It’s pretty comical: When you work as a stand-in, you become trained to respond to the yell, “Second team!” That verbal cue can cause you to drop what you’re doing and scurry to set.

You know just how much you’ve stood in when you are on set not as a stand-in, and your body jolts when it hears “Second team!” shouted out to bring in the stand-ins.

As you may have found out from your own work as a stand-in, a number of different phrases sound like “Second team!” but are hardly the phrase. When you hear these soundalikes, you drop everything just as if you were called for. Here are some phrases we’ve heard on set that sound like a call for second team but definitely are not.

“Seventeen!”

Who knows why this number might be shouted out on set. Perhaps it is a scene number. Perhaps it is the number of the actor. Perhaps it is the number of background actors on set. Regardless, hearing this number shouted out sounds quite a bit like “Second team!”

“Seven fifteen!”

It’s morning. Or it’s night. It doesn’t really matter. Hearing this time shouted out will make many a stand-in jump!

Also, “seven fifteen” could be a number shouted out like “seventeen.” Either way, it alarms second team just the same.

“Second” Anything

If you’re in the deep, dark recesses of a sound stage while production is shooting a scene, when you hear the word “second” followed by almost any other word, your stand-in ears will probably perk up a bit. You might ask your compatriots, “Did they call second team?”

You might know deep down that second team wasn’t called for, but because you hear the word “second” — as in “second AD,” or “second second AD” — your mind starts to wonder. Unless the word after “second” is “team,” you’re not needed.

“Checking!”

“Checking!,” we say? We do! “Checking!” is shouted at the end of shooting a scene, and it is usually short for “Checking the gate!”

Sometimes when said quickly, “Checking!” will sound very similar to “Second team!” You might have to think about that. Then again, you might just have to experience the confusion on set just once to know how similar they sound.

But mishearing “Checking!” might not be such a bad thing. Why? Because “Checking the gate!” is a good cue to adjust to because usually after that’s shouted out, “Second team!” is shouted out soon after.

Can you think of other phrases you’ve heard on set that sounded like “Second team!” but weren’t? If you can, post it below!