Today embodied everything that I love about this business.
I got a call at 1830 last night to do a Boost Mobile commercial today. Brilliant. We broke the slump!
I get to call, and it's a pretty typical experience: moderately to very attractive people dressed in pretty classy stuff, because it's a restaurant scene. We're all checked in and wardrobe approved, and the 2nd 2nd and the PAs start funneling us in to this high class little restaurant in downtown LA (location shoot). It's gonna be a pretty standard day.
Enter the Animatronic Pig.
Yes, that's right, a man in a six foot tall hog rig. A fully articulated, completely realistic looking pig, with two guys at the remote controls for the mouth, snout, ears, eyes, et cetera.
We get the pig all situated at the table, and then we get him a forkful...of ham.
The pig's line (in various forms throughout the day), "Are you judging me? Is this so wrong? Let me tell you what's wrong...a mobile phone service that charges blah blah blah."
Pretty standard cell phone sales pitch. But it's a pig. Eating ham.
It was hard not to stare at this beautiful(ly realistic) puppet doing it's thing. Combine the facial puppeteering with the man-in-the-rig moving his arms and manipulating the fork...brilliant.
I'm pretty sure it's a local spot, so it's not something you'll see outside of southern CA...but nonetheless, that was a day brightener.
I got $150 to watch puppeteers make a pig fly...talk. Still pretty cool.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Fight!
I won't go into the gory details...that would qualify as some kind of breech of contract, I'm sure...but Alicia and I had a bit of a tiff today.
Turns out I equate the inability to pay bills in full and on time with failure as a human being. Regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Funny part of it is, we haven't actually missed any bills yet.
I cannot express with English words the frustration inherent in my emotional spin cycle.
Therefore:
Xrbt manx, tlufoo cnorb shangee too plutz. Mifkinish dengteebe: fanboosh ting leebit yort. Feglannick dik-dik!
Still no work. And it's Friday tomorrow.
Turns out I equate the inability to pay bills in full and on time with failure as a human being. Regardless of extenuating circumstances.
Funny part of it is, we haven't actually missed any bills yet.
I cannot express with English words the frustration inherent in my emotional spin cycle.
Therefore:
Xrbt manx, tlufoo cnorb shangee too plutz. Mifkinish dengteebe: fanboosh ting leebit yort. Feglannick dik-dik!
Still no work. And it's Friday tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
The First Slump
Hey-ho.
If acting comes in cycles of sprees and slumps, we're at the bottom of the first.
Not that this really acting, we're still in the background stage, so we're talking about the minors...if we want to stick with the baseball analogy.
Last time I worked was Friday. Nothing since then.
I did have a pretty good time at a little (delightfully inexpensive) seminar that gave me a boost. It was an industry primer for auditions. The guy running the thing is in the business of teaching new folks how to land the "Under 5 line" roles that most background don't have the wherewithal to do and most SAG actors are either past or can't do...just like the background.
You see, SAG's got 120,000 for a membership, and maybe 4000 of them work on a regular basis. Plenty of folks get their eligibility by luck or persistence as an extra. Then, once these folks are in the Union, nothing happens 'cause they don't know what to do next.
So I didn't work, but I developed a little strategy.
I didn't realize that agencies take non-union talent with no film credits. I also didn't realize what Taft-Hartley status was. Taft-Hartley status applies when you're not in the Union, you go to a Union audition, and they want you, they need you, they can't live without you. At that point, they take you and you're in, supposedly on their dime. Schwanky.
So I audition for Union stuff, and submit to agents, and I can keep working on that.
Just the slumpy issue to deal with. And the agent that needs to sign me. And the rent, and the bills.
This is the part where I ploof my hair with an upward aimed huff.
It's funny how simple it all seems when I go and boil it down for the reading.
It's not funny or simple when I'm passing every day minute by minute and wishing I could just skip to the end and see how it all turns out.
One side bonus to the day: I found the Studio City location of Samuel French. For those of you not familiar with theatre, Samuel French takes care of distribution and royalty supervision for basically every single playscript in circulation. They have an online bookstore...but to walk into a little 1500 square foot place and see it loaded from floor to ceiling with scripts and craft books, the likes of which you'd never imagine at your lowly neighborhood Barnes & Noble...that's priceless.
Loving this town. Hating the suspense.
If acting comes in cycles of sprees and slumps, we're at the bottom of the first.
Not that this really acting, we're still in the background stage, so we're talking about the minors...if we want to stick with the baseball analogy.
Last time I worked was Friday. Nothing since then.
I did have a pretty good time at a little (delightfully inexpensive) seminar that gave me a boost. It was an industry primer for auditions. The guy running the thing is in the business of teaching new folks how to land the "Under 5 line" roles that most background don't have the wherewithal to do and most SAG actors are either past or can't do...just like the background.
You see, SAG's got 120,000 for a membership, and maybe 4000 of them work on a regular basis. Plenty of folks get their eligibility by luck or persistence as an extra. Then, once these folks are in the Union, nothing happens 'cause they don't know what to do next.
So I didn't work, but I developed a little strategy.
I didn't realize that agencies take non-union talent with no film credits. I also didn't realize what Taft-Hartley status was. Taft-Hartley status applies when you're not in the Union, you go to a Union audition, and they want you, they need you, they can't live without you. At that point, they take you and you're in, supposedly on their dime. Schwanky.
So I audition for Union stuff, and submit to agents, and I can keep working on that.
Just the slumpy issue to deal with. And the agent that needs to sign me. And the rent, and the bills.
This is the part where I ploof my hair with an upward aimed huff.
It's funny how simple it all seems when I go and boil it down for the reading.
It's not funny or simple when I'm passing every day minute by minute and wishing I could just skip to the end and see how it all turns out.
One side bonus to the day: I found the Studio City location of Samuel French. For those of you not familiar with theatre, Samuel French takes care of distribution and royalty supervision for basically every single playscript in circulation. They have an online bookstore...but to walk into a little 1500 square foot place and see it loaded from floor to ceiling with scripts and craft books, the likes of which you'd never imagine at your lowly neighborhood Barnes & Noble...that's priceless.
Loving this town. Hating the suspense.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
The honeymoon is over.
I knew this would happen, and I made myself commit to blogging the good and the bad. I have a tendency, in my life, to not discuss anything unless it's in the past, or planned to the hilt. I avoid the issues that are thorny, ambiguous, and labyrinthine in favor of the issues that are silky, crystal clear, and arrow-straight. If no one knows about my stuff, it doesn't really exist, does it? In short, I hide my problems until I know what to do about them, and everybody (including me) can be fooled into thinking I'm awesome.
That was a pretty intense opener, so I'll start off by cooling it down. No, I am not announcing a heroin addiction.
What I am going to do is discuss the future without having the slightest loving clue of what I'm going to do about it. That's a big step for me.
So here's why the honeymoon is over.
I've been loving every minute of work. However, if y'all will check the timestamp on this post, you'll notice it's very near the end of the month. When the calendar reads February, some very nice people down the street are going to expect a small, rectangular piece of paper to appear in their hands, that's labelled with the name of their business and a four digit number...1147. I wish there was a decimal point in that number somewhere, but no. It's California. Our rent is $1150 a month. Current checking account status is reading less than half that altitude. The worry worm has wriggled into my mouth, oozed past my epiglottis, and slinked down my esophagus to nest in my belly again.
I can love this work like nothing in the world, but if I can't pay the bills, I can't pay the bills.
And this was the deal to start with. For those of you irritated, offended or generally chafed by an exploration of the spiritual / religious &/ theological, change the channel.
[religious part]
The only reason I ever got up the cojones to do this Hollywood thing in the first place is because I wrapped my head around the concept that the course of my life is entirely in God's hands. He willed the universe into existence, and thus it continues to exist because he does not will it to cease. He's interested in my welfare because He incarnated himself in order to substitute Himself for my in judgement so that I could have a relationship with Him. I have the free will to make my own decisions, and take action, but there is only so much I can control. This lack of control scared me away from even considering acting for a living for many years. By nature I want something safe and predictable (or at least something that offers the illusion of said qualities). By getting to understand the idea that it's my business to go where I believe I'm being led and allow Him (The Omniscient) to take care of the rest (everything I can't control) in His own way, my fear was assuaged and even extinguished to the point that I could say, "I need to do this acting thing." And I did it, and it's been awesome.
[/religious part]
From the beginning I knew that it would either work out, or it wouldn't work out. There were a few variables to be considered going forward, but they all fell under two basic questions:
1) Do I love this, or does it suck?
2) Is the money there or not?
I knew I could love the stuffing out of this work, but fall flat on my nose financially.
I knew that I could make enough money at it, but find out that I'd been chasing a mythical thing, and I really didn't like Hollywood that much.
I knew that I could be broke and disenfranchised.
And I knew that I could make it, and be the happiest I've ever been.
Since I don't believe in luck, I'll let you run the stats on those possibilities...what I believe is that, whatever the outcome, it would be a clear indicator of my path in life.
I'm meant to be here, or I'm not meant to be here. If I'm not meant to be here, I had to get this place out of my head before I could live a contented life elsewhere, otherwise employed.
Okay, spiritual again...tough cookies: God has a plan for me, and this Hollywood stint is a part of it. I'm clearly supposed to be here right now doing this. Am I supposed to be here to see that it's not for me? Is my path elsewhere, and a love affair with the movies is just an obstacle? Or has it been so hard for me to believe I should do this precisely because it's what the Big Kahuna wants me to do?
Enough wandering, back to the point. I don't want to worry. I've spent enough of my life doing it, and it sucks. I can't control everything, and I've made big steps toward letting God handle the no-control issues in my life.
The problem is I'm worrying. I saw the bank account, I can see the calendar...and I desperately want to have enough money to keep at this. That's where the worry comes from. It feels so right to be working in the industry, but logic and my wife's favorite (read: most hated) word pragmatism says there's no way we'll have money for rent when it's due.
And this is my problem. I'm getting ahead of the game, trying to wrestle with the unknowns and divine them, somehow, so that I can make the right decision now and avoid the potential pain.
