When Kyla McFalls submitted the University of Central Arkansas logo to the writers and producers of Left Behind, starring Nicolas Cage, she didn't know her alma mater would soon get some recognition on the big screen.
McFalls, a 25-year-old Magnolia native, graduated from UCA in May 2011 with a degree in digital filmmaking and got her first job working as an intern on the set of Pitch Perfect the following August.
“I was basically making posters for the set decoration department,” she said.
After Pitch Perfect, McFalls got her first paid job in film working on Escape Plan, starring Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger, then moved on to the sets of the Bonnie & Clyde television show, The Maze Runner and Left Behind.
“Most of the time, I’m an art assistant,” she said. “On Left Behind, I was the clearance coordinator. [The clearance coordinator] reads the whole script, and ... if a guy is eating a Snickers bar, I have to make sure Snickers is OK with it.”
In one of the scenes of Left Behind, the writers wanted the main character to be a student at Yale University.
“I was talking to the writers and producers and told them that [UCA] has a cool logo,” McFalls said. “They told me to see if I could get it, and I called the main UCA phone number and told them, ‘This is what I’m doing, and can you help me?’”
The university signed the clearance request form for the movie to use the logo and got the process started.
The UCA logo was sent to the Left Behind wardrobe department, where the logo was embroidered onto a sweatshirt that the main character wears in the movie and the recently-released trailer.
“It was so strange, I got a tweet from UCA about [the logo being in the trailer],” McFalls said. “I’m really glad that it made it into the movie, because sometimes they edit it out.”
McFalls worked on the Left Behind set from July 2013 until October 2013, she said. Left Behind hits theaters on Oct. 3.
McFalls is currently living in New Orleans working on the set of Jurassic World, which is set to come out in June 2015.