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Casting firm hires for Keys film shoot: Hundreds line up for chance to be a movie extra

Aug 13, 2010 (The Reporter – McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) —

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Conventional wisdom says American teenagers don’t want to work hard, especially for low pay in difficult conditions. Still, 100 or more teens and young adults lined up Saturday for a temp job paying under $10 an hour for working outside all day in August.

In a bad economy, it’s not surprising to see lines of job-seekers. But the people waiting at the Outback Steakhouse and Hampton Inn in Islamorada were probably lured by who was hiring: a company named Dreamworks, for a project led by Steven Spielberg, who you may have heard of, and Michael Bay, director of “Transformers,” “Pearl Harbor” and “Armageddon” among others.

Not that this was a star search. The casting call run by Miami Beach-based Ellen Jacoby Casting International was for 30 or so teenage-looking people to be in the background, as extras during filming in the Keys for a few scenes of “I Am Number Four,” a science-fiction film about teenage aliens, the good kind, hiding on earth.

Bad aliens persuing the teenagers have found them, and they’re killing them one by one. “Three are dead. I am number four,” the story tagline says. The film is scheduled for release in early 2011.

D.J. Caruso is directing the film, which stars Alex Pettyfer as Number Four, Timothy Olyphant (“Justified”) as his guardian and Dianna Agron (“Glee”) as the love interest. The book came out just last week.

The production has been filming in Pittsburgh, including high school scenes. Once Number Four is discovered there, he does what aliens have been doing since Blackbeard — he tries to hide in the Florida Keys.

Jacoby’s assistant, Laura Aceves, said the extras will used in a daytime beach scene and a night beach bonfire scene.

On which beach, exactly? Jacoby and her team couldn’t provide any filming details, except that the extras would be in beach scenes filming in the Upper Keys, and the crew may film aerial scenes of cars driving, possibly on the Seven Mile Bridge.

No adults needed

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