By JERRY O'BRIEN
Journal-Bulletin Staff Writer

NEWPORT -- The set was a crazy beehive of motion, noise and energy.

Makeup artists smoothed actors' errant hair. Costumers snugged limp cravats. Set dressers nudged table lamps to their proper positions.

From every corner of the room, production assistants barked into wireless headsets, as lighting technicians and sound engineers rearranged cables and adjusted equipment.

"Quiet! Rolling!" came the cry, instantly calming this little world.

Now, as the film uncoiled in the camera, actors stood like stones, staring at a place within themselves. Everyone awaited the director's call for action.

Time stands still in this brief, electrifying moment.

Suddenly, a man in a baseball cap leaped from his corner perch.

"Wait," Steven Spielberg shouted, bounding toward the camera. "I have an idea."

With even measures of pandemonium and planning, of precise detail and unrestricted imagination, a motion picture is created by the world's preeminent director.

Or so it unfolded for me.

For eight days, I worked as an extra on the set of Spielberg's Amistad. The experience was exhilarating and exhausting, rapturously exciting and painfully dreary.

With the director in full stride, marshalling more than 150 actors and crew for a difficult scene, every particle of awareness glows.

But waiting hour after hour in the holding room for a call to the set that never comes, struggling in vain to fend off sleep, is a fate worthy of Dante's damnation.

Extras were pampered and protected, scolded and instructed. We arrived for costumes at 4:30 a.m. and often worked until 7 p.m. for the minimum wage. We would have worked for nothing.

IN A COUNTRY where aspiring screenwriters seem to outnumber registered voters, being in the movies is the true American Dream. Long fascinated with motion pictures, I have always wanted to get on a movie set. I figured it would happen someday, but in my wildest daydreams I never thought it would begin with Steven Spielberg.

When word went out that Spielberg needed extras for Amistad, I was one of about 7,000 people who sent a snapshot to the casting office. I promptly forgot all about it. Then the phone rang at home.

"We have you in mind for the court crier," a woman told me. "You haven't shaved since this picture was taken, have you?"

With the permission of my editors, I signed on as an extra and told DreamWorks SKG, Spielberg's company, that I was writing a first-person account of my experience.

Obeying the protocol of the movie set, I did not take notes or interview any actors or staff at any time, returning to my office after each long day of shooting to jot down my recollections.

I was not the court crier. But my costume was so splendid that I didn't mind - long black coat with tails, snug black vest with seven silver buttons and white shirt with ruffled cuffs.

An assistant director led me to the set on my first morning. The main floor of Colony House had been transformed into a crowded, smoke-filled courtroom. A small desk was planted by the judge's elevated bench. I saw an inkwell, a quill and a few sheets of paper.

"You can be a court clerk," the assistant director said. "Sit here."

I have a part.

The first- and second-floor courtrooms in Colony House were the settings for scenes that sharpen the conflict.

THE MOVIE IS BASED on the true story of a revolt on the Spanish slave ship Amistad in 1839 by a group of abducted Africans. Their action leads to charges of murder, and blossoms into an international incident that pits abolitionists against a pro-slavery President.

The lives of the Africans - and the fate of the institution of slavery - hang in the balance.

In two courtroom scenes before different judges, lawyers for the slaves, the federal government, the Spanish crown and other parties all make competing claims for the Africans.

In other scenes, the Africans' lawyer, Baldwin, played by Matthew McConaughey, makes emotional but legally tenuous arguments for his clients' deliverance.

Among the more than 100 extras used in these scenes - out of about 1,000 extras called for filming in Newport - I was fortunate to be called for many shots. Whether any of these camera angles will be included in the final print, I do not know.

But I do know that my placement as a clerk allowed me to keep busy and attentive, to pretend - to act. I dip my quill in ink, write court records, react to testimony, tilt my head, bite my lip, raise an eyebrow.

I was trying not so much to create a character as to build an atmosphere. All these bits of business make up my little realm, present mainly for the actors who will glance at me - and for the camera.

If the small, realistic movement of my quill helps another actor be fully present in each moment, I'm doing my job.

I was left undirected for these smaller actions. But Spielberg and his assistant directors told me how to move to accept documents and pass them to the judge.

I was kept wonderfully busy in the upstairs courtroom scenes. In one scene I was directed to rise, take a document from actor Paul Guilfoyle, and hand it to the judge.

With the camera rolling, I rose, walked toward Guilfoyle as he shouted to the judge and reached for the document. He wouldn't give it to me. Gripping it in his hand, he kept right on talking. Now what? If I sit down I wreck the take. So I stood and waited until he was ready to hand it to me, then I passed it on to the judge.

Nobody said a word, so I did it that way in all successive takes.

In a later scene, I took a document from McConaughey as he walked toward the Africans and passed it to the judge. This scene, from assorted angles, took the better part of a day. It was great fun.

