“Rehearsal everyone!
Settle please! Rehearsal up! Quiet please! Stand by. Very
quiet. Ready. And action!”
These were words heard over and over on the Chamberlin
Ranch May 12 as production crews gathered to film part of the Japanese feature
film “Leonie.” When producers went looking for the people and a setting to
accurately depict life in the early American west, the Santa Ynez Valley was an
obvious choice.
About 20 Santa Ynez Valley residents worked as extras
during filming, which took place May 11, 12 and 13. The ranch was used as the
setting for a small settlement just outside Pasadena in 1904, where settlers
are trying to eke out an existence in the hard scrabble life of the time.
Buellton-based company Magic Casting, owned by Lee Sonja Kissik, rounded up the local talent for the three-day
shoot.
“Leonie,” a film directed by Hisako Matsui and starring
Emily Mortimer and Shido Nakamura, is based on the
life of Leonie Gilmour, the American wife of Japanese writer Yone Noguchi and mother of sculptor Isamu Noguchi.
The film stars Mortimer (“Notting
Hill,” “Bright Young Things”) and Nakamura (“Letters from Iwo Jima”
“Fearless”), Christina Hendricks (“Mad Men”) and Mary Kay Place (“Mary Hartman,
Mary Hartman,” “Private Benjamin,” “The Big Chill”).
Three local horsemen, Fred Chamberlin, Ryan Marell and Vern McWilliams, appear in the movie as wagon
drivers. On the hot and dusty set May 12, Chamberlin sat atop a wagon pulled by
two draft horses as Mortimer and Place rehearsed and then shot several
scenes.
Local extras for the film include Amy Peet,
Gail Steele Moyer, Christa Carole, Ashley Macias, Jan Henning, Jesse Sherman,
Jason Rhienhold, Jordan Breschini,
David Cappell, Rick Ferguson, Robin Metz, Stuart
Wagner, James Carrera, Ray Wolf and Ian Young.
Their work, in which they were all dressed in period
clothing, is mostly waiting for the director to yell, “Action!” For their
efforts they were paid $112 for each 10 hours of work.
Christina Castellan, 21, was working as the stand-in for Mortimar on the ranch set. She has worked in front of the
camera and behind the scenes since she was about 16, she said. Lynn Robinson, a
valley resident and marketing manager for Greenhills
Software in Santa Barbara, was the stand-in for Place.
Robinson said she first worked as an extra when one of
her daughter’s friends told her about it. It was kind of a lark, she said.
“I’ve only done a few of these,” Robinson said as she
checked work on her Blackberry and waited to be called on set. “I just can’t
afford to take too much time from work.”
And finally, 7-week-old Jordyn Oltman, one of the valley’s newest locals, was the “Baby
Isamu photo double,” according to production notes.
Another resident makes it in Hollywood.