A booth at Bates Motel

…or the reason why I was up until 5 am on Knit City set up day.

So one of the lovely set decorators for a new A&E TV series, Bates Motel, came by the studio a couple weeks ago to see if we had any yarn she could borrow for a film set. One of the scenes of this new show involves a bit of a “lumberjack”-type festival and they wanted a couple homey/crafty vendor booths for the festival. We rented her several boxes full of our yarns and some equipment as well, to give it that “crafty” vibe. And this is what she made of it:

In addition to providing the props, they were also looking for a “wool spinner” to be on set as background. So, I got to be a film extra for the first time! My call time was 8 pm on Thursday night before Knit City and drove out to the Fort Langley location. Everything is really “hurry up and wait”! When I arrived, there was already a tent FULL of townfolk extras who were all in costume and made up already. We all sat semi-huddled in a warm tent pitched outside on a dirt parking lot and ate dinner at 9 pm. We then got shuffled to another extras holding area (upstairs in the Fort Langley town hall) where we peered out the windows to watch them film some other scenes on the front lawn.

After about 3 more hours of waiting (in the dark!), at 12:30 am, the extras were asked to come on set for a log cutting competition scene. Between that and the next scene, I sat at my spinning wheel in my little booth out on the front lawn. Lots of extras came by the booth in between takes because they were so curious to see what I was doing! We stayed outside until about 4 am when we finally finished for the day. It was pretty chilly, but I would go sit inside the town hall and warm up a bit, sitting not more than 10 yards from Vera Farmiga, herself.

Out of this brief but memorable experience, I came away with two big points… 1) Actors are uncommonly beautiful. I don’t know if it’s the make up or the hair or whatever, but leading actors are just stunningly attractive. Hello, I’m talking to you, Mike Vogel. 2) Extras should really learn to knit. Some extras had books and others were playing on their iPhones, but for the most part, extras just sat around waiting for something to happen. I don’t know if I could handle that! The hours on hours of sitting would drive me insane. I’m so glad I brought my Vitamin D to work on.

I’m hoping to catch even a glimpse of myself spinning in this show, but we’ll see if it doesn’t end up on the cutting room floor!