Here's your chance, folks! Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School is partnering with the SLC Film Center to auction off eight opportunities to be an extra in "High School Musical 3: Senior Year," scheduled to start shooting next week around Salt Lake City's East High. Online bidding began Friday on the extras roles plus memorabilia - T-shirts, jerseys, backpacks, basketballs, flip-flops, posters and a Wii karaoke game - autographed by the movie's stars.
You'd think that given a chance to see their precious cherubs appear in "HSM3," scheduled to hit theaters this fall, Utah parents would be elbowing past each other like Carlos Boozer and Dikembe Mutombo. "[It] is the opportunity of a lifetime," says Carol Kroesche, auction chair for RHSM, who thinks the autographed items will also become prized keepsakes. "So many kids and teens would jump at the chance to show off something signed by Zac Efron or Vanessa Hudgens."
Right! Right? As it turns out, not so much.
As of Monday afternoon, the 31 auctioned items (visit www.rhsm.org and click on the "HSM3" auction link) had yet to attract a single bid. That's zilch. Nada. Bagel.
So what gives? Has "HSM" hysteria peaked? Or are the minimum bids, which start at $1,000 to be a movie extra, set too high?
"It might be a higher threshold than folks are wanting to bid on," admits Susan Koles, director of marketing at RHSM. But auction-site traffic has been strong, Koles says, and she's confident people will open their checkbooks as Friday's 6 p.m. deadline grows closer. Besides, bidding on signed "HSM" basketballs starts at just $13.
Reagan Tolboe of the SLC Film Center says that bidders who win roles as extras will likely appear in crowd scenes, such as fans in the bleachers at a school basketball game. There are no age restrictions, although kids younger than 12 will have limited scenes to choose from.
Tolboe says the roles being auctioned are not speaking parts, so extras shouldn't get false hopes about being onscreen much or being "discovered" by Hollywood. Then again, you never know. "If the next Zac Efron walked in," Tolboe says, "that would be up to the producers' discretion."
Hear that, stage moms and dads? Get'cha heads in the game!
griggs@sltrib.com
