, and is filmed in Wilmington. Tim, a friend and I signed up to be extras earlier in the spring, and I guess Tim is the most charismatic on paper, because they often call him to come extra. But, I'm the one that didn't have to work on Friday, so I'm the one that ended up going.

The scene was about a 30 second monologue that one of the new characters to the show (to replace the 2 main stars that left last season) gives to a college sports management class (think typical big lecture). It was the actor's (Robert Buckley) first day ever filming on the One Tree Hill set, and the thing was, although this actor has been in many other things (I looked him up), he was really nervous. I could see his hand shaking at times, and after the first few run throughs, he kept announcing, "Oh man, they're going to fire me. I'm so fired. They're thinking right now, 'his audition tape is so much better that this is.'" But, after going through it about 40 times, all of that was over, and the whole time he was extremely nice to the audience of extras.

Like I said, I know nothing about OTH, so I kept having to ask other extras who were the actors and who were the film crew. The people that come to be extras are an interesting group. There were those like me who just wanted the experience of being an extra, and knew very little about the show. Then, there were the avid fans, who were only in Wilmington to be on the show. There were DJs and partiers, who were just trying to get people to come to their party afterwords (I don't know if they realized that in a group of college students, not that many people are over 21). Then there were people trying to break into the business. The person that signed the extras in picked one girl to come be an extra for some scene that requires fashion experts. You can imagine how beautiful this extra was.

Mostly, it was a bunch of waiting, and getting paid to read Harry Potter It took about 3 hours to get this thirty second clip. I was originally in the third row, but I have continually proven not to have charisma, and got moved to about the 15th row. Next time, maybe Tim can come with me and maybe then we'll get a speaking part. Or at least, he will.