Published Sunday, August 25, 2002
of 'West Wing'
By Sherris Moreira-Byers
Herald Staff Writer
When Seth Gruber, 18, of Pulaski Township, and Jim Cherney, 34, of New Wilmington, turned in their pictures and information at "The West Wing" casting call for extras two weeks ago at Westminster College, they were just hoping to get a bit part in the production.
Instead they were chosen as stand-ins for some of the stars of the show during the filming of the two-hour season opener of the political drama.
"I was at work and I started jumping up and down," said Gruber, a recent Wilmington graduate and employee of Perkins restaurant in Neshannock Township. "The manager said you might as well go home, because I kept taking food to the wrong tables."
"There are at least 300 extras," said Cherney. "There are only five or six stand-ins. It has to do with a body shape and size similar to the actors." He is the stand in for Richard Schiff, who plays Toby on the television show.
Cherney, an instructor of speech communication at Westminster College, explained that depending on how much an actor is used in the script, a stand-in could be used for most of the filming, so he had to rearrange his orientation and first-year program schedules at the school.
"I had to work through the school scheduling conflict," he said, adding that Westminster starts classes this week. Both he and Gruber began to work on the sets Tuesday.
The down side to being a stand-in is that they aren't filmed, explained Cherney. But the upside for both of them is that they are right there with the stars and crew during the filming.
"We take the place of the actors for the purpose of framing shots, lighting, and camera angles," said Cherney. "There is an awful lot of set up involved in every single shot. Stand-ins take their place for the purpose of setting the actors up. Then when the actors are ready and the crew is ready, they shoot the scene."
"Its a very slow process, very stop and go, very repetitious," said Gruber, who stands in for a farmer named Cap, a train engineer and a store manager.
During the episode, three of fictional president Josiah Bartlet's aides get lost in the rural farmland of Indiana trying to get to a campaign rally at a farm, and spend most of the episode trying to get there on time.
The aides include Schiff, Bradley Whitford and Janel Moloney. "We literally are right there with them," said Cherney, who will be filming a train station scene with them Saturday at Bridgeville, which is southwest of Pittsburgh, along with Gruber. Martin Sheen and Allison Janney are supposed to arrive today.
"They are very friendly, but I wouldn't say they are down to earth," said Gruber. "No matter what they say, goes. Everything revolves around the actors but they are very outgoing."
"There hasn't been any angry tempers flaring or storming off like those in this field have a reputation for doing," said Cherney. "They are very professional and very hard working."
Both of them noted that the television characters and the actors are very similar in their characteristics.
"On the show, Schiff's character is a cigar-smoking, very intelligent, baseball aficionado," said Cherney, adding that Schiff himself also smokes cigars and knows his baseball better than anyone Cherney's ever met.
Gruber thought that Bradley Whitford's personality was spontaneous and easygoing, similar to his television character.
"At lunch, he's telling stories, very outgoing, very much like his character," said Gruber. "When it's time for him to act, he sings, makes weird noises and spins around. Then he'd go do his part. They all seem to have a pretty good time with it."
Watching the crew work together and create a production has also been exciting for Gruber and Cherney. "A lot of the crew hadn't worked together prior to production. There's an ad hoc sense of structure, but they know what they are doing so well, that they can do that," Cherney said.
He described a scene filmed Thursday at the covered bridge near Volant. "While we were shooting there, it began to rain, so they moved everyone inside of it and adapted to the rain," said Cherney. "They added a line and added the rain to the scene."
The experience won't be forgotten by either of them. Cherney plans on using his experiences during his teaching and Gruber thinks the experience is a plus for his plans to be an opera singer. And both wouldn't mind involvement in future film productions.
"Definitely," said Gruber. "I would be interested in doing different kinds of things to get a variation on the experience," added Cherney.
And despite not actually being filmed in the season-opener, both plan to watch the show when it comes out in the fall.
"I enjoyed watching how well everyone worked as a team together," Gruber said. "I want to see how it comes out."
You can e-mail Herald Staff Writer Sherris Moreira-Byers at sbyers@sharonherald.com