How many times in my life has the right help showed up at the right time? How many times has the door of opportunity closed when I was about to take a path that, in retrospect would have been foolish? God has a great track record, but here I am again.
Oh, ye of little faith, right?
It's so irritating to ostensibly believe in a Sovereign God, and then, at the drop of a hat, completely flip out. Whether you buy into a personal God or not, you'd have to agree that if a God that was looking out for you was on your side, it would be borderline retarded to start planting an ulcer over a couple hundred bucks.
And I do this, time after time. I spent most of today spinning probabilities in my head, trying to guess the value of preparing for "the inevitable" (an abandonment of Hollywood), mostly because there's a little voice inside that goes all Revolutionary Road on me in the dark moments and hollers about Responsibility, and Accountability, and Righteousness, and Provision for Your Family...which is a Responsibility, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, blech. While it all sounds great and good in theory, leaving because of the perceived upstanding-ness of getting a "real" job is just as much rejection of God's leading as would be staying here to the detriment of my wife and son (and myself) when I clearly wasn't making any progress at all.
So of course, I'm somewhere in between (like I said, nuanced). I fit in here, I'm fulfilled by this work, it interests me, I'm with my family, and, shock of shocks, I kind of like living here (now that I actually live here). But the money...she's not in the bank.
Written out like that, I guess the argument clears itself up a little bit...but being broke and missing the bills is a big, fat, scary thing for a performance oriented, socially hyper-sensitive Minnesota German. Like, you're a failure as a person if you can't pay your dues.
But it's show business. I could land a job that pays $600 tomorrow and everything would be different.
It's just a bitch and half.
Alicia does the bills, and she goes, "I don't know how this is going to work."
I go, to myself, "Well how is this going to work?"
I should stop right their and ask the God I claim to believe in, but no, I go, "I gotta figure out how it's gonna work! That's my job! Oh, shit, look at the calendar, there's no way I can conceive of that will find us with enough money to get by...there must be no way! God must be telling me to pack it in and leave." Notice, please, that at this point the Creator finally enters the calculus of the created being. Notice also that because I can't immediately find the answer, there must be no answer. Talk about your palm-to-the-forehead moments.
Now that I'm out with all of this exposition, it actually helps me relax a little and take it one day at a time...but the fact remains: I spent the bulk of the day trying to find tomorrow's answer today.
Isn't this what sitcoms do? Make a situation hilarious because the entire audience can see the problem, but the character just can't seem to get it right.
Says the six-year-old me, "But I wanna know NOW!"
I guess it's true...
Adults are really just kids with a hell of a lot more practice.
The honeymoon ended because I checked out of the hotel.
Tired of all the analogies, metaphors, comparisons, and mental chess?
Yeah, so am I...that's what the last blog was for.
G'night.
I knew this would happen, and I made myself commit to blogging the good and the bad. I have a tendency, in my life, to not discuss anything unless it's in the past, or planned to the hilt. I avoid the issues that are thorny, ambiguous, and labyrinthine in favor of the issues that are silky, crystal clear, and arrow-straight. If no one knows about my stuff, it doesn't really exist, does it? In short, I hide my problems until I know what to do about them, and everybody (including me) can be fooled into thinking I'm awesome.
That was a pretty intense opener, so I'll start off by cooling it down. No, I am not announcing a heroin addiction.
What I am going to do is discuss the future without having the slightest loving clue of what I'm going to do about it. That's a big step for me.
So here's why the honeymoon is over.
I've been loving every minute of work. However, if y'all will check the timestamp on this post, you'll notice it's very near the end of the month. When the calendar reads February, some very nice people down the street are going to expect a small, rectangular piece of paper to appear in their hands, that's labelled with the name of their business and a four digit number...1147. I wish there was a decimal point in that number somewhere, but no. It's California. Our rent is $1150 a month. Current checking account status is reading less than half that altitude. The worry worm has wriggled into my mouth, oozed past my epiglottis, and slinked down my esophagus to nest in my belly again.
I can love this work like nothing in the world, but if I can't pay the bills, I can't pay the bills.
And this was the deal to start with. For those of you irritated, offended or generally chafed by an exploration of the spiritual / religious &/ theological, change the channel.
[religious part]
The only reason I ever got up the cojones to do this Hollywood thing in the first place is because I wrapped my head around the concept that the course of my life is entirely in God's hands. He willed the universe into existence, and thus it continues to exist because he does not will it to cease. He's interested in my welfare because He incarnated himself in order to substitute Himself for my in judgement so that I could have a relationship with Him. I have the free will to make my own decisions, and take action, but there is only so much I can control. This lack of control scared me away from even considering acting for a living for many years. By nature I want something safe and predictable (or at least something that offers the illusion of said qualities). By getting to understand the idea that it's my business to go where I believe I'm being led and allow Him (The Omniscient) to take care of the rest (everything I can't control) in His own way, my fear was assuaged and even extinguished to the point that I could say, "I need to do this acting thing." And I did it, and it's been awesome.
[/religious part]
From the beginning I knew that it would either work out, or it wouldn't work out. There were a few variables to be considered going forward, but they all fell under two basic questions:
1) Do I love this, or does it suck?
2) Is the money there or not?
I knew I could love the stuffing out of this work, but fall flat on my nose financially.
I knew that I could make enough money at it, but find out that I'd been chasing a mythical thing, and I really didn't like Hollywood that much.
I knew that I could be broke and disenfranchised.
And I knew that I could make it, and be the happiest I've ever been.
Since I don't believe in luck, I'll let you run the stats on those possibilities...what I believe is that, whatever the outcome, it would be a clear indicator of my path in life.
I'm meant to be here, or I'm not meant to be here. If I'm not meant to be here, I had to get this place out of my head before I could live a contented life elsewhere, otherwise employed.
Okay, spiritual again...tough cookies: God has a plan for me, and this Hollywood stint is a part of it. I'm clearly supposed to be here right now doing this. Am I supposed to be here to see that it's not for me? Is my path elsewhere, and a love affair with the movies is just an obstacle? Or has it been so hard for me to believe I should do this precisely because it's what the Big Kahuna wants me to do?
Enough wandering, back to the point. I don't want to worry. I've spent enough of my life doing it, and it sucks. I can't control everything, and I've made big steps toward letting God handle the no-control issues in my life.
The problem is I'm worrying. I saw the bank account, I can see the calendar...and I desperately want to have enough money to keep at this. That's where the worry comes from. It feels so right to be working in the industry, but logic and my wife's favorite (read: most hated) word pragmatism says there's no way we'll have money for rent when it's due.
And this is my problem. I'm getting ahead of the game, trying to wrestle with the unknowns and divine them, somehow, so that I can make the right decision now and avoid the potential pain.
How many times in my life has the right help showed up at the right time? How many times has the door of opportunity closed when I was about to take a path that, in retrospect would have been foolish? God has a great track record, but here I am again.
Oh, ye of little faith, right?
It's so irritating to ostensibly believe in a Sovereign God, and then, at the drop of a hat, completely flip out. Whether you buy into a personal God or not, you'd have to agree that if a God that was looking out for you was on your side, it would be borderline retarded to start planting an ulcer over a couple hundred bucks.
And I do this, time after time. I spent most of today spinning probabilities in my head, trying to guess the value of preparing for "the inevitable" (an abandonment of Hollywood), mostly because there's a little voice inside that goes all Revolutionary Road on me in the dark moments and hollers about Responsibility, and Accountability, and Righteousness, and Provision for Your Family...which is a Responsibility, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, blech. While it all sounds great and good in theory, leaving because of the perceived upstanding-ness of getting a "real" job is just as much rejection of God's leading as would be staying here to the detriment of my wife and son (and myself) when I clearly wasn't making any progress at all.
So of course, I'm somewhere in between (like I said, nuanced). I fit in here, I'm fulfilled by this work, it interests me, I'm with my family, and, shock of shocks, I kind of like living here (now that I actually live here). But the money...she's not in the bank.
Written out like that, I guess the argument clears itself up a little bit...but being broke and missing the bills is a big, fat, scary thing for a performance oriented, socially hyper-sensitive Minnesota German. Like, you're a failure as a person if you can't pay your dues.
But it's show business. I could land a job that pays $600 tomorrow and everything would be different.
It's just a bitch and half.
Alicia does the bills, and she goes, "I don't know how this is going to work."
I go, to myself, "Well how is this going to work?"
I should stop right their and ask the God I claim to believe in, but no, I go, "I gotta figure out how it's gonna work! That's my job! Oh, shit, look at the calendar, there's no way I can conceive of that will find us with enough money to get by...there must be no way! God must be telling me to pack it in and leave." Notice, please, that at this point the Creator finally enters the calculus of the created being. Notice also that because I can't immediately find the answer, there must be no answer. Talk about your palm-to-the-forehead moments.
Now that I'm out with all of this exposition, it actually helps me relax a little and take it one day at a time...but the fact remains: I spent the bulk of the day trying to find tomorrow's answer today.
Isn't this what sitcoms do? Make a situation hilarious because the entire audience can see the problem, but the character just can't seem to get it right.
Says the six-year-old me, "But I wanna know NOW!"
I guess it's true...
Adults are really just kids with a hell of a lot more practice.
The honeymoon ended because I checked out of the hotel.
Tired of all the analogies, metaphors, comparisons, and mental chess?
Yeah, so am I...that's what the last blog was for.
G'night.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
Lost and Found
Lost and Found is a pilot shooting for next season.
What a day this was.
First, the location was in Venice Beach, about a block from the ocean...so Venice Beach for Minnesota. Interesting.
Backing up a little. When I called in and heard the call for this show, the specific info on what types they were looking for was right up my alley. Minnesota Vikings bar, need to look white and northern (essentially what they said), and need to look blue collar, nothing trendy...so think construction, factory workers, truckers.
Ding, ding.
I called in and got it, and all I had to do was bring Me to the set. I almost had too many choices for wardrobe.
So we hung out in a beach parking lot for most of the morning, waiting to be needed. (In case you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of waiting to be needed.)
