WFE Extra Shares His Experience on the Set of WFE with Robert Pattinson

Cody Wood, one of the Water For Ele­phants extras, decided to share his expe­ri­ence on the set of the movie and talked a bit about Rob play­ing Jacob.

This is only the part where he men­tions Rob. You can read his expe­ri­ence (parts 1 and 2) HERE

Fran­cis Lawrence, the direc­tor, sat under a black awning against the cir­cus bleach­ers. His face was calm with a slight smile of sat­is­fac­tion as he watched the footage. He exchanged words with the AD (Assis­tant Direc­tor). Almost imme­di­ately I heard the cue: “Pic­tures up!” A pause. “And BACKGROUND!” On back­ground we all began the exhil­a­rat­ing sprint from dan­ger once more. A plume of dust rose from our pound­ing feet and swirled around the swing­ing lamps. Wind pushed the top of the tent up and down like waves. As the motion of can­vas, lamps, and peo­ple rushed about, the enor­mous ele­phant stood calmly in the cen­ter of the ring. “And CUT! Thank you folks! Good job.”

On my walk back across the cir­cus floor I noticed a new excite­ment. There was no audi­ble noise but some­thing seemed dif­fer­ent. When I came around the last large tent pole Pat­tin­son had appeared at the end of the menagerie. I heard the start of the AD’s instruc­tions. “Rob, we’re going to have you….” The young actor looked con­trolled and con­fi­dent even while hun­dreds of Rubes tried to secretly glance in his direc­tion. Most of the cast had arrived at their orig­i­nal mark but I was still walk­ing. For­tu­itously I was placed near the entrance to the tent just a few feet from where Rob was now standing.

While the cin­e­matog­ra­pher gath­ered light­ing cal­cu­la­tions I was instructed to wait for Rob to hit his sec­ond mark and run past him going out the menagerie. Again, the speed at which the cues came was sur­pris­ing. The AD instructed, “Pic­tures Up, and Back­ground”. On “back­ground” the crowd began the stam­pede away from the menagerie. A third cue came for Rob and on “action” he became Jacob Jankowski. He took a slow step toward the run­ning crowd and looked on with awe. He took another step and scanned the crowd left to right. From behind the cam­era I sprinted as fast as I could just past Jacob. The crowd was still scream­ing and run­ning in the other direc­tion. I hopped to my right to avoid a tent pole and stopped dead. My breath was gone and my eyes were frozen. A few feet in front of me stood an enor­mous buf­falo. Dark thick fur cov­ered the entire ani­mal except for the large blood-shot eyes that looked directly at me. I method­i­cally moved each foot back­ward while the stam­pede con­tin­ued on in the tent. Finally the word “Cut” came bel­low­ing out from the tent and gladly moved back to safety.

Rob was smil­ing at the direc­tor. He was obvi­ously tick­led by the inten­sity and size of the stam­pede. The entire expe­ri­ence was authen­tic. There were peanuts scat­tered on the ground and pop­corn boxes tipped in the bleach­ers. Along the menagerie a host of ani­mals did their part to make the scene pos­si­ble and cen­ter ring the mas­sive ele­phant stood like roy­alty. There was so much to take in that the twelve hour day passed like minutes.

After a long drive home I dropped onto the couch. My feet were sore and I could still taste a lit­tle dust but I couldn’t stop think­ing about what the next day would have in store…

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