Uncle Reggie Saves the Day
The action ramps up!
This is the one where Brooke has greatness foisted upon him. You ever use that word? ‘Foisted?’
Synopses (Spoiler Alert!)
The whole office has crowded around Cake’s desk – stunned by the discovery that she has taken her own life in the office. Captain Annoy-o is disappointed by her timing, he would kill himself on a Monday for maximum impact on his co-workers.
Meanwhile, Brooke is toying with the idea of letting Roxanne, the boss, know what’s happening. Alice is dead set against it, advising Brooke to turtle and keep his head down. Both she and Reggie are convinced that Brooke will be fired if he brings the problem to the boss.
The office staff needs a leader, someone to take charge and take care of things for them. Reggie steps up… and volunteers Brooke.
Production Notes
I think we see almost all of our cast in this scene – everyone except Marrisa (Roxanne) and those from Martin Wells, whom we don’t see until the last episode.
Our office staff extras, most of whom didn’t even have a line, really came through for us. The life of an extra is not fun. It involves sitting around for hours and hours, often only ending up as an out of focus shadow walking behind Brad Pitt. And we didn’t even have Brad Pitt. These guys put up with the long hours for no other reason than a desire to be on set, and to act. The biggest problem with many low budget films is the lack of background performers. It makes it seem dull and lifeless. Team Leader could not have been done without the guys who made up our office staff.
We shot almost every part of our location. There were only two rooms we didn’t shoot – one was the equipment storage, and the other was wardrobe, hair and make up, and green room all rolled into one. It was crowded, but it installed a sense of camaraderie amongst our cast. It was the only place where you could relax on set. And, another weakness of many low budget film sets, it was close enough to most of the filming that you had to keep quiet during the takes – not the easiest way to relax!
Actually, there was one other room that didn’t involve filming. It was a tiny, tiny room, about the size of a small stairwell, and the only thing that fit inside was a full on, automated massaging chair. I caught Brad Cowan in there one time, dead asleep. I let him rest, poor guy. You can almost see the room in this episode, behind Ash.
One of the challenges of doing a crowd scene like this is recording good sound. Sound is often overlooked in favour of camera work, but it is crucial because it affects a viewer on a subconscious level. Bad sound recording will turn a viewer off without them really knowing why (and they’ll blame the director!). Our sound team did a great job – especially considering they had never worked on a movie set before! Our sound recorder, Brian Pare, was a trained studio engineer, which came in handy. Our boom operator was a total newbie… only you would never have noticed! Being a good boom op is a tough, tough job – you have to hold a pole over your head with a heavy weight on the far end of it. And if you shake or slip in any way, you ruin the take and everyone has to start over. I can’t do it. Most professional boom operators have to take regular breaks, and are tired at the end of a long shoot day. But Mike held that microphone rock steady for hours and hours and never got tired. Between Brian’s ears and Mike’s upper body strength, we pretty much had the best sound team we could hope for.
