Paris - Friday June 29th 2001

The second and final day of the Metro shoot. Today's schedule has to be completed and the station vacated by 9.00pm at the latest. That means a 7.30am call so that filming can begin at 9.00. Not being an early bird, I headed out from my hotel at 9.00am.

I arrived just in time to watch a scene being filmed at the top of the stairs, leading down to the platform. People were running up the stairs - one of them, the guy with the gun from the train scene yesterday, grabbed a girl's arm as she passed by him. He was looking for Marine. Once the scene was "in the can" I made my way down the stairs. All hands were on deck to move the equipment back to the end of the platform as the next few scenes were taking place down there.

I still had my final scene to film and I'm called over to join the French girls I had shared the scenes with the day before.We are on the second carriage nearest the stairs and more extras are spread through the other carriages.We are told to get off the train when we hear them shout "action" and walk towards the stairs. Then a gun will be fired and we must run up the stairs. Whilst we are waiting for the scene to be set up a man comes round and offers us some wax plugs to protect our ears from the noise of the gun. I find myself face to face with Yates (Emmanuel Crespin) the bad guy who was chasing Michael's character, Julian. He will be getting out of the same doorway as me. We chat whilst waiting for our cue and he's really a sweet guy! So much for appearances.

"ACTION!"

Yates is first out of the door and runs along the platform. I step out of the train and walk towards the stairs when suddenly the gun is fired. I start to run with the other extras, up the stairs. At the top we all stop and start to laugh. We have to do the scene four or five times, to make it more realistic and scream to show our panic. Finally, when we are all back on the platform, we are asked to just scream, so that the sound can be recorded. The same is done for the gun shot. My work as an extra is now finished and I can sit back for the rest of the day and watch everyone else work.

 

The first scene to be shot after lunch features Michael's stunt double. Sporting the same "do" as Michael, courtesy of hairdresser Richard, the man looks remarkably like Michael from behind. Not only does he look like him, he moves like him too! He practices diving across a mat and when it's time to go, the mat is removed. Within seconds he has dived across the platform and is standing behind one of the pretend pillars as a man (Vincent Martin played by Francois Montagut) comes down the stairs.

The afternoon is filled by a lot of action scenes and those little wax ear plugs come in pretty useful when more guns are fired. It is very interesting to watch the train sequence come together and even more interesting to note that the scenes are not filmed in chronological order. It's like having the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle laid out before you and picturing the finished product in your mind.

The last scenes to be filmed from that angle of the platform are finished and it's time to move all the equipment once again. Everything gets moved up by the stairs and the monitors are placed in the first carriage, out of the way. The scenes involve Michael's character Julian and Vincent who's a street wise DST Agent. I sat with Janeen on the train to watch the action on the monitors, it seemed safer in there somehow with the gunshots ringing outside. Again the scenes were filmed in English and French as dialogue was involved.

Around 8.00pm shooting came to an end and the clearing up began. It had been a long but successful day. Eduard had given me instructions on how to find tomorrow's shoot location, so I took the elevator up to the street with Michael and Janeen and bid them farewell.