Brock Allen Casting is looking for about 500 people to be extras in an upcoming Paramount+ series called Landman.
Taylor Sheridan of Yellowstone fame and West Texan Christian Wallace are involved in the project. They are listed as the show’s creators on IMDb.
According to a synopsis provided by the studio, Landman is “set in the proverbial boomtown of West Texas.”
“Landman is a modern-day tale of fortune seeking in the world of oil rigs. Based on the notable podcast ‘Boomtown,’ the series is an upstairs/downstairs story of roughnecks and wildcat billionaires fueling a boom so big, it’s reshaping our climate, our economy and our geopolitics.”
Boomtown, which chronicles the lives of West Texans, is Wallace’s podcast. One episode featured Permian High School and Miss Elizabeth Faught, the Mojo Queen, he said in an email.
Toni Brock and Sally Allen are the casting firm for the show. They also did the casting for the movie “Friday Night Lights.”
Brock said they started filming about two months ago mainly in the Fort Worth area. They will be in Odessa to film the Permian High School spring game May 16 at Ratliff Stadium and are staying a couple of days afterward.
“We have a limited number of paid extras that we are going to get to look for and that number is 500. Then obviously, it’s a real scrimmage game for Odessa Permian so there will be all of the usual fans (and) parents … They say there’s usually between 1,000 and 1,500, so that’s about what it will look like,” Brock said.
Once they meet their quota for paid background people, they will be looking for volunteers who would like to come out for a few hours to watch the scrimmage, Wallace said in the email.
It will be a 10- to 12-hour day starting at about 2 p.m. so they probably won’t be done until early the morning of May 17. There will be a meal break.
Brock said it will be a lot of fun.
“It’s usually fun to not only watch the game, but to watch the filming of a football game,” Brock said.
Allen added that they will be shooting quite a bit of story during the game.
Brock said Ratliff is an iconic high school football stadium.
“I know everyone on the crew is excited about coming out. We feel lucky that we actually get to come out there and shoot it there vs, once again like Toni was saying, finding someplace closer get to come out and shoot at the real Ratliff Stadium,” Allen said.
They have been doing secondary shooting in the Midland-Odessa area to get exterior shots.
Wallace has been out with the second unit team. They have been shooting establishing shots and “some of the oilfield stuff.”
“This is going to be really, it’s the biggest day, I would say, as far as the amount of people, the amount of cameras that we’re going to have there … It will be a very large day on set for us,” Allen said of May 16.
They will also be looking for stand-ins, photo doubles.
“The people that we hire they’ll be filming before the scrimmage and after the scrimmage it will be a little bit of a longer filming than just the scrimmage. It’ll be more along the lines of what we as the crew do, as far as the day that we work and everything we’re planning on shooting,” Allen said.
She added that both she and Brock are from West Texas. Allen has lived here for parts of her life and Brock was born and raised in Lubbock.
“I went to school in Lubbock. My parents lived in Andrews and my little sister graduated from high school in Andrews. We all have family out there,” Allen said.
She added that they have put family in the movies or TV shows at some point, but will probably be too busy to visit them. They have, however, asked their families to join them at the stadium.
Having cast for Friday Night Lights, Brock said they found the people here to be fabulous.
“Actually, we had a really great turnout for that film and enjoyed filming out there,” Brock said.
Most of the filming for Landman is being done in the Fort Worth area although it’s supposed to be set in West Texas.
“I don’t know why that decision was made. They scouted Midland-Odessa. They scouted Dallas. They scouted Austin and different places throughout Texas and apparently they found more of what they needed location-wise in the Fort Worth area,” Brock said.
“That’s true, too, with housing,” Allen said. “A majority of the crew, it’s a large crew, we found a lot of extras and people when we were in Odessa for Friday Night Lights, but all of the crew was brought in from somewhere else. That gets awfully expensive. Most of the crews in Texas are either centralized in the Dallas-Fort Worth area or in the Austin area.”
Brock said what accounts for the popularity of shows like Yellowstone is great writing and excellent production value.
“And so far, all of the shows that have aired have (had) really great casts, good acting and directing, so it’s a good product,” she added.
The form to sign up can be found here.
