I was living in China and I came across an advertisement for extras for a "movie" on Facebook in December 2020. After sending an audition video and photos that I made there and then the "agent" said they would pay me 22,000 RMB/3,000 USD per month to go on set for a couple of months and be an American soldier. They described what we would have to do very differently to what transpired though. I was out of work at the time and said why the hell not, I've got nothing to lose, it's gonna be an experience. It was the longest 4 months of my life.

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They told us after arriving at the hotel that the movie was called "The Battle at Lake Changjing" - the second highest-grossing movie at the box office worldwide last year. We were working for the director Dante Lam, a famous Hong Kong action director. Because they were short on foreigners in China let alone actors, everybody was just paid for their English level and whiteness or lack thereof. I got closest to the maximum as I'm from Ireland as did most other English native speakers. There were probably about 4 Americans in the whole bunch. About 30 native English speakers and the rest were from all over the world, the Middle East, Russia, Eastern Europe, Asia etc. The less white skinned people were, the less they were paid. I know some people who got 1/3rd of what we did. They kept us there by only paying half the first months wages, with the second half to be paid with the final months wages. Very few, around 10, of the total amount of guys got private rooms, everyone else was sharing a twin room between two people. Most people didn't know anyone else so started sharing with strangers. The hotel life was crazy, 500 guys partying every moment they could.

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There were a few different bands of people involved above us. There were the Chinese "agents" who found us, who got a percentage of a cut, then there was the Chinse guy who paid us and his company who looked after us on set, he got 200% of our wages for each of us and paid us. There was the actual production company comprised of mostly Hong Kong people who were extremely professional, and there were all of the Chinese extras and workers.

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We were corralled onto set for 4 months from January to May with very few days off, there were 500 of us at the peak all living in a hotel in the middle of nowhere. Mostly university students pretending to be at home studying during COVID. When we first arrived it was during stringent COVID measures and we weren't allowed to leave the hotel or get deliveries. We were given breakfast of a couple of boiled eggs, milk and bread, and 2 "lunch boxes" of barely edible bone-filled food every day. Except for CNY we got a chicken leg each. The restrictions only lasted a few weeks thankfully so we could order deliveries after that and the hotel did a BBQ for us every night but unless we had a day off it was too early to eat it.

Starting in January we had 3 weeks of "training" because they didn't know what to do with us before shooting started. We went to a desert near the movie set where a real ex-US Marine trained us in what was like basic training. Every day at 8 am standing at attention in -12 degrees celsius somedays, doing pushups, and running around the training field, if you were late you got extra pushups and all the other jazz you expect, finishing at 6 pm with an hour for lunch. During this time the stunt team came and tested us for "stunts" for 2 days to see who could do it - just dying to different bullet reactions. The driving team also tested and rated the people who said they could drive a manual or a truck.

Once we started shooting they separated us into two groups, 80 of us into the "action squad" who they gave featured extra roles (that changed every day!) and the rest were just a giant pot of people for when they needed to fill a scene. People very quickly realised if you didn't want to work you could just hide and they would always pick the same guys who wanted and had a chance to get on camera for the closeup shots. Those of us that wanted to be on camera died a lot of times in this single movie.

We were separated into groups of 10 with a "foreign language translator" leading each group as mostly nobody other than us spoke English. Some of the extras spoke good Chinese. These leaders were not movie workers, they were just people told to bring these guys to set where the production team would meet us and sort it out from there.

We spent around 3 months total shooting the village scene on the top of a hill in the middle of the desert at night time. Two rotations of extras, one left at 3 pm and got home around 2 am, the second left at 8 pm and returned as soon as the sun came up arriving home around 7 am. Sometimes you might work until 8 am, and then find out at mid day that you need to go back at 3 pm. They expected us to wake up and check the call sheet at mid day. Most days they sent the people requested plus 200 additional random dudes. The boss replaced people at will when the requested people weren't available.

The guys in the action squad got called to set a lot, and the rest of the guys spent most of the time in a heated tent with no internet hiding from the guys looking for extras every day. We were given our uniforms before we started shooting in January and handed it back at the end of the 4 months. They were not washed even once during this time. Every day when we arrived we got fed then get the weapons/helmets and guns, makeup and then to the tent/set. When it came time for blank guns people were given no or little training and handed the gun with blanks loaded. There were explosions at our feet and directed at us. People got injured all the time. The guns jammed a lot.