I thought that was going to be as cool as it got...wearing my own comfortable clothes, chilling on the beach (on. the. BEACH.) at work. But no, it got epic.
Early in the evening, we set up a shot where the principle (Katie Sackhoff) is telling a story to a bunch of enraptured Vikings fans in this sports bar. Okay, that's cool. I get placed directly in front of the stool where she sits (and her stand-in sits when we're not shooting). Awesome. Screen time, close to moderately famous people...this is exhilarating stuff.
Coup de grace time. Up on the big flat screen tv pop these words:
Skol Vikings, let's win this game
Skol Vikings, honor your name
Go get that first down
Then get a touchdown
Rock 'em! Sock 'em!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
followed immediately by the AD wondering aloud, "How are we going to do this?"
Now, for those who might be unfamiliar, that little poem happens to be the Vikings fight song, which you have (perhaps drunkenly) sung if you've ever attended a Vikings home game as a home team fan.
They wanted a roomful full of Angelinos to sing the Vikings fight song.
I quietly let the AD know that I knew the song (practically by heart). He said, "That's okay, we haven't got the rights to the Vikings, so we'll have to make something up."
I was a little crestfallen, but legal is legal...or so I thought.
Ten or twenty minutes later, with me sardined literally in the middle of a circle of people capped by the principle (still the stand-in). The AD goes, "Okay, we're going to sing this thing...and..."
He pauses, and the rest of the extras in the room kind of give this nervous laugh, like, "What? We're improvising a melody to a song with the word Skol in it? Isn't that a chewing tobacco?"
Awkward pause over, AD goes, "Where's my Minnesota guy? That knows it?"
I raised my hand.
"Right, how does it go?"
So I taught sixty some odd people the Vikings fight song melody.
Not only did I get a chance to preserve the Purple and Gold dignity, when Ms. Sackhoff found out I was a genuine Minnesotan (since she was sitting literally eight inches to my right) she said, "Oh, God! I'm gonna embarrass you with my Fargo accent!"
Frankly, I think I made her a little nervous. She had to pull a "yooper", which, given her own testimony, was the only way she could sound like she was from the Northland. If she scaled it back, it sounded like she was from New York.
So, apparently, subtle Minnesota dialect is difficult to pull off.
It'll pass for Hollywood, and, as usual, there'll be a couple of thousand pissed off Minnesotans when it airs, because they're convinced that because they don't sound like that, nobody sounds like that. Everybody else won't notice.
So if I'm not on Lost and Found this fall, they've cut an entire sequence from the script...after they've shot it.
Short version: I'll be on the Lost and Found pilot.
What a day this was.
First, the location was in Venice Beach, about a block from the ocean...so Venice Beach for Minnesota. Interesting.
Backing up a little. When I called in and heard the call for this show, the specific info on what types they were looking for was right up my alley. Minnesota Vikings bar, need to look white and northern (essentially what they said), and need to look blue collar, nothing trendy...so think construction, factory workers, truckers.
Ding, ding.
I called in and got it, and all I had to do was bring Me to the set. I almost had too many choices for wardrobe.
So we hung out in a beach parking lot for most of the morning, waiting to be needed. (In case you haven't noticed yet, there's a lot of waiting to be needed.)
I thought that was going to be as cool as it got...wearing my own comfortable clothes, chilling on the beach (on. the. BEACH.) at work. But no, it got epic.
Early in the evening, we set up a shot where the principle (Katie Sackhoff) is telling a story to a bunch of enraptured Vikings fans in this sports bar. Okay, that's cool. I get placed directly in front of the stool where she sits (and her stand-in sits when we're not shooting). Awesome. Screen time, close to moderately famous people...this is exhilarating stuff.
Coup de grace time. Up on the big flat screen tv pop these words:
Skol Vikings, let's win this game
Skol Vikings, honor your name
Go get that first down
Then get a touchdown
Rock 'em! Sock 'em!
Fight! Fight! Fight! Fight!
followed immediately by the AD wondering aloud, "How are we going to do this?"
Now, for those who might be unfamiliar, that little poem happens to be the Vikings fight song, which you have (perhaps drunkenly) sung if you've ever attended a Vikings home game as a home team fan.
They wanted a roomful full of Angelinos to sing the Vikings fight song.
I quietly let the AD know that I knew the song (practically by heart). He said, "That's okay, we haven't got the rights to the Vikings, so we'll have to make something up."
I was a little crestfallen, but legal is legal...or so I thought.
Ten or twenty minutes later, with me sardined literally in the middle of a circle of people capped by the principle (still the stand-in). The AD goes, "Okay, we're going to sing this thing...and..."
He pauses, and the rest of the extras in the room kind of give this nervous laugh, like, "What? We're improvising a melody to a song with the word Skol in it? Isn't that a chewing tobacco?"
Awkward pause over, AD goes, "Where's my Minnesota guy? That knows it?"
I raised my hand.
"Right, how does it go?"
So I taught sixty some odd people the Vikings fight song melody.
Not only did I get a chance to preserve the Purple and Gold dignity, when Ms. Sackhoff found out I was a genuine Minnesotan (since she was sitting literally eight inches to my right) she said, "Oh, God! I'm gonna embarrass you with my Fargo accent!"
Frankly, I think I made her a little nervous. She had to pull a "yooper", which, given her own testimony, was the only way she could sound like she was from the Northland. If she scaled it back, it sounded like she was from New York.
So, apparently, subtle Minnesota dialect is difficult to pull off.
It'll pass for Hollywood, and, as usual, there'll be a couple of thousand pissed off Minnesotans when it airs, because they're convinced that because they don't sound like that, nobody sounds like that. Everybody else won't notice.
So if I'm not on Lost and Found this fall, they've cut an entire sequence from the script...after they've shot it.
Short version: I'll be on the Lost and Found pilot.
Desperate Housewives
A couple of brief, interesting tidbits about this show.
1. They're as efficient a heck. We shot a lot of coverage in a very short day.
2. Eva Longoria is a very small woman. Not just thin...but small. That was surprising.
3. Desperate Housewives has its own branded bottled spring water. With a label.
I managed to catch the [botched] oath of office on the radio between one location and another. It was another moment of, "I'm really, for really, working here." The world is whirling on, and all the news items I was following as a trucker are still spinning themselves out. Crazy.
1. They're as efficient a heck. We shot a lot of coverage in a very short day.
2. Eva Longoria is a very small woman. Not just thin...but small. That was surprising.
3. Desperate Housewives has its own branded bottled spring water. With a label.
I managed to catch the [botched] oath of office on the radio between one location and another. It was another moment of, "I'm really, for really, working here." The world is whirling on, and all the news items I was following as a trucker are still spinning themselves out. Crazy.
Saturday, January 17, 2009
So, the recall to Prison Break made up for the first day on Prison Break.
Instead of sitting around for 10 hours to do 3 takes, we sat around for 1 hour to do 30 takes.
Really, it was more than that, but it was a nice flip.
It was the top of a new episode, and the same pack of Miami Police came back for this new day, and we kicked off the day by running. Up stairs. A lot of them. Several times.
Then we ran up more stairs. Less of them, but still...several times. That second set of stair running took several takes because of the smallish confusion about when we were supposed to start up the stairs. On the first take somebody (me) jumped our cue, and the rest followed, with the result that Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller were still standing at the end of the hallway as we passed them. The confusion wasn't really our (my) fault, because nobody had thought to fill us in on what was happening. As we reset to do it again, one or the other of Purcell and Miller said, "So that's it? We get arrested? Series over?" We got it once we actually had a clear understanding of what our cue was supposed to be.
After lunch came the really interesting stuff. The extras were all hovering near the setup of a new shot, waiting to be called in to be placed. Ingrid (a 2nd AD) comes up and says, "Come with me, please."
And not a minute later I find myself on a mark, squared up with Mike and Jesse (didn't get their last names) SAG supporting cast for the episode. Mike was the police captain and Jesse was the hotel manager. Myself and another cop were there to give Mike somebody to talk to...so I had two cameras shooting over my shoulders at the actors with lines.
It gets better.
All this was a setup for a moment where Purcell and Miller take off from a concealed spot and we chase them down the hallway. Four SAG actors, and two extras. Wow. Not to mention that Captain Mike had a live weapon (in the sense that it fired blanks for visual effect) which he fired at Purcell and Miller as the fled down the hall.
We covered it from one direction, then from the other, and then we cover the last bit where the two fugitives bust into a stairwell and we come in after them.
By this time, Captain Mike has started to throw in an ad libbed line as we're just about to entered the stairwell after Miller and Purcell. He looks over his shoulder and goes, "You ready?" to me. So what am I going to do? Stand there like an idiot, and not respond because I'm an extra? Hell no! What did I go to school for 4 years for? We're all huffing and puffing from the sprint down the hall, so I nod briskly and give him a raspy, "Yah."
The significance of this is: It's a SAG show. I don't know the specifics, because I haven't researched it fully yet, but that spoken word has the potential to make me eligible for SAG membership. It might not, too. So I'm not going to cry if it doesn't happen, but I'm sure going to ask.
Penultimate wacky moment of the day...On one of the takes into the stairwell, both Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are standing on the first landing, safely out of the shot, but I've got to act like I'm warily looking up the stairs. Dominic has had a little spritz bottle all day, in order to mist his face to look like he's sweating. As I'm looking up the stairs, and the scene is still going, he starts squirting at me with this bottle, hissing, "Come on! Come on! I'm right here!"
I don't know if I did anything noticeable to the camera, but it was rather difficult to keep from busting out laughing...not so much because what he did was tremendously funny (it was pretty funny) but rather because I was just struck by the absurdity of the whole thing.
I'm in the Long Beach, CA Hyatt hotel, dressed as a cop, holding a fake gun, seven feet from two TV stars, interacting with a 25 year Hollywood vet, very obviously on camera, and this is my 5th day of work. Ri. Di. Cu. Lous.
