Elizabeth Banks takes the reins on 'Pitch Perfect 2'

LOS ANGELES — Everyone warned Elizabeth Banks against filming the outdoor concert finale for "Pitch Perfect 2." It was June in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It was scorching hot, it was hurricane season, and they would have to build a full, functioning stage and recruit a small town of extras to make it believable.

But Banks knew what she wanted.

"I kept saying, 'I don't care, it's going to look cool, we've got to do it'," said the actress, producer, and now, feature director.

It took nearly a month to build the Glastonbury Festival-inspired stage. As for the extras, the production sent out an open invitation casting call to fans of "Pitch Perfect."

Over 3,000 people showed up.

The massive undertaking required four all-night shoots, multiple cameras, elaborate performances and a tolerance for mysterious bug bites. Banks even took responsibility for the crowd's waning energy.

"At one point, she went out on stage and started whipping them into a frenzy," said Banks' husband and producing partner, Max Handelman. But the crowd really lost it when she brought a few Bellas out, too.

"It was her connecting the fans with the girls and letting everyone know that this was a big deal," said Handelman.

It's no secret that "Pitch Perfect" has fans to spare. Universal Pictures' modest 2012 comedy about a college A Capella group (the Bellas) racked up $113 million worldwide and an additional $103 million in home video sales.

As plans for a sequel started to take shape, though, the first film's director, Jason Moore, signed on to the Tina Fey-Amy Poehler comedy "Sisters," and suddenly "Pitch Perfect 2" needed a director.

Banks, known for roles in "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" and "The Hunger Games," had been thinking about directing for some time. She directed plays at the University of Pennsylvania, and had been taking on small projects over the past few years to learn as much as she could. Plus, as a producer and actor on the first film, Banks already knew the a cappella world and had the trust of returning cast like Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson.

San Francisco police under fire for racist text

SAN FRANCISCO — The original charges were shocking: Six San Francisco police officers were accused of stealing from drug dealers. Then federal prosecutors released racist and homophobic text messages.

Those texts have now turned a small-time police corruption case into a racially charged scandal, thrusting a diverse and liberal city into the national debate over policing in minority communities.

"We now know this can happen in San Francisco," San Francisco District Attorney George Gascon said. "We're certainly not immune to the problems that we have seen in Baltimore, Staten Island, South Carolina."

The San Francisco turmoil comes amid growing tensions between police departments and communities of color. Large, sometimes violent protests over police treatment of black suspects have occurred in several cities over the last two years.

That has put police under a microscope. Three Fort Lauderdale, Florida, police officers were fired last month and a fourth resigned after they were found to have exchanged racist messages about colleagues and the predominantly black neighborhood they patrolled.

In San Francisco, Police Chief Greg Suhr has moved to fire eight officers, two of whom have since retired. Six others also are facing some kind of discipline.

The district attorney, meanwhile, is looking into whether the department's racial problems run deeper than the officers implicated.

"In the process of looking at the text messages, increasingly I became uneasy that this may not be localized to the 14 officers that were being reported, but that we may have some systemic issues," Gascon said.

San Francisco Police spokesman Albie Esparza says the department supports the district attorney's examination, but disputes any suggestion that the police force of 2,100 sworn officers may suffer from systemic racism.

"This was an isolated incident," Esparza said. "To say it's systemic is unfounded."

The San Francisco police department hasn't faced widespread allegations of discrimination since Officers for Justice, a group of minority officers, sued the department in 1973. After the Department of Justice joined the lawsuit, the department settled the case in 1979 and agreed to hire more minorities and women. Nearly half of the sworn officers are minorities today.

News of the racist texts prompted outrage among community leaders. The Rev. Amos Brown, president of the NAACP's San Francisco chapter and minister at Third Baptist Church, said he wasn't surprised.

"We have seen this. We have lived this. We have breathed this discrimination," he said.

Lawyers for several implicated officers characterized the text messages as "banter" and failed attempts at humor. In one, Sgt. Yulanda Williams was called racist and sexist names by one of the texting officers when she was promoted to sergeant in 2011.