East County Girls Scouts land roles in future film

CLEARWATER — As 10-year-old Kendra Hall wiped the sleep from her eyes, she couldn’t help but be filled with anticipation.

It was still just 4:30 a.m., in the morning, but she and five other girls from the East County’s junior Girl Scout Troop 499 and their mothers packed into their vehicles and made the hour-long trek to Clearwater for a special 6 a.m. appointment Monday morning.

“It’ll be really cool,” Kendra said. “Not a lot of people get to be in movies.”

On Nov. 15, the girls were extras in the making of “Dolphin Tale,” a family film about a young dolphin named Winter who lost her tail in a crab trap. In the story, a boy meets the rescued dolphin at Clearwater Marine Aquarium and convinces a doctor to make a prosthetic attachment to restore her ability to swim.

The film is inspired by the story of Winter, a dolphin at the aquarium who was not expected to survive after losing her tail. Winter plays herself in the film.

Girls in Troops 499 learned about what they’d be doing during filming over breakfast then got their hair and makeup ready and headed to their acting debut outside the Clearwater Marine Aquarium. At a waterway just outside the facility, the girls climbed into bleachers and into their role cheering two swimmers during a race. When one of the swimmers injures his leg, Winter goes out to finish the race for him.

“When you see them racing, you feel like you were actually there and (the race) was real,” Hall said. “You stand and you cheer for them. If you look around, except for seeing the cameras, you wouldn’t be able to tell it was fake. It was cool.”

Ten-year-old Sophie Herdrich even got a little bag of popcorn as a prop.

“It’s very fun,” she said. “They give us things to say and do.

“I like that we all had to cheer when the race was going on,” she said. “I kind of think of it as I’m not in a movie. I just look at it like I’m at a normal dolphin race.”

With a real fairground as a backdrop for the scene, the girls also were able to enjoy some carnival games during breaks, Herdrich said.

The girls admit the waiting — and there was plenty of it — could be boring at times, but they had fun just being together, making up games and taking in the day’s activities.

“It’s a great opportunity that the Girl Scouts are going to learn a lot from,” 10-year-old Allyson Smith said. “Just learning how they shoot a movie — it’s exciting to see it all happening in front of you. It just seems awesome that I can be there.”

Ten-year-old Caitlyn Klein agreed.

“It could be a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” she said.

Troop leader Jennifer Davis said she found the casting call for the movie while browsing her Facebook page.

“With Girl Scouts, it’s all about opportunities and life experience,” Davis said.

All seven members of the troop were scheduled to go back for filming Nov. 18.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].