Last thing of the night. We're shooting something else, and I'm back the background, background, working some background action with Heath (another cop, and a cool guy) and Michael Rapaport is making his entrance in front of us. As the shot is setting up, a tall black man weaves through the hubbub (the hotel is still working, obviously, and we're shooting just inside the main entrance) and there's some interaction between Rapaport and this guy. I hear, "he could throw like a rifle down in Houston," or something to that effect from Rapaport, and I look...
Sure enough. Warren Moon had just walked into the hotel to check in. That definitely added an extra flavor of surreal onto the top of what was already a seven layer dip of surreal.
So who knows if that was just an awesome, hysterically fun day, or an awesome, hysterically fun day that winds up being an awesome help to my career. Either way, I win.
Prison Break, Episodes 19 and 20, sometime in April/May of this year.
Instead of sitting around for 10 hours to do 3 takes, we sat around for 1 hour to do 30 takes.
Really, it was more than that, but it was a nice flip.
It was the top of a new episode, and the same pack of Miami Police came back for this new day, and we kicked off the day by running. Up stairs. A lot of them. Several times.
Then we ran up more stairs. Less of them, but still...several times. That second set of stair running took several takes because of the smallish confusion about when we were supposed to start up the stairs. On the first take somebody (me) jumped our cue, and the rest followed, with the result that Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller were still standing at the end of the hallway as we passed them. The confusion wasn't really our (my) fault, because nobody had thought to fill us in on what was happening. As we reset to do it again, one or the other of Purcell and Miller said, "So that's it? We get arrested? Series over?" We got it once we actually had a clear understanding of what our cue was supposed to be.
After lunch came the really interesting stuff. The extras were all hovering near the setup of a new shot, waiting to be called in to be placed. Ingrid (a 2nd AD) comes up and says, "Come with me, please."
And not a minute later I find myself on a mark, squared up with Mike and Jesse (didn't get their last names) SAG supporting cast for the episode. Mike was the police captain and Jesse was the hotel manager. Myself and another cop were there to give Mike somebody to talk to...so I had two cameras shooting over my shoulders at the actors with lines.
It gets better.
All this was a setup for a moment where Purcell and Miller take off from a concealed spot and we chase them down the hallway. Four SAG actors, and two extras. Wow. Not to mention that Captain Mike had a live weapon (in the sense that it fired blanks for visual effect) which he fired at Purcell and Miller as the fled down the hall.
We covered it from one direction, then from the other, and then we cover the last bit where the two fugitives bust into a stairwell and we come in after them.
By this time, Captain Mike has started to throw in an ad libbed line as we're just about to entered the stairwell after Miller and Purcell. He looks over his shoulder and goes, "You ready?" to me. So what am I going to do? Stand there like an idiot, and not respond because I'm an extra? Hell no! What did I go to school for 4 years for? We're all huffing and puffing from the sprint down the hall, so I nod briskly and give him a raspy, "Yah."
The significance of this is: It's a SAG show. I don't know the specifics, because I haven't researched it fully yet, but that spoken word has the potential to make me eligible for SAG membership. It might not, too. So I'm not going to cry if it doesn't happen, but I'm sure going to ask.
Penultimate wacky moment of the day...On one of the takes into the stairwell, both Dominic Purcell and Wentworth Miller are standing on the first landing, safely out of the shot, but I've got to act like I'm warily looking up the stairs. Dominic has had a little spritz bottle all day, in order to mist his face to look like he's sweating. As I'm looking up the stairs, and the scene is still going, he starts squirting at me with this bottle, hissing, "Come on! Come on! I'm right here!"
I don't know if I did anything noticeable to the camera, but it was rather difficult to keep from busting out laughing...not so much because what he did was tremendously funny (it was pretty funny) but rather because I was just struck by the absurdity of the whole thing.
I'm in the Long Beach, CA Hyatt hotel, dressed as a cop, holding a fake gun, seven feet from two TV stars, interacting with a 25 year Hollywood vet, very obviously on camera, and this is my 5th day of work. Ri. Di. Cu. Lous.
Last thing of the night. We're shooting something else, and I'm back the background, background, working some background action with Heath (another cop, and a cool guy) and Michael Rapaport is making his entrance in front of us. As the shot is setting up, a tall black man weaves through the hubbub (the hotel is still working, obviously, and we're shooting just inside the main entrance) and there's some interaction between Rapaport and this guy. I hear, "he could throw like a rifle down in Houston," or something to that effect from Rapaport, and I look...
Sure enough. Warren Moon had just walked into the hotel to check in. That definitely added an extra flavor of surreal onto the top of what was already a seven layer dip of surreal.
So who knows if that was just an awesome, hysterically fun day, or an awesome, hysterically fun day that winds up being an awesome help to my career. Either way, I win.
Prison Break, Episodes 19 and 20, sometime in April/May of this year.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Got work on Prison Break on Wednesday.
Fun times.
It was in Long Beach, so it was about a 60 mile schlep. I suppose, technically, it wasn't a schlep, because I headed out at 445 and got there at 545...which is an average of 60mph. In Los Angeles that's miraculous.
I grabbed some breakfast and hung out, waiting for check in time (630). The cool thing was that the production had rented what are called "Lunchboxes" for the extras. They're maybe 50 foot trailers that pop the sides out like campers they can fit at least 70 or 80 people at tables. It was literally a cool thing, because the little heating/air-conditioning generator (formerly known to me as a reefer unit) wouldn't really make heat...so the temperature was 59 degrees, and it was set to 68. Beside making it uncomfortably chilly in that particular trailer, it's notable because I actually had a decent idea of what the problem was. Other folks tried to adjust the set temperature upward, but I knew, from trucking experience, that if the system won't make heat, nothing helps. Life experience for the win!
So I hung out outside.
630 arrives and Jack, the guy checking in the mob of extras calls for the Miami Cops, which is what I was scheduled to be.
He says, "Hey, I have to apologize, but there was a miscommunication with central, you're not called until ten."
I say, "Hey, thanks for telling us." He could have made us wait in line.
So I got to sit around for three hours or so. There was a small kerfuffle about whether the eight of us would get paid for being there at 630, which I tried to avoid as diplomatically as possible. It wasn't worth getting pissed about, but it was something that was easy to get pissed about. It was the kind of thing I would have gotten hocked off about just a few months ago.
So I just watched the sunrise in a cloudless Long Beach sky.
When 1000 rolled around, Jack had (very awesomely) worked it out so that we got paid from 630.
I got to wardrobe and the girl said, "How tall are you?"
I said, "6-3."
She looked at Jack, "Jack, we asked for no cops over 5-11, we haven't got the shirts bigger than that." Which meant wardrobe had requested of Central that no one over 5' 11" be booked as a cop. Not my fault, not Jack's fault.
"Nothing I can do," Jack said.
Wardrobe got a little miffed and gave me a suit. I'd been converted to a convention goer, and they were in a fluff trying to recruit a shorter cop from the conventioners.
When I came back to the wardrobe trailer to finish up the approval on the suit, there was another guy standing there getting finished up in a cop uniform. He was taller than me. It didn't upset me, but it didn't make sense...especially since it was going to be really hard to figure out how to get a conventioner back from the Hyatt (where shooting was) to the Arena parking lot three blocks down the road.
"Hey, if he fits, I'm pretty sure I can make it work," I said.
They looked at him, looked at me, and looked at the rack, kind of gave a what-the-hell shrug and started digging.
I was a cop again.
The rest of the day went something like this: get bussed to the Hyatt, wait in holding. Talk to three of my fellow cops, get bussed back to "base camp" for lunch, get bussed back to the Hyatt, wait in holding, talk to my fellow cops, have a generally fun time, get called onto the set at about 1730, set up a chaotic group shot post-somebody-getting-shot, run a rehearsal, shoot it three times, and we're done.
Now, if you didn't catch that, let me boil it down a little more. I got paid from 630 to 1915 yesterday to do three takes at the end of the day. How ridiculously awesome is that?
Plus, it was an episode wrap, so I'm recalled for Friday, because the next epi picks up where this one leaves off. Only in the pictures.
On the down side, I've got a pinched nerve or strained muscle or something in my shoulder, which has made today less than productive.
But, really, I can't complain.
Fun times.
It was in Long Beach, so it was about a 60 mile schlep. I suppose, technically, it wasn't a schlep, because I headed out at 445 and got there at 545...which is an average of 60mph. In Los Angeles that's miraculous.
I grabbed some breakfast and hung out, waiting for check in time (630). The cool thing was that the production had rented what are called "Lunchboxes" for the extras. They're maybe 50 foot trailers that pop the sides out like campers they can fit at least 70 or 80 people at tables. It was literally a cool thing, because the little heating/air-conditioning generator (formerly known to me as a reefer unit) wouldn't really make heat...so the temperature was 59 degrees, and it was set to 68. Beside making it uncomfortably chilly in that particular trailer, it's notable because I actually had a decent idea of what the problem was. Other folks tried to adjust the set temperature upward, but I knew, from trucking experience, that if the system won't make heat, nothing helps. Life experience for the win!
So I hung out outside.
630 arrives and Jack, the guy checking in the mob of extras calls for the Miami Cops, which is what I was scheduled to be.
He says, "Hey, I have to apologize, but there was a miscommunication with central, you're not called until ten."
I say, "Hey, thanks for telling us." He could have made us wait in line.
So I got to sit around for three hours or so. There was a small kerfuffle about whether the eight of us would get paid for being there at 630, which I tried to avoid as diplomatically as possible. It wasn't worth getting pissed about, but it was something that was easy to get pissed about. It was the kind of thing I would have gotten hocked off about just a few months ago.
So I just watched the sunrise in a cloudless Long Beach sky.
When 1000 rolled around, Jack had (very awesomely) worked it out so that we got paid from 630.
I got to wardrobe and the girl said, "How tall are you?"
I said, "6-3."
She looked at Jack, "Jack, we asked for no cops over 5-11, we haven't got the shirts bigger than that." Which meant wardrobe had requested of Central that no one over 5' 11" be booked as a cop. Not my fault, not Jack's fault.
