“Real Steel,” which made its theatrical debut Oct. 7, features Eastern Michigan University senior Holly Knick.
Knick, 21, is currently in her last year of classes as a secondary education major with a minor in communications and theater arts.
She said she filled out a casting call form after she drove her friend out to California in the summer of 2010 and soon found herself on the boxing ring set of a film described to her as “Rock
’Em Sock ’Em Robots in the future.”
According to the Internet Movie Database, “Real Steel” is “set in the near future, where robot boxing is a top sport … a struggling promoter feels he’s found a champion in a discarded robot.
During his hopeful rise to the top, he discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father.”
Knick said underneath the action of the robot fights, there is a heartfelt story about a father and son bonding… over robot fights.
“It sounded super weird,” Knick said. “I thought none of my friends were going to go see it [when it came to theaters], but I liked it, and a lot of the people in the movie theater were college age.”
Knick, who has been doing community theater since she was young, said she expected movie shoots to be much more fast-paced than her experience actually was.
“We had 16-hour days,” she said, “and a majority of the time you weren’t filming — you were just waiting. We filmed a 10-15-minute scene over five days, so it was kind of frustrating spending hours and hours doing something to get a 15-minute product. But it was fun.”
The set was designed to look like a futuristic boxing ring, where Knick and several other extras were assigned to cheer and shout as if at an actual match. Instead of people fighting, however, the film called for large robots to duke it out.
“They actually had robots that they built, and they would be in the shot for when the robot was still,” she said. “And then they had these guys dressed in stilts and unitards with sensors on them, and they would actually do the fight scene.”
She said working on a film shoot took a lot of patience, and it “definitely takes a person who doesn’t mind waiting or long days.” Since her casting call took place over the summer, she said she had plenty of time to do it.
“We had to be [at the set] at 5:30 a.m.,” she said. “But shooting wasn’t until 9, so they used the time to get everyone ready. A lot of it was setting for a shot, so the actual filming part only takes probably about 5-10 minutes.”
Without the extra time or a friend to help pass the time, Knick said she would probably not do it again.
Even so, she said she had a great time — and even got a little star struck.
“It was exciting,” she said. “Where I was sitting [for the shoot], Hugh Jackman was right in front
of me… I met him; he was really nice. Everyone was playing it cool [when he was on set], so I did, too… but inside I was like, ‘Oh, my God, it’s Hugh Jackman!’ ”Jackman is one of her favorite actors, Knick said, not only because of the shoot, but for his work on Broadway. She has been on big stages before — as a child she was an extra in a production of “High School Musical” performed at Detroit’s Fischer Theatre.
Knick has a wide range of movie preferences, but said she’s a fan of good plot lines and family films. Her favorites include films like “Elf,” “Taken” and “Transformers” — “Kind of similar to [Real Steel],” she said, “except the robots aren’t, you know, evil.”
“Real Steel” is currently No. 1 at the box office, having made $27.3 million over the course of its first weekend in theaters. It has knocked “Dolphin Tale” out of its three weeks in first place, according to statistics provided by rottentomatoes.com.
“When I went to see the show, I could see myself on the screen,” Knick said. “It was really surreal… even though I had no lines.”
