The Man in the Moon

A TV Series is filming in the block where I live. They're shooting a night scene at a convenience store. They start at dusk and work till 1 in the morning. There's a crane in our parking lot, and on the crane is a huge cylindrical light behind a plastic film. That's the moon. In the first extra you can see the scene the "moon" is illuminating. That convenience store doesn't exist. The film crew created it in an empty building. The orange reflection doesn't exist either. That's my favorite bit: they lay down orange powder and then spray it with water, and that creates the illusion of an orange reflection. 

Here's what happens: a man drives that truck into its spot. He gets out. She gets in. Then the cameras start, and she jumps out of the truck and goes to the back of the truck. Cameras stop. Two people run out and open the tailgate of the truck. Cameras start. It appears that she yanks the tailgate open. Then she runs into the store. That's it. Two days of filming. Maybe half a minute of screen time. Hundreds of people, each of them doing their job. The people who set up the convenience store, who make the decorations (paper cutouts of snowflakes, greenery hung over the gas price signs; the scene must be set around Christmas a few years back when gas was that cheap). The people who lay the tracks for the cameras to move on, the people who push the chariots that travel on the tracks, the camera people who sit in the chariots being pushed on the tracks. There are the people who lug the cables around, the people who supervise the people who lug the cables, and the people who direct the people who supervise the people who lug the cables. Then the costumers, the makeup and hair people, the sound people, the food catering people. The man who runs the moon and the crane that holds the moon. The TV series may be crap, but the workers are all doing their jobs to perfection.