Day 3 - April 25, 2012 (Episode 1)

Today, we had our first “shoot”, which accounted for a ton of downtime, but some pretty amazing sights!  All-in-all, a great day!

We had some free time to start the day, so I used that time for breakfast with Barbara and Stephanie, a good workout, some time to cool down, and finally, lunch with Austin, Amy and Dana.  Lastly, we all met in the lobby to get prepped for the day.  This is when you would start to get a feel for the cast members that may hang out together.   More on that to come.

Dressed in our "signature outfits" and ready to go for our first shoot!

Around 1:00, we took off for Ellis Island.  On the way, we were able to view the NY skyline during most of the drive.  Pretty cool thing to see!  I also spent a good portion of the ride talking with Austin about business and life.  I think I really like that guy!  I’m guessing we may buddy up.

Eventually, we made it to the island and after a security check we took our first steps where our ancestors did.  This whole time, surrounded by New York skyline on one side and the Statue of Liberty on the other.  Amazing!

The rest of the day, we did several scenes all with several takes and filled with long down time!  It was a long day, but a pretty cool experience, so I was glad to do it!

As for the scenes, the first was Henriette inviting us to eat our first traditional-Norwegian food, which was a goat cheese called Brunost or something like that.  Next, individuals and pairs  were filmed searching for their ancestors names on the Ellis walls.  Jessica and I walked around looking for my ancestors names.  Due to some construction, the director showed me where my actual names were, but because they were behind some constructions fencing, we had to walk to a different part of the wall and fake that we found them.  That was my first experience with “acting out reality”.  (I have George Clooney like skills!)  Then, we did the actual opening scene with Henriette, which was simply to walk in as a group and answer some questions that were fired at us.  Alf ended up getting a little emotional while talking about his family.  You can see that this means a lot to him!  Finally, we did some filming inside the building where all the immigrants had to check in.  Had to be a pretty frightening experience for them!  It was this huge, cavernous building, that must have been incredibly loud when it was filled with immigrants.  It was also there that we were able to read through some of the registries and realized that several of these immigrants would travel these incredibly long journeys, only to be told they weren't going to be let in!  Can you imagine having to get back on a ship to go back after all of that!

After it was all done, we finally had a chance to truly go looking for our ancestor’s names.  I was able to find Ole Joris Norby (which my Mom told me to look for) and Ole Olsen, which I was told by the Producers was a relative of mine (but, apparently a very common name in Norway, so who knows if that was actually his name).

 

That was it for the day.  Several hours of standing around and waiting, for a few minutes of actually filming.  From what I'm told, this is pretty standard in the filming industry.  Something I'll have to get used to. 

We headed back to the hotel and most of us went and had dinner, but didn’t hang out too long since most everyone was tired and we would be flying out tomorrow.

Overall, a long day, but a very cool experience!  Can’t wait to get overseas!  Oh, as for people pairing up.  Dana and Tara seem to be hitting it off, Johnathan and Amy and their theatrical sides seem to pair well, Austin and I get along pretty well, and finally, Barbara and Alf seem to match well.  It’s still early though, so we’ll see how the rest unfolds.

Good times!  Flight overseas tomorrow!

Day 3 over!


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