"Nothing I can do," Jack said.
Wardrobe got a little miffed and gave me a suit. I'd been converted to a convention goer, and they were in a fluff trying to recruit a shorter cop from the conventioners.
When I came back to the wardrobe trailer to finish up the approval on the suit, there was another guy standing there getting finished up in a cop uniform. He was taller than me. It didn't upset me, but it didn't make sense...especially since it was going to be really hard to figure out how to get a conventioner back from the Hyatt (where shooting was) to the Arena parking lot three blocks down the road.
"Hey, if he fits, I'm pretty sure I can make it work," I said.
They looked at him, looked at me, and looked at the rack, kind of gave a what-the-hell shrug and started digging.
I was a cop again.
The rest of the day went something like this: get bussed to the Hyatt, wait in holding. Talk to three of my fellow cops, get bussed back to "base camp" for lunch, get bussed back to the Hyatt, wait in holding, talk to my fellow cops, have a generally fun time, get called onto the set at about 1730, set up a chaotic group shot post-somebody-getting-shot, run a rehearsal, shoot it three times, and we're done.
Now, if you didn't catch that, let me boil it down a little more. I got paid from 630 to 1915 yesterday to do three takes at the end of the day. How ridiculously awesome is that?
Plus, it was an episode wrap, so I'm recalled for Friday, because the next epi picks up where this one leaves off. Only in the pictures.
On the down side, I've got a pinched nerve or strained muscle or something in my shoulder, which has made today less than productive.
But, really, I can't complain.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Worked on NCIS today, across town (I know I mentioned it, but it's still cool), and it was a short-ish day, which was cool because I stayed cool...It was winter in DC...but it was really Valencia, so the high was aiming for 80. I was in a suit, scarf, gloves, and a fully built winter overcoat.
It was, however, a well picked location, where the traveling sun never landed any light in the frame. Combine that with the steady breeze coming down from the higher elevations, and the coat, suit, etc. felt fine.
Interesting factoid: If you've ever wondered how they do the dead bodies in crime shows (the freshly dead, not the decayed, gnawed three weeks dead type) it turns out that it's not a well dressed dummy. It's a real person. It might be obvious to you, but I've always wondered if they can get a person to stay comfortable and still for a shoot like that...often in uncomfortable, twisted, just-been-popped-by-a-Glock positions. I'm pretty sure they get a spiffy check out that, though, because today's corpse had his leg in a position that but some serious torque on his left knee...and he was pushing 60.
Another interesting thingy: for those of you that are fans of the show--look for Abby to get out of the lab and onto a crime scene...bearing a nice little black lace parasol.
Currently, I'm striking out on work for tomorrow, watching Season 3 of How I Met You Mother.
Whee. (That's the whee that comes from being in the air about the headshots and really worrying about finding the work for the first time since I came home.)
Whee!
It was, however, a well picked location, where the traveling sun never landed any light in the frame. Combine that with the steady breeze coming down from the higher elevations, and the coat, suit, etc. felt fine.
Interesting factoid: If you've ever wondered how they do the dead bodies in crime shows (the freshly dead, not the decayed, gnawed three weeks dead type) it turns out that it's not a well dressed dummy. It's a real person. It might be obvious to you, but I've always wondered if they can get a person to stay comfortable and still for a shoot like that...often in uncomfortable, twisted, just-been-popped-by-a-Glock positions. I'm pretty sure they get a spiffy check out that, though, because today's corpse had his leg in a position that but some serious torque on his left knee...and he was pushing 60.
Another interesting thingy: for those of you that are fans of the show--look for Abby to get out of the lab and onto a crime scene...bearing a nice little black lace parasol.
Currently, I'm striking out on work for tomorrow, watching Season 3 of How I Met You Mother.
Whee. (That's the whee that comes from being in the air about the headshots and really worrying about finding the work for the first time since I came home.)
Whee!
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Did I mention that I got booked as an extra for NCIS on Monday?
And that the shoot is at the mall 8 miles away?
No?
Yeah.
Schweet!
Also, my son is sleeping brilliantly, and it's only 1930. Usually he's seriously upset by an attack of gastric distress. Okay, so since that might be a really bad medical condition that I don't know about, I'll rephrase:
The poor guy has gas problems. He'll be really upset when he should be sleeping because he's just got to fart it out.
Not right now though, so points for that.
To whom? I don't know, but points, nonetheless.
Weirdness over, good night.
And that the shoot is at the mall 8 miles away?
No?
Yeah.
Schweet!
Also, my son is sleeping brilliantly, and it's only 1930. Usually he's seriously upset by an attack of gastric distress. Okay, so since that might be a really bad medical condition that I don't know about, I'll rephrase:
The poor guy has gas problems. He'll be really upset when he should be sleeping because he's just got to fart it out.
Not right now though, so points for that.
To whom? I don't know, but points, nonetheless.
Weirdness over, good night.
A word about craft services food.
I know I built the breakfast surprise into the description of my first day on the set, but it's worth going back and discussing a little more thoroughly.
The food provided (for free) as a part of a shooting day is mind-blowing beyond the pale of any working environment I've ever imagined in my life.
Breakfast and lunch are available as buffets, and these caterers are putting their backs into it. I put the estimate of the quality of this stuff at somewhere around $20 a plate food. It's not just that it's free, it's that it's good.
Steamed veggies in butter drizzles, barbecued chicken breast, steak cutlets, rice pudding, multiple salad options, multiple dessert options...I could go on.
I eat better at work than I do at home. Crazy.
It should be noted that I don't eat poorly at home. On a limited budget Alicia (and I) succeed in coming up with quite a few tasty options...but we just don't have the banking prowess to match the quality of the ingredients.
I'm not digging holes, breathing fumes, or shoveling shit. I'm getting fed for that twice a day. Never, never, never, ever, never do I want to get desensitized to that. Ever.
I know I built the breakfast surprise into the description of my first day on the set, but it's worth going back and discussing a little more thoroughly.
The food provided (for free) as a part of a shooting day is mind-blowing beyond the pale of any working environment I've ever imagined in my life.
Breakfast and lunch are available as buffets, and these caterers are putting their backs into it. I put the estimate of the quality of this stuff at somewhere around $20 a plate food. It's not just that it's free, it's that it's good.
Steamed veggies in butter drizzles, barbecued chicken breast, steak cutlets, rice pudding, multiple salad options, multiple dessert options...I could go on.
I eat better at work than I do at home. Crazy.
It should be noted that I don't eat poorly at home. On a limited budget Alicia (and I) succeed in coming up with quite a few tasty options...but we just don't have the banking prowess to match the quality of the ingredients.
I'm not digging holes, breathing fumes, or shoveling shit. I'm getting fed for that twice a day. Never, never, never, ever, never do I want to get desensitized to that. Ever.
Saturday, January 10, 2009
Good day today.
Oh, good day.
Woke up and didn't really need to hustle to get anywhere. Hung out, watched some TV on DVD, left the volume up too high, bugged the hell out of Alicia. All in typical married morning.
It was headshot day today, and the photographer I picked out (who now appears in my Relevant Links section) specifically said to get good rest the day before.
The appointment was at 1300, so I packed up a ton of clothes (read: basically my whole closet, because I haven't got too many clothes), packed it into the car and took off for Burbank.
Oddly enough, the little theatre where he shoots is just down the street from Bob Hope airport, which I had to find in order to turn in the rental car I took home from trucking. So, it was easy to find.
When I got there he was just finishing up a reshoot with another client. It was one of those awkward moments that you can never avoid when meeting somebody new for some kind of project...but that was pretty much the worst part of the day.
The clothes I had offered good options, and he said that my skin looked good and that he was digging my hair. The man's married with two kids, so don't read that the wrong way. What's notable about that is: I've been a trucker for a year and a half. The last time I had reasonably attractive hair and skin that was anything close to clear, I had a Wisconsin zip code.
So I threw on the first set of clothes he wanted to shoot, and we got started.
He explained that we were going to shoot about 700 frames, and that there was no pressure, because it's a digital shoot, which allows tremendous flexibility to take a quick look and lose the ones that missed the focus or the depth of field. He said that the first hundred shots were the ones we'd use to get used to each other, "so they'll all be shit, but that's how it goes."
About seven shots in, he stopped and checked his preview screen and went, "well, that one was great! We got one."
It wasn't idle flattery, it was genuine surprise and satisfaction.
"Look at the way your eyes pop," he showed me, "that's nice."
It went on like this. We talked about life and the business and everything in between, and we shot a lot of stuff in a few different places around the block, in several different looks. It felt good to know that I'm easy to work with, and it felt good to have somebody tell me I had a good marketable look and really mean it. It felt good to feel on track.
I know that Hollywood is a place that smells of horse manure from a thousand miles away, so before you raise the doubt that I might have fallen into a pile of it, let me assure you that my BS radar is pretty sensitive, and I didn't catch any red flags. The man asked my permission to use some of my shots on his new website.
In all, today just served to reinforce a few core beliefs I have about this whole Hollywood thing. 1) There are people out there, doing this, that care about it the way I do, and that aren't vapid hairdos. 2) Showing up, and showing up, and showing up makes a difference.
Into traffic, and see what runs me over.
Oh, good day.
Woke up and didn't really need to hustle to get anywhere. Hung out, watched some TV on DVD, left the volume up too high, bugged the hell out of Alicia. All in typical married morning.
It was headshot day today, and the photographer I picked out (who now appears in my Relevant Links section) specifically said to get good rest the day before.
The appointment was at 1300, so I packed up a ton of clothes (read: basically my whole closet, because I haven't got too many clothes), packed it into the car and took off for Burbank.
Oddly enough, the little theatre where he shoots is just down the street from Bob Hope airport, which I had to find in order to turn in the rental car I took home from trucking. So, it was easy to find.
When I got there he was just finishing up a reshoot with another client. It was one of those awkward moments that you can never avoid when meeting somebody new for some kind of project...but that was pretty much the worst part of the day.
