The Dark Knight Rises; Experiences on set

So I'm just going to write out the details of my day as nitty gritty as possible. Apparently several people were filming and taking pictures, leaving the few I took looking pretty pitiful by comparison. More than a few people showed up just for the sake of recording the goings-on in order to immediately hand it over to the media the next day. So it goes.

Anyway, I'll be using some of the videos/sound clips/photos taken and uploaded by others to avoid any legal ramifications (not that I think there will be any at this point, you can't censor once that stuff hits the press). Posting them where relevant.

The chronology of the events may be a bit mixed up, as the day's length kind of blurred everything together. You'll get the idea though.

Note: This scene takes place in the winter, even though it's filmed in the summer so we had to wear winter clothes. Needless to say, uncontrollable swamp ass and deluges of sweat were endured this day.

11:50 pm the night before: Get email that some spaces have opened up (I was on standby only at the time), and I grabbed them up as soon as I could. Called my friends, made the arrangements, etc.

8:30 am: Arrive on set via shuttle. Heinz Field, Pittsburgh's football stadium and home of the Steelers. Being the nerd I am, I've only ever been to one game there in my lifetime.

9-ish: We make our way inside. Everyone had to sign some waivers, and we each got a little paper lunchbag. Inside was a cookie, a nutrition bar, a yellow handkerchief/bandanna, some suncreen, and a tiny bottle of water.

9:30-ish: We make our way to the seats (which were wet from the rain). I tried in vein to dry the seat. We see the field, half of which is totally leveled. Pretty sweet.



As we were coming out, they were filming the national anthem. It was being performed by what I think was a young choir boy. The far side of the field was covered in trucks and tents being used by the production crew.

10: After being filmed singing along to the anthem, our section of the stadium was instructed to move to the other side to fill a section that was empty.

10:10ish: We get to our new section and settle in next to a bunch of rude redneck plebeians and watch the magic.

10:30: The crew films some generic football plays between the Gotham Rogues and the Rapid City Monuments, we cheered as necessary. The Rogues wore our city's traditional football colors (black and gold), the Monuments were blue and light gray.

11ish: The production liaisons did some kind of raffle drawing that went on for what felt like forever. Apparently my friends and I were the only ones who actually showed up to be in batman, not just to get free shit.

11:30-Noonish: The first raffle drawing ended. Someone who I can only assume was the second unit director (Nolan was nowhere in sight as of yet) came out and talked to the crowd about how lucky we are to be apart of this. Meanwhile, the production crew were setting something up on the field.

12:10ish: First sight of the tumblers; three of them in their original camo color, one of which was mounted with a large turret. Naturally, we were all cheering like mad. The director made a point of telling us the tumblers had been stolen by Bane and his militia.



The director guy told us he was going to give a pyrotechnics demonstration. The gun-mounted tumbler aimed at a small mound of sod on the field set up by the crew and fired a dummy round. The mound was detonated, resulting in a lovely explosion. More cheering.


Half of this video is some guy's thumb, so just skip ahead.

12:30: The tumblers retreated back inside. We were getting ready to shoot some reaction shots. The director indicated when the rounds went off by shouting "boom" over and over into the microphone. We reacted accordingly. We ducked, screamed, scrambled for the exits only to be stopped by Bane's henchmen who looked like a combination of generic Guerrilla fighters and Contras. We did this several times as many of the audience members were smiling like idiots, potentially messing up each take.

Next shot was us looking at the field in horrified awe, which the director told us would be "a smoking crater" in the final film. We did this a few times too.

At this point I'm going to stop listing time approximations, as this is about where I lost track of time completely.

They filmed some close-up shots of the Rogues linebacker running down the field with the ball. We cheered moar. Interestingly, they took great care to film every part of the field except the leveled part. When you watch the final film and you see what appears to be a completely normal football field, remember that half of it was actually in ruin and they only filmed the parts that weren't.

While they were setting up the next shot, the liaisons did this thing that went on forever where they had the production assistants pull people from the crowd for some kind of "singing contest". I lost count of how many people performed, but they were all terrible.

During this lengthy reprieve, we grabbed some complimentary chow. The kind of food I would probably never eat in any other situation, but anything tastes good when you're that hungry. The production crew was also rigging several explosives on the field.

They had now moved some of the football players to the raised part of the field (the ruined part). The raised platform had several man-sized holes in it. When filming began again, we saw the linebacker running with the ball, while the Monument players were coordinated to fall into these holes. In the movie, it will appear as if they're falling into random sink holes in the ground as the field begins to come apart. Pretty fuckin' cool. They did this about four times.

