2006-08 (AUGUST, 2006)

Being A TV Extra - Wellington, New Zealand

One of the stranger things I did this week was to be an extra in a TV show a friend of ours is directing at the moment. It is a docu-drama series that will air later this year/early next year. A component of the show involves re-enacting various aspects of a crime and the subsequent investigation. I played a detective in a scene in a hospital mortuary. The filming was done on site inside the mortuary in our local hospital - a deeply odd place. Apparently it wasn't the first time they'd filmed there, either - the Sound Guy told me that last time he was in there a real autopsy had been going on in the room next door and that the door between the rooms kept opening to reveal gruesome sights whilst they were shooting. Bugger that!

My role involved lots of "writing notes" and "looking serious" and "asking probing questions of the pathologist". One of the things I copied down whilst "writing notes" was the following wall chart:

Organ   Normal Weights (in grams)
Brain   1275 - 1400
Heart M 250 - 350
  F 200 - 300
Lungs Lt. 360 - 570
  Rt. 325 - 480
Liver   1400 - 1600
Spleen   100 - 170
Kidney   125 - 170
Adrenals   5 - 6
Pancreas   60 - 100
Thyroid   20 - 40

So now you know...