I was directed to be ready to take the document but not to telegraph my movement in advance. I figured out a way to write with the quill while eyeballing McConaughey. Angling the chair toward the camera let me stand and walk from the desk without knocking any furniture.

On the last two days of shooting - wearing a different vest and seated in the gallery - I was directed to exit angrily with a small group of men who protest the release of the Africans.

A few unsatisfactory takes prompted Spielberg to offer this direction: "As you leave the courtroom, point at the judge and yell 'Nay!' Don't turn your backs to the judge."

But the camera is planted by the judge, looking out at us in the courtroom. How can I leave walking backwards?

"Action!" Spielberg cried.

I went into a trance of hatefulness, arching my eyebrows and screaming, pointing at the judge with my right arm outstretched. With my left hand, I gripped the shoulder of the man leaving in front of me. In this way, I was led from the courtroom, allowing me to keep my face both to the judge and the camera.

I found the repetition endlessly fascinating.

One afternoon upstairs, actor Pete Postlethwaite, as the federal prosecutor, performed 21 takes of a few lines of dialogue - for just one camera angle among many.

Each time, he had to perfectly hit the tape marks on the floor for the camera to catch him in focus, and turn his head at the right time to create the composition the director wanted.

With his resonant voice, compact movements and sly delivery, each take was a revelation of character and subtext.

By the end of the day, I took pride in the burgundy ink stains on my fingers. A real clerk of the era would know this as the emblem of his duty.

WORKING ON THE SET, Spielberg is part general, choreographer, coach, teacher and confidant. He wields absolute control, but he expresses it in a tone of relaxed confidence and perpetual wonder.

From his modest appearance and behavior, one would never guess that the man whose cap crowns a head of unruly hair is responsible for 6 of the 20 top- grossing films in history.

The greatest cinematic storyteller of his generation wore an open winter parka with a fur-lined hood, blue jeans and sneakers. Sunglasses with small oval lenses balanced on the tip of his nose.

In eight days I never once heard a trace of indecision, panic or ill temper. The cheerfulness that greets you amid a furious pace of activity, everywhere from the costume shop to the dining room, was a marvel. No tantrums, no screaming, no intrigue.

"This is the top of the line. You can't get any higher than this," one production person said of the atmosphere on Spielberg's sets. "Everybody knows they have to keep all that away from the work."

Many afternoons on the set, Spielberg sat watching a live video display of the action, arms around his children who were snuggled in his lap. At other times, he watched the action develop as he leaned backward in his director's chair munching popcorn from a small white bag.

"I'm in the zone," he said to his director of photography, Janusz Kaminski, as the first long court scene became richer with each take. "I'm watching the movie. This is great."

A movie set is a controlled explosion of scores of actors and production personnel, tons of high-tech equipment and concentrated will power. It is the director's will that brings focus to such a mammoth multi-million-dollar enterprise.

A single camera is aimed at the action. Just out of the frame, however, are unused extras, an army of technicians, thick bundles of cable and limitless reflective lighting grids held aloft by spindly metal arms, outstretched like the solar panels of a spacecraft.

If the camera doesn't see it, it doesn't exist.

At one point, I was to stand just out of camera range and grab a leather- bound document that McConaughey would hand to me. Spielberg shouted "action" and the scene began.

The camera panned to the left. Spielberg shouted "cut."

"Whose shoulder is that?" he yelled.

"It's Jerry's," an assistant director replied.

"Move him!"

I moved.

Spielberg knows exactly what he wants in a shot. After a lengthy resetting of lights for a new shot in the downstairs courtroom, he spotted something amiss by the staircase: a sunbeam was escaping from an upstairs window.

"Get rid of it," he ordered.

"Steven, it looks good. It's real," an assistant said.

"Get rid of it," Spielberg said. "It looks like Hollywood."

The set collapsed in laughter.

Despite rigorous planning, Spielberg remains open to the unexpected. His remark, "Wait, I have an idea," became habitual.

"I noticed water on the woodgrain yesterday," he said to actor Peter Firth, testifying in the witness stand.

Spielberg called for water and sprayed his own palm, pressing it against the wooden railing. It appeared to leave an imprint of nervous sweat, a perfect touch. He framed the scene anew to include this small detail.

IT WAS A WONDERFUL experience, and now it's done.

I can hear Spielberg's voice when I close my eyes. It is a youthful voice, excited and fully engaged. I can hear the countdown to the cry of "action," as potent a moment as I have ever experienced.

I can see my fellow extras captivated by the spectacle and tortured by the sleeplessness. I can see the nervous shake of an actor's hand dissolve into poise when the camera rolls.

And I remember the three women who stopped me in my costume on my way to lunch one day. They wanted me to pose with each of them for pictures.

"But I'm not anybody," I said. "I'm just an extra."

"It doesn't matter," one replied happily. "We're tourists."

My smile could not have been brighter.

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