More raffles and some other non-batman faggotry went down, and despite being adamant about sunscreen usage, I was getting pretty pink. At this point it was at least 3 or 4 pm. We were guzzling down complimentary water bottles, blotting the sweat from our brow with our handkerchiefs, and making use of our umbrellas for shade. One of the redneck pigs sitting next to us bitched that our umbrella was in his way or something, and told us we don't really need them. The joke was on him at the end of the day, when he was burned to a crisp by the carcinogenic beams of death while we retained a minimal amount of sun damage.

The director did several rehearsals with us for our reaction to the explosive charges, as we only had one chance to get it right. I tried my best to react accordingly and still be able to see the blast, but I only saw about four of the twenty-something charges detonate. Bane's henchmen began to climb into the stands and take point along the sidelines to ensure nobody got out alive. Video time!



It was indeed a sight to behold.

After that, the tumblers were brought out a second time to entertain the crowd with some antics. Our football mainstay, Heinz Ward, was riding on top of one of them and waving to the crowd. Fun.

It was about this point I noticed the crowd thinning out. It had to have been about 5 o'clock by now, and I guess people assumed that after the explosions, there wasn't much else to see. How wrong they were.

The director informed us that Tom Hardy, Bane himself, would be on set soon to threaten us with a super weapon of some kind. At this point it was pretty much just lots of waiting, more raffle and t-shirt cannon bullshit, anxious as hell to see Bane.

We were instructed to be in complete terrified silence as Bane revealed himself. We cheered, the director shouted more "booms", we ducked down in fear, and then Bane revealed himself. I will never forget how ominous it was to see him come out of the shadows onto the field. The only light part of his costume was the lining of his trench coat, which is the first thing you saw as he began to step out. You could see the lining even when he stood in the dark part of the archway, and you knew he was coming.

Bane came out onto the field, the crowd falls deathly silent. This terrorist has just killed our football team and turned our field into a smoldering pit of death. Behind him, his henchmen carried a large spherical device. A bomb perhaps? Some fans speculate that it's actually an earthquake-making machine of some kind. He plucks a microphone from the referee's corpse and delivers his speech. Audio time!



"Gotham, take control! Take control of your city.
*wheeze*
This! This is the instrument of your liberation.
*grunting* *labored breathing/growling*
(To the hostage) Care to identify yourself to the world? ..."



Each take was a little different. The word "liberation" was swapped out for words like "destruction". And in some takes he added "Liberate yourselves" to the dialogue. My friend had trouble keeping himself from smirking when he heard Bane's voice, because it did sound kind of funny.

You might be able to find some accurate transcriptions of his lines on the internet somewhere. I could barely understand him at the time.

He had a hostage with him. The henchmen forced him onto his knees before the mighty Bane and he said something to the effect of "any last words?" and held the microphone to hostage's lips. The hostage may have said something that they'll add in later, but I certainly didn't hear anything on set. Bane's henchmen then kills the poor bastard on the spot. Cut.

Tom Hardy participated in the final raffle drawing, in which someone would win a sports car. A nice looking young couple won the car and got their picture taken with Bane. Lucky ducks.

Finally Mr. Nolan appeared to us, but no attention was called to him. I just happened to know what he looked like and picked him out of the crew. They were preparing the Imax camera (of which there are only five in the world) to film OUR side of the stadium for some reaction shots/national anthem singin'. I was thrilled. More than once was the camera pointing directly at me, and I was definitely close enough to be seen clearly. I hope they use that take in the final film, as my appearance in it will be assured.

We found a bright yellow sign someone made lying under an unoccupied seat. We held it up during the final few takes. It was a diamond shaped sign that said "Rogue Zone" in big black letters. Cheaply painted though, as my fingers were covered in black paint after handling it.
I had actually drew a sign the night before that we forgot to bring with us in the morning rush, but it was a sloppy last minute job done on white poster-board anyway, so whatever.

So yeah. One of the better days of my life for certain. Movie magic up close. It was something special. Even though I was filthy, sun burnt, sore, tired, and my voice no longer works from all the cheering... I felt like I had been having amazing sex all day. I can't wait until I'm called in for a new scene!

On a different note, I wrote a separate blog documenting some of the unruly, piggish behavior of the other extras present. I'll share that another time.



TLDR: Fuck you. Read this.