We spent roughly another month doing another couple of other scenes like arriving to Korea at the start of the war on ships and the camps when everyone was happy, and leaving Korea at the end after the defeat. I got to drive US Army trucks and jeeps because I could drive a stick shift and passed my training. The driving was probably one of the coolest parts about it. Driving a truck with 30 people in the back or a jeep with a "gun" and 3 passengers. We drove in formation for a couple of days straight. They were recreated vehicles by the Chinese team who were in charge of the vehicles. The tanks only had Chinese guys driving them and the tracks would break randomly.

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The toilets at the training ground were like something you keep cattle in, long troughs in the ground in one large room with no separation. On set they were Asian squat toilets but in a horrible temporary fashion with a plastic bag that was closed after each use with a foot peddle.

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Towards the last third of shooting people started to get really tired with it and a lot of guys started to drink all night on set. It didn't matter though as we knew who would be working and who wouldn't at this point.

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I had the pleasure of shooting 3 featured extra/co-star roles, 2 of me talking, 1 to a room full of guys just after arriving in Korea introducing a Major who is giving them instructions, and 1 with a General who is wondering where the Chinese had come from when the Chinese had just entered the war. My third big scene was just blessing the graves as a priest with a bible and rosary beads in my hand at the end of the war. Only the General scene made the movie and they dubbed me. I was selected at random by different people for each role long after we started shooting, mostly Assistant Directors who had worked with us for months already and had selected the action team so they knew who was who and what we might be good at.

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Some of the most amazing parts of this entire experience was the attention to detail, every single shred of paper on any set had proper notes on the Korean army for example, the food/rations and backpack contents were real, the toothpaste was real, the chewing gum was real, the cigarettes were real, the orange juice was real and could be opened and drank, the food was real, the best food we had the entire movie, the tins of beans and other rations were real. I didn't expect that at all.

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In November 2021 we were asked by the same agents to go back to finish some scenes for the sequel which was already mostly finished but needed some more. A group of us went back to the same place to shoot but this time they hired us as "action team" for $150 per day or "extras" for $100 or less. I realised after the first movie I would be paid the same for much less work to just be an extra and I was only going to meet my friends so I did that. I was glad of my choice after seeing how much more work the "action" team had to do and we could just sit around on our phones all day. When we arrived at the desert from the original movie the local government told us COVID was too risky and we couldn't shoot there and didn't even let us into town. We spent 10 days being paid 50% wages to sit around a hotel while they moved the whole movie/tanks/artillery/set across the country. We shot for a month in Hengdian World Studios, this time it was large battle scenes with explosions and lots of blank guns misfiring everywhere. People were drinking and getting high on set which made it feel ridiculously dangerous at all times. They blew up most of the set again. That was cool for a couple of days and then just terrifying for the rest of the month. We worked mostly days but we found out the night before shooting if we were working or not, sometimes as late as 2am we were told to be awake at 6 the next day. Every day was 12 hours with only a couple of days off. During our time there two guys had a fight and one stabbed the other with a pen. The attacker was at work the next day because it was just a numbers game and our employer got paid for every person on set each day. He was fired after that though thankfully. We were treated worse than cattle for this entire movie.

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In January 2022 an agent contacted me and asked if I'd be able to shoot a featured extra role in Wandering Earth 2. I accepted for roughly $425 per day to shoot in Qingdao Studios. It even has a sign like the Hollywood sign on a hill spelling Qingdao in Chinese characters. It was supposed to be for 3-5 days but after shooting wearing the crazy 20kg space suit in the attached image for a few days in a spaceship 2 meters up in the air ontop of some hydraulic rams that shook us about as we shot all of our scenes, a hydraulic ram exploded during shooting rendering our ship useless. We shot those first few days with just 5 of us and Wu Jing and his double, one of the biggest Chinese movie stars of all time in our little spaceship. The suits have a fan to blow air inside once the glass is attached. We had a headpiece so we could always hear the director speaking Chinese, the English translator and the Russian translator. We had mics attached inside to record our shouts of victory and then our moans and groans during a crash. I have a scene where I'm dead after the crash and the SFX makeup took a couple of hours each day we shot that.

We shot a few scenes with 100s of extras in the spaceport before "take-off" and a scene for the selection of our crew and then had to wait 10 days around the hotel for them to fix the spaceship. We shot another couple of days and finished on a high note. This was a really great experience, we were treated like royalty and had people looking after us all day. Food was awful but we could get deliveries from McDonalds etc and us featured extras had our own private rooms at the hotel.

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On lunch on Battle at Lake Changjin

Waiting to be called to set on Battle at Lake Changjin

My speaking scene in Battle at Lake Changjin

Chinese extras advancing through explosions on Lake Changjin 2.

The toxic plastic they used as fake snow on Lake Changjin 2

Waiting to be called to set of Wandering Earth 2 with the space suit.

Proof it's me.