The clothes I had offered good options, and he said that my skin looked good and that he was digging my hair. The man's married with two kids, so don't read that the wrong way. What's notable about that is: I've been a trucker for a year and a half. The last time I had reasonably attractive hair and skin that was anything close to clear, I had a Wisconsin zip code.
So I threw on the first set of clothes he wanted to shoot, and we got started.
He explained that we were going to shoot about 700 frames, and that there was no pressure, because it's a digital shoot, which allows tremendous flexibility to take a quick look and lose the ones that missed the focus or the depth of field. He said that the first hundred shots were the ones we'd use to get used to each other, "so they'll all be shit, but that's how it goes."
About seven shots in, he stopped and checked his preview screen and went, "well, that one was great! We got one."
It wasn't idle flattery, it was genuine surprise and satisfaction.
"Look at the way your eyes pop," he showed me, "that's nice."
It went on like this. We talked about life and the business and everything in between, and we shot a lot of stuff in a few different places around the block, in several different looks. It felt good to know that I'm easy to work with, and it felt good to have somebody tell me I had a good marketable look and really mean it. It felt good to feel on track.
I know that Hollywood is a place that smells of horse manure from a thousand miles away, so before you raise the doubt that I might have fallen into a pile of it, let me assure you that my BS radar is pretty sensitive, and I didn't catch any red flags. The man asked my permission to use some of my shots on his new website.
In all, today just served to reinforce a few core beliefs I have about this whole Hollywood thing. 1) There are people out there, doing this, that care about it the way I do, and that aren't vapid hairdos. 2) Showing up, and showing up, and showing up makes a difference.
Into traffic, and see what runs me over.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Two crazy days, and one not so crazy day.
WEDNESDAY
First day ever doing anything related to show-making that involved compensation of the Green Cottony Paper variety.
I rolled out of bed at 400 and worked myself through a poached egg/english muffin sandwich, a glass of juice and a mug of coffee. Then I transferred to the bathroom for a shave and a shower. Funny thing: I've been "shaving" with an electric shaver since last year. It's a nice little Norelco model, but I never had the light or the mirror resource to properly use it. Because of that, I really only shaved when I got in a shower, which was, at best, every three days. By that time, I'd have solid beard seeded, and I had to use the trimmer tool first, and then shave. Since I got home, I've been back to the old Mach 3, and I've noticed that I must shave daily, or razing just hurts. This might have been my running problem for the last six years. Don't shave daily, shave, pain, repeat ad nausiem until you don't ever want to shave again. I might just turn it around with this "habit" thing.
Anyway, got out to the car at 505 and busted out for Warner Bros. It's about 25 miles from my house, and my car and I needed to be there by 600. Because the trips aren't multi-hundreds of miles anymore, I haven't really set up the GPS in the car...so it was a little new not having a quick reference for the remaining distance to destination. By that token, I got a nervous about arriving on time. Generally speaking, I was nervous about everything. First day, find new place, use car on TV show set, use Self on TV show set...all that. I kept my speed under control, and got there in good time.
I pulled up to the Warner Bros. gate at 535 or so. A word about this. Usually, you're not booked with your car. You park the car off site and get shuttled to the shoot. That would have been adventure enough for a first day, but I had to drive myself onto the lot...that I'd never seen...in the dark. And I mean dark. I introduced myself to security rather lamely, saying something affable about how my car and I were here for Trust Me, and he found my name and gave me the little security pass and gave me directions. Here's where the dark part comes in.
I went up three stops and took a left, and then looked for the second left. I was weaving through 5 ton straight trucks jockeying for position to set up for the day, which was cool, I'm used to big vehicles in tight spaces, but that second left was a massive dark hole. Not used to that. I turned and my headlights illuminated a building facade. I realized where I was. They literally gave me driving directions onto Warner's New York/Chicago/large western city street set. Except in a large western city there are usually street lights. Turns out, when the electricians aren't there yet, Warner Brother's street lights aren't on. I pulled off to the side, not really knowing how it worked (and being slightly early, alone and unable to ask). I turned around and got off the set and parked where there was light and went and tried to figure out where to check in. Nobody really knew, because they had other stuff to work on (like, their actual jobs) but they were at least pleasant. I then decided against leaving my car off set, because it was supposed to be on set for the day, so I got back in and parked it behind a bus.
I'll spare you the details on the check in and stand around procedures save a few things. 1) That poached egg sandwich I ate? Yeah, didn't need that. Craft services (what caterers are called in industry parlance) had eggs, french toast, fruit, vegetables, coffee, juice, et cetera laid out neatly in a buffet. Turns out breakfast is included on a show set. Good breakfast. 2) Organized chaos rules the day. If you're uncomfortable in murmuring, semi-confused group settings, please avoid working in Television or Movies.
I volunteered to drive for the day, but just before the driving started, the director decided that he didn't like a yellow cab in the shot, so it left and my car, which somehow was first in line, was asked to move in and park there. Since the car can't drive itself in there, I had to do it. When I got it parked (paralleled in one shot, thank you), I didn't really know what to do, since I was a little unclear on why I'd been bumped up in the first place. (I only figured out the cab-didn't-look-good thing in retrospect.) I thought, at the time, that perhaps they wanted a car to pull out of a space at the top of the shot, and it was me.
Really, no. But we'll get there.
So here's the physical situation: My car is parked against the curb. Two feet from the nose of the car is A Camera, on rails for a short tracking shot that starts shooting basically straight past the whole driver's side of my car (well, Alicia's car, really, but the one I'd brought to the set). In the middle of the street, looking at the action to be shot (looking over the trunk of my car) is B Camera. They still haven't told me to get out of the car, so I'm thinking, "Well, crap! If this is where I'm supposed to be, I'd better come up with something unobtrusive to do so that I don't look like a shmuck just sitting in his car." So I threw my bluetooth in and got ready to have a conversation with somebody and look for something in my bag. They start the first rehearsal, and I realize that Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack run their action up to the light pole that's right off the gas tank door. Dammit, I'd better sell this phone conversation. (And by sell, I do not mean ham it up. I mean make it as absolutely believable and invisible as possible.)
We did two rehearsals this way.
Then they noticed I was in the car. Dave (nice guy, our wrangler for the day...don't know what his official title was) suddenly pops the passenger door open and says, "'Scuse me, why are you still in the car?"
I say, "Sorry, nobody told me to get out."
"Okay, well, get out and join us, won't you?"
"Sure thing!" Out of the car I come, as swiftly as possible. In retrospect, I realize there's no way I should have thought I was supposed to stay in the car. They cannot, will not, and do not expect extras to function that close to the camera for longer than a few seconds. However, it being two hours into my first day, I had no clue.
The rest of the day was much less confusing. I got hang of the framework of what extras are expected to do, and it made easy sense from then on.
I learned so much, it's really impossible to give it a summary description, so I'll have to stick to aphorisms that represent the day.
I learned that I'm way more committed to "showing up" for the entire work day than most people. I watch a number of my fellow extras read books and text and make phone calls between takes...and get visibly irritated when we were rolling (ready to go to action) and then had to cut. It was a, "You made me put down my book for nothing?" kind of thing. More on this at the end.
I learned that people suck at paying attention.
I learned that some extras think good background action is totally unintelligible gesturing that would get most people committed to mental institutions if it were seen anywhere but on set.
I learned that when you're shooting a scene in which a commercial is being shot (as part of the story), some extras just can't quite connect all the dots. "Is that the real cut or the fake cut?"
I learned that many extras are content to sit in holding all day and avoid actually working on the set.
I worked, by contrast, pretty much all day...principally because when they asked me to do something, I did it.
The day was a little tiring. My stamina is still set to "Sit on your ass". It was chilly in the morning and then sunny and warm for the rest of the day (I was wearing a winter jacket). I was wearing my dress shoes for the first time in almost two years.
But: The food was fantastic, and free. I was able to stand where I was supposed to stand, and just shamelessly stare at the process of shooting until I needed to do something, which I then did. I talked to some nice people and got some good information. I drove my car professionally, and had no qualms about volunteering myself when they said, "Okay we need 8 really solid drivers...nobody flaky."
And, apparently, the shots that I'm in (and that the Zoom-zoom is in) will be a part of the series premiere. (TNT, January 26th). I walk right by the two principles just after they try a locked door in a street scene. That's the back of my head in the gray coat and black pants. I know it's all geeky and "Look Ma, I'm on TV!" when I'm just an extra, but I'm not overselling it, you know it's just the back of my head. (The car probably gets more screen time.) You probably ought to watch the show because it looks like it could be a great show.
In short: It was a fantastic work day. Really, it was the best work day I've ever had. I never want to take that for granted. I got home at about 1730, wiped out, but cool.
THURSDAY
Rolled out of bed at 400 again, but saved myself a half hour of sleep, because today I knew that work provided breakfast! Woot. All I had to do was get myself downtown and find the prescribed parking lot (free) and get shuttled to the location. Sooo much easier than Wednesday. This show was Kath & Kim, an NBC adaptation of a popular Australian show. The shooting for the day was at a Roller Derby rink. It was a real roller derby rink, with real roller derby girls playing most of both teams. Needless to say, it promised to be an interesting day.
Trucking will inform my understanding of my new career for awhile, so, get used to it.
The benefit of trucking this morning was the fact that I'm totally comfortable going and searching for a bathroom when I need one, being aware of which bathrooms are okay for me to use, which aren't, and when I find one, not being squeamish about using it, no matter it's condition. So, when they're port-o-johns, I'm cool. Turns out, movie port-os are waaay cooler than port-os that you find at the municipal park. These had electric lights, and running water for the sink and the toilet. Wow.
Back to the shooting. It was a big scene, with plenty of crowd, so there were about 300 extras to contend with. But it was cool, because, apparently, I've learned how to comfortably chat with people I've just met. That's a good skill for working with random people every day of the week.
The first thing we shot was a stunt where the double for Selma Blair gets "railed" and flips over the guard rail, lands on a table and winds up on the floor. So I got paid to watch a TV crew set up and shoot a stunt. It's like the making-of mini-docs on the DVDs, but they're paying me instead of the other way around.
At one point, shooting another part, the AD said, "Ron, glasses off!" to one of the actors. It took me fifteen minutes to realize that "Ron" was comedian Ron White doing a guest star as Kim's father. Am I blowing this stuff for expectant viewers? Suddenly I feel like maybe I shouldn't be giving this info away. Oh, well.
Anyway, I'm still getting used to seeing celebrity types in the flesh. It's a little quirky when you don't have the framed shot telling you who's important. You can be in the same room for like an hour and suddenly go, "Oh, right, hey...it's Ron White!"
The day was an experience in coverage. Coverage is where you shoot stuff from different angles to get different actors saying their lines. In this case it was that, plus getting skating action from a million places. Okay, so, like, twelve places, but still. To make a looong story short, it was a fifteen hour day. We checked in at 645 and checked out at 2300. I found out about two thirds of the way through the day that they had to wrap the episode that day...so it was "get everything or you're screwed" day. Roger dodger.
I found out a lot more about the constitution of a lot of extras. We're back to the "more on that later".
Maybe 40% of extras a attentive, thoughtful, patient and unobtrusive. 60% percent are cranky, entitlement oriented, self-centered, and blank. By blank I mean, empty-headed, unobservant, and under supplied with common sense.
Because of this growing realization, I'm subsequently so glad that I've had a myriad of crappy jobs that provide me with a brilliant appreciation of how freaking awesome it is to get paid to sit, stand, and/or wander around as asked. I mean, holy crap. Easiest job ever. It occurred to me that many of the 60% of wonks to be found there are really interested in doing absolutely nothing with their lives, and this is as close as they can get and still claim to have a job.
Also, with theatre in my training (and blood) I was shocked by the disrespect for props. It was simple prop stuff. a drink per person, and maybe a bag of peanuts. We got a big speech at the top of the day. Grab a prop when you go in, bring it back to the place you got it from when you come back to holding. They even numbered the cups to make it easier. When we wrapped for the night, I brought my energy drink, a cup, two pretzels and a bag of popcorn back simply by policing up the three rows of bleachers around me. Not to mention the number of props that were consumed (edibles) when the little prep speech included the fact that the food props weren't craft service things and they couldn't be replaced.
Final gripe: a fair portion of the 60% don't seem to understand how stupid it is to act as though being asked to do something or wait for something is an imposition. The Entitlement Ethic combined with our social egalitarianism has allowed a lot of people to grow up totally convinced of their own importance. They're not bothered at all that they're huffy about waiting a few minutes to be signed out, or that lunch is ruing behind because the film crew needs to finish shooting a particular segment. The fact that so many people in the world are okay with doing just barely enough to complete the task...sort of...and otherwise do exactly what they want, when they want, with no respect for the real point of the whole day shouldn't be shocking to me, but it is.
It really has to do with the fact that I've been dreaming about being near movies and TV and such for years, and it blows my mind that anybody could be so blind to how unique the opportunity is to work on this stuff.
Only in Hollywood, I guess.
Today was a catch up day, and it was a good one. I got a lot done, felt at ease about living with Alicia and Matt for the first time, and got work for Monday...IN TOWN! It's an NCIS shoot in Valencia, which is a neighborhood of Santa Clarita. I don't even have to get on the freeway to go to work on Monday. Huzzah!
Headshots tomorrow. Hopefully that'll be up tomorrow night.
Happy times! And really, I do mean Happy. I can observe and "complain" a little about silly people...but for the first time in my life, the complaints are there because they're exceptional, not because they're the focus.
Momentous.
WEDNESDAY
First day ever doing anything related to show-making that involved compensation of the Green Cottony Paper variety.
I rolled out of bed at 400 and worked myself through a poached egg/english muffin sandwich, a glass of juice and a mug of coffee. Then I transferred to the bathroom for a shave and a shower. Funny thing: I've been "shaving" with an electric shaver since last year. It's a nice little Norelco model, but I never had the light or the mirror resource to properly use it. Because of that, I really only shaved when I got in a shower, which was, at best, every three days. By that time, I'd have solid beard seeded, and I had to use the trimmer tool first, and then shave. Since I got home, I've been back to the old Mach 3, and I've noticed that I must shave daily, or razing just hurts. This might have been my running problem for the last six years. Don't shave daily, shave, pain, repeat ad nausiem until you don't ever want to shave again. I might just turn it around with this "habit" thing.
Anyway, got out to the car at 505 and busted out for Warner Bros. It's about 25 miles from my house, and my car and I needed to be there by 600. Because the trips aren't multi-hundreds of miles anymore, I haven't really set up the GPS in the car...so it was a little new not having a quick reference for the remaining distance to destination. By that token, I got a nervous about arriving on time. Generally speaking, I was nervous about everything. First day, find new place, use car on TV show set, use Self on TV show set...all that. I kept my speed under control, and got there in good time.
I pulled up to the Warner Bros. gate at 535 or so. A word about this. Usually, you're not booked with your car. You park the car off site and get shuttled to the shoot. That would have been adventure enough for a first day, but I had to drive myself onto the lot...that I'd never seen...in the dark. And I mean dark. I introduced myself to security rather lamely, saying something affable about how my car and I were here for Trust Me, and he found my name and gave me the little security pass and gave me directions. Here's where the dark part comes in.
I went up three stops and took a left, and then looked for the second left. I was weaving through 5 ton straight trucks jockeying for position to set up for the day, which was cool, I'm used to big vehicles in tight spaces, but that second left was a massive dark hole. Not used to that. I turned and my headlights illuminated a building facade. I realized where I was. They literally gave me driving directions onto Warner's New York/Chicago/large western city street set. Except in a large western city there are usually street lights. Turns out, when the electricians aren't there yet, Warner Brother's street lights aren't on. I pulled off to the side, not really knowing how it worked (and being slightly early, alone and unable to ask). I turned around and got off the set and parked where there was light and went and tried to figure out where to check in. Nobody really knew, because they had other stuff to work on (like, their actual jobs) but they were at least pleasant. I then decided against leaving my car off set, because it was supposed to be on set for the day, so I got back in and parked it behind a bus.
I'll spare you the details on the check in and stand around procedures save a few things. 1) That poached egg sandwich I ate? Yeah, didn't need that. Craft services (what caterers are called in industry parlance) had eggs, french toast, fruit, vegetables, coffee, juice, et cetera laid out neatly in a buffet. Turns out breakfast is included on a show set. Good breakfast. 2) Organized chaos rules the day. If you're uncomfortable in murmuring, semi-confused group settings, please avoid working in Television or Movies.
I volunteered to drive for the day, but just before the driving started, the director decided that he didn't like a yellow cab in the shot, so it left and my car, which somehow was first in line, was asked to move in and park there. Since the car can't drive itself in there, I had to do it. When I got it parked (paralleled in one shot, thank you), I didn't really know what to do, since I was a little unclear on why I'd been bumped up in the first place. (I only figured out the cab-didn't-look-good thing in retrospect.) I thought, at the time, that perhaps they wanted a car to pull out of a space at the top of the shot, and it was me.
Really, no. But we'll get there.
So here's the physical situation: My car is parked against the curb. Two feet from the nose of the car is A Camera, on rails for a short tracking shot that starts shooting basically straight past the whole driver's side of my car (well, Alicia's car, really, but the one I'd brought to the set). In the middle of the street, looking at the action to be shot (looking over the trunk of my car) is B Camera. They still haven't told me to get out of the car, so I'm thinking, "Well, crap! If this is where I'm supposed to be, I'd better come up with something unobtrusive to do so that I don't look like a shmuck just sitting in his car." So I threw my bluetooth in and got ready to have a conversation with somebody and look for something in my bag. They start the first rehearsal, and I realize that Tom Cavanagh and Eric McCormack run their action up to the light pole that's right off the gas tank door. Dammit, I'd better sell this phone conversation. (And by sell, I do not mean ham it up. I mean make it as absolutely believable and invisible as possible.)
We did two rehearsals this way.
Then they noticed I was in the car. Dave (nice guy, our wrangler for the day...don't know what his official title was) suddenly pops the passenger door open and says, "'Scuse me, why are you still in the car?"
I say, "Sorry, nobody told me to get out."
"Okay, well, get out and join us, won't you?"
"Sure thing!" Out of the car I come, as swiftly as possible. In retrospect, I realize there's no way I should have thought I was supposed to stay in the car. They cannot, will not, and do not expect extras to function that close to the camera for longer than a few seconds. However, it being two hours into my first day, I had no clue.
The rest of the day was much less confusing. I got hang of the framework of what extras are expected to do, and it made easy sense from then on.
I learned so much, it's really impossible to give it a summary description, so I'll have to stick to aphorisms that represent the day.
I learned that I'm way more committed to "showing up" for the entire work day than most people. I watch a number of my fellow extras read books and text and make phone calls between takes...and get visibly irritated when we were rolling (ready to go to action) and then had to cut. It was a, "You made me put down my book for nothing?" kind of thing. More on this at the end.
I learned that people suck at paying attention.
I learned that some extras think good background action is totally unintelligible gesturing that would get most people committed to mental institutions if it were seen anywhere but on set.
I learned that when you're shooting a scene in which a commercial is being shot (as part of the story), some extras just can't quite connect all the dots. "Is that the real cut or the fake cut?"
I learned that many extras are content to sit in holding all day and avoid actually working on the set.
I worked, by contrast, pretty much all day...principally because when they asked me to do something, I did it.
The day was a little tiring. My stamina is still set to "Sit on your ass". It was chilly in the morning and then sunny and warm for the rest of the day (I was wearing a winter jacket). I was wearing my dress shoes for the first time in almost two years.
But: The food was fantastic, and free. I was able to stand where I was supposed to stand, and just shamelessly stare at the process of shooting until I needed to do something, which I then did. I talked to some nice people and got some good information. I drove my car professionally, and had no qualms about volunteering myself when they said, "Okay we need 8 really solid drivers...nobody flaky."
