Getting Aboard The A-Team Train

Just last week when the new trailer for The A-Team movie came out, I mentioned to my friend and fellow 80's aficionado, DT, that I would love to have been in this movie.  Well, thanks to the need for some reshoots, I got to be!  After a film has completed principal photography and goes through editing, sometimes the director sees a need for additional/different stuff and orders some reshoots.  This was the case on The A-Team and I got called to come in yesterday to be a photo double for a sniper.

Photo double work is pretty cool -- you usually get your own little trailer and the treat you very nicely.  Essentially what it was in this case: they needed to match a very short (5 frames) shot they got from a distance of a sniper shooting into a crowd (I guess that guy who was the original sniper when they shot up in Canada couldn't be there.)  They realized they needed to ratchet up the tension by getting more 'sniper-ish' shots, i.e. close-ups of the eye, barrel, bolt action, trigger pull, etc.  So, that's where I came in.  It was a lot of fun, though a bit stressful since I was prone, firing (but not actually shooting anything...) this heavy, bolt-action sniper rifle (something which I had never done before) in front of hot lights and a crew of some 30 folks with the camera about three feet away while the director was yelling instructions to both me and the camera from the back of the soundstage ("close your eye slower!"  "get to the trigger faster!" "rack focus on the end of the barrel!")  It was about an hour worth of shooting/set-up for what may be 5 seconds in the film, but it should look pretty slick - Ah, good times!

I didn't take any photos of the me on the set to respect the privacy of the film, but here are a couple shots of my sniper garb. 

No doubt there will be many sniper shots in the film, but look out for one shooting from a hotel balcony with a black cap on, and you may see a familiar face -- or trigger finger!

"I love it when a plan comes together!"