Hundreds of Cantabrians are reliving their earthquake experience as extras in a six-part television drama set in Christchurch.
Scenes for the fictional Hope and Wire series were last night being shot on scaffolding erected on the side on a Worcester St building, near Cathedral Square.
Filming for the show, set in the aftermath of the earthquakes, has began across the city in late February.
Since filming got under way, the call has also gone out for Christchurch residents to be featured in the show.
The show’s publicist Sue May said only Cantabrians were being used for extras, and community groups had been scouted for those willing to try out their acting chops.
One of the hundreds of extras recruited for the show was University of Canterbury law student Nicole Evans.
Evans plays a bar patron in a scene filmed at Pomeroys’ on Kilmore St, and was challenged with ”chilling out in a bar” listening to Lyttelton band The Eastern.
The series takes its name from the band’s latest album ‘Hope and Wire’.
Evans filled the bar with around 60 other amateur actors in a pre-quake scene.
”I think it’s been a couple of years since the earthquakes began and it is time to start moving on. I think most people, like me, would like to have the story told and for others to see what we lived through and what life is like here now,” she said.
May said she did not want to disclose the sites filming was taking place to ”preserve the integrity” of the show, but film crews have been seen on the Port Hills and around the city centre over the last couple of weeks.
The series, funded by a $5 million grant from NZ On Air, is being directed by New Zealand film and television maker Gaylene Preston.
Preston said she was humbled to be working in an ”unpredictable, yet inspiring city.”
”When I first started coming here regularly over a year ago it seemed to me that people weren’t sure that this was a good time to be making this series centering on common experiences,” she said.
However, she had since been ”overwhelmed” with support from the Christchurch public.
Filming is expected to be wrapped up on April 25, and the series will screen on TV3.
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