There are no useless occupations in the world, and each of them performs some function and has its own importance in society. In Hollywood, in addition to the basic well-known professions, there are jobs that you have never thought of. The people who do this work stay in the shade, but play an important role in the process of filming Hollywood movies and help actors not to get trapped. Here’s the list of 5 highly specific, unexpected and even bizarre jobs in the Hollywood film industry.
Cinematic sex choreographer
According to the only sex choreographer in Hollywood, Michael Arnold, when shooting scenes with the elements of battles, the director of battles is required, when shooting a dance, a choreographer is needed, and when dealing with sex scenes, they need … a sex choreographer.”
This idea may sound funny, but you’ve watched Arnold’s work, if you saw Scorsese’s latest film, The Wolf of Wall Street. With a variety of numerous movements, sex scenes are difficult to stage well; adding people and props makes the whole thing more complex and requires more complex acrobatics.
For this reason, Michael Arnold (for a fee, of course) stages sex scenes in every detail, working with actors to determine what they will and what will not do, and taking care that the sex scene should have the desired tone.
A decoy
Some people are terrified by the idea of vacant seats in the audience hall at the awards ceremony or the premiere of the film. The film, which has failed to arouse emotions or gain an acceptance speech, would be a great shame for publicists and PR managers.
The need to occupy all the seats in the audience hall led to the appearance of a strange phenomenon – the agencies that would fill vacant seats, providing the event with a crowd of peaceful well-dressed people, who haste to the vacant seats during the advertising break for the hall to always seem sold-out.
Even the largest ceremonies, such as the Academy Awards, do not abstain from hiring a group of people who are not allowed to drink, eat or talk with celebrities.
The American Vanity Fair magazine was able to interview one of the decoy people, who said that the potential candidates needed to send a scan of their passport to the organizers of the ceremony and a photograph of the dress, which they were going to wear.
The working day lasts from 9 am to midnight. This work is considered voluntary, so it is not paid.
Stuntmen and stuntwomen
While body doubles retain the modesty of their stars, stunt doubles are needed to keep the celebrity unharmed. Falling from buildings, jumping on moving cars, sword fighting, and the most widespread actions – flights and downs – are intended for special stuntmen and stuntwomen.
Previously, latex masks with the actors’ faces were normal, but now the task of creating the illusion lies mostly in the field of computer graphics. An especially exciting element of the industry is known as an air gun device that uses compressed air or hydraulics to literally shoot the stuntman in the air, imitating an explosion or a superhuman battle.
There are several major stunt training schools, although it is expected that most of these people will start with any special training (a good starting-point is fighting with swords, climbing, or the ability to break the car at high speed and stay alive).
You may be familiar with a particularly prolific stuntman, Colin Follenweider, who appeared everywhere from “Die Hard” and “X-Men” to “Avatar” in order to ensure that the actors, including Shia LaBeouf, Bruce Willis and Chris Evans, did not get wounded while shooting complex scenes.
Despite the specific training, accidents occur on the filming set, and in some rare cases stuntmen may even die. At the dawn of cinema, the doubles’ life was much more dangerous, but tragedies happen even with today’s safety and the protective gear.
While filming “The Expendables 2,” “xXx” and “The Raven”, some accidents happened. Something went wrong during the performance of the tricks, and this led to accidents, weapon misfires and explosions, which resulted in killing the stuntmen involved.
Trainees
Work for free is not new, but because of the financial crisis more and more young people after twenty years have fallen to the bottom of the career ladder, with minimal compensation or no compensation for being treated as the lowest by status.
A simple trainee is the first to come to the studio and the last person to go home. Trainees perform a variety of small tasks that can make them feel doubtful as to the correctness of their career choice.
Although the best employers replace the unpaid working period with the official employment over time, multimillion companies feel perfectly normal about using free labor of their workers, who may get fired and replaced with new people in a matter of a few months.
Nude doubles
When Penelope Cruz, Natalie Portman, Owen Wilson and Keira Knightley star in movies, a certain part of the film fans can be attracted to the idea of seeing their favorite actor or actress without clothes. However, such celebrities are most likely to be replaced for the time of shooting this scene, and while a star enjoys a day off, some nude double may be playing her body.
This is such a common practice that it is probably easier to list those who play in such scenes by themselves (such as Jason Segel). It is unknown what a person is required to have in addition to a similar body shape, but it goes without saying that there are agencies and databases, where it is possible to find a suitable double with perfectly matching forms.
It is unclear how embarrassing this process is, but it seems quite strange, when an actor like Kit Harington (Jon Snow) spends time with a guy who will play the star character’s “butt”.