And, apparently, the shots that I'm in (and that the Zoom-zoom is in) will be a part of the series premiere. (TNT, January 26th). I walk right by the two principles just after they try a locked door in a street scene. That's the back of my head in the gray coat and black pants. I know it's all geeky and "Look Ma, I'm on TV!" when I'm just an extra, but I'm not overselling it, you know it's just the back of my head. (The car probably gets more screen time.) You probably ought to watch the show because it looks like it could be a great show.
In short: It was a fantastic work day. Really, it was the best work day I've ever had. I never want to take that for granted. I got home at about 1730, wiped out, but cool.
THURSDAY
Rolled out of bed at 400 again, but saved myself a half hour of sleep, because today I knew that work provided breakfast! Woot. All I had to do was get myself downtown and find the prescribed parking lot (free) and get shuttled to the location. Sooo much easier than Wednesday. This show was Kath & Kim, an NBC adaptation of a popular Australian show. The shooting for the day was at a Roller Derby rink. It was a real roller derby rink, with real roller derby girls playing most of both teams. Needless to say, it promised to be an interesting day.
Trucking will inform my understanding of my new career for awhile, so, get used to it.
The benefit of trucking this morning was the fact that I'm totally comfortable going and searching for a bathroom when I need one, being aware of which bathrooms are okay for me to use, which aren't, and when I find one, not being squeamish about using it, no matter it's condition. So, when they're port-o-johns, I'm cool. Turns out, movie port-os are waaay cooler than port-os that you find at the municipal park. These had electric lights, and running water for the sink and the toilet. Wow.
Back to the shooting. It was a big scene, with plenty of crowd, so there were about 300 extras to contend with. But it was cool, because, apparently, I've learned how to comfortably chat with people I've just met. That's a good skill for working with random people every day of the week.
The first thing we shot was a stunt where the double for Selma Blair gets "railed" and flips over the guard rail, lands on a table and winds up on the floor. So I got paid to watch a TV crew set up and shoot a stunt. It's like the making-of mini-docs on the DVDs, but they're paying me instead of the other way around.
At one point, shooting another part, the AD said, "Ron, glasses off!" to one of the actors. It took me fifteen minutes to realize that "Ron" was comedian Ron White doing a guest star as Kim's father. Am I blowing this stuff for expectant viewers? Suddenly I feel like maybe I shouldn't be giving this info away. Oh, well.
Anyway, I'm still getting used to seeing celebrity types in the flesh. It's a little quirky when you don't have the framed shot telling you who's important. You can be in the same room for like an hour and suddenly go, "Oh, right, hey...it's Ron White!"
The day was an experience in coverage. Coverage is where you shoot stuff from different angles to get different actors saying their lines. In this case it was that, plus getting skating action from a million places. Okay, so, like, twelve places, but still. To make a looong story short, it was a fifteen hour day. We checked in at 645 and checked out at 2300. I found out about two thirds of the way through the day that they had to wrap the episode that day...so it was "get everything or you're screwed" day. Roger dodger.
I found out a lot more about the constitution of a lot of extras. We're back to the "more on that later".
Maybe 40% of extras a attentive, thoughtful, patient and unobtrusive. 60% percent are cranky, entitlement oriented, self-centered, and blank. By blank I mean, empty-headed, unobservant, and under supplied with common sense.
Because of this growing realization, I'm subsequently so glad that I've had a myriad of crappy jobs that provide me with a brilliant appreciation of how freaking awesome it is to get paid to sit, stand, and/or wander around as asked. I mean, holy crap. Easiest job ever. It occurred to me that many of the 60% of wonks to be found there are really interested in doing absolutely nothing with their lives, and this is as close as they can get and still claim to have a job.
Also, with theatre in my training (and blood) I was shocked by the disrespect for props. It was simple prop stuff. a drink per person, and maybe a bag of peanuts. We got a big speech at the top of the day. Grab a prop when you go in, bring it back to the place you got it from when you come back to holding. They even numbered the cups to make it easier. When we wrapped for the night, I brought my energy drink, a cup, two pretzels and a bag of popcorn back simply by policing up the three rows of bleachers around me. Not to mention the number of props that were consumed (edibles) when the little prep speech included the fact that the food props weren't craft service things and they couldn't be replaced.
Final gripe: a fair portion of the 60% don't seem to understand how stupid it is to act as though being asked to do something or wait for something is an imposition. The Entitlement Ethic combined with our social egalitarianism has allowed a lot of people to grow up totally convinced of their own importance. They're not bothered at all that they're huffy about waiting a few minutes to be signed out, or that lunch is ruing behind because the film crew needs to finish shooting a particular segment. The fact that so many people in the world are okay with doing just barely enough to complete the task...sort of...and otherwise do exactly what they want, when they want, with no respect for the real point of the whole day shouldn't be shocking to me, but it is.
It really has to do with the fact that I've been dreaming about being near movies and TV and such for years, and it blows my mind that anybody could be so blind to how unique the opportunity is to work on this stuff.
Only in Hollywood, I guess.
Today was a catch up day, and it was a good one. I got a lot done, felt at ease about living with Alicia and Matt for the first time, and got work for Monday...IN TOWN! It's an NCIS shoot in Valencia, which is a neighborhood of Santa Clarita. I don't even have to get on the freeway to go to work on Monday. Huzzah!
Headshots tomorrow. Hopefully that'll be up tomorrow night.
Happy times! And really, I do mean Happy. I can observe and "complain" a little about silly people...but for the first time in my life, the complaints are there because they're exceptional, not because they're the focus.
Momentous.
Tuesday, January 6, 2009
The First Moves
Whirlwind.
It's been a week since I moved back into my apartment. I've only been home to visit two or three days a month since June of '07, so it was really like moving in for the first time. Everything needed to find a home, and then get rearranged for efficiency. That is not a small or simple process, as you might know or imagine, especially when one is folding one's belongings into a house that has been set up and running like a (mostly) well-oiled machine for a year and a half.
I knew I needed to do a few things beside just move in so that we might not be broke at the end of the month. I needed to take a couple of days to recover from the 7 day per week schedule of an over-the-road driver. I needed to get registered for Central Casting (a background talent service). I needed to find a headshot photographer I liked...it's been years since I last had headshots, and while those were awesome, and free (more awesome), they don't look like me anymore. I needed to generally get the ball rolling on finding work and getting paid.
Having spent a year and a half driving...behind the wheel 8 or 9 hours a day (and then some) with most of that time pretty much available for idle thought...I've had plenty of opportunities for self-examination. Extra work or no extra work? Is that limiting? Can we afford all of the start-up costs with three people and no income? What are good places to look for auditions? for headshots? for Other Work? What kinds of Other Work should I even look for? Will there be any auditions? Can I even get cast?
You get the picture.
This is where the "Step into Traffic" mantra comes from. There are a hundred thousand variables in a life in the film industry, and you can control one of them.
Will you show up?
Okay, two of them.
Will you show up? Will you keep showing up?
Will you step into the stream of traffic in order to have a chance at getting clobbered by the opportunities when they go whizzing by?
This idea is especially applicable if I believe in what I supposedly believe: a God that's looking out for my best interests, and that's actively involved in the world. If that's so, what is the loving point of worrying these variables until they're worn through? If it is to happen, it'll happen. If it's not, it won't. If it doesn't work out, I still have a future, it's just somewhere else. When I can embrace that, anxiety fades away.
So I had stuff to do. But I knew I needed to pace myself, because even with a fresh understanding of Who's in control, I know that I get freaky and start to focus on the what-ifs. I've launched enough what-ifs into the air in the last months to give the FAA an ulcer.
I got registered at Central yesterday. It was no sweat to find (trucking skills paid off), no sweat to park (a small car and trucking skills paid off), and really, no skin off my nose to register. To invoke Dr. Allen (my mentor at University), it really helped to be a person. I realized what 18 months on the road has done for me.
This ain't my first rodeo anymore. A short drive down to Burbank in a small car is pocket change compared to a 650 mile day in a 72 foot truck. A new and different place is just a new and different place. It's not scary anymore. I know how to pay attention; how to glean information by keeping my eyes and ears open. I feel comfortable waiting in lines. I've got hours of patience now instead of minutes. I know how to ask questions and be communicative, and how to be at ease in idle conversation with people I don't know.
What I don't have yet, however, is a good way of monitoring my stress levels. While I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm freaking out because I doubt anything will work out, I've got a massive blind spot when it comes to to the stress created by believing that things might actually go well.
I got home from the registration, and I promptly crashed out, taking a three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't all loaded down with fear, I was tapped out from feeling like things were looking up and that I was doing everything I knew how to do. What a flipping concept! It was unexpected moments like this that were part of the calculus for slowing myself down a little bit.
When I emerged from my sleepy fog, the schedule for the day was shot...but it was okay, because I had some wiggle room. Instead of emailing the photographer I had found, I saved it for this morning and just signed up for access to Backstage. I think I can get good use out of the boards in order to find work, but of course, that remains to be seen.
I took a side trip to Babies R Us for a high chair for Matt. It won't be long before he's eating solids, and Alicia wanted to get him up at the table so that he can get used to the family table idea. It's nice to tool around town now and feel like I really live here for the first time. I'm not too familiar with Santa Clarita, given that I only lived here full time for a month before packing up and shipping out for OTR driving. It's a strange feeling to run these errands and not have the reality of a reload hanging over the whole thing. It makes California a little bit more of an attractive place to live. I guess we'll see how I feel about that in July, when I can't just drive away from the triple digit temps.
Today I rolled out of bed at 630 or so, a few minutes after Alicia, who was a few minutes after Matt. I spent the morning poking around online for job possibilities and getting the hang of the Backstage User Interface. I also sent an email to the photographer. I think I'll like him. In less than an hour and a half we'd sent four emails back and forth and I was booked for Saturday. Huzzah.
A note for the theatrically illiterate: headshots are basically the key to auditions. You go in and read for a casting director, and you leave a headshot behind. If the casting director (who sees a lot of people on any given project) can't go, "Aha! That's that guy!" Well, you're never going to get work, cowboy. So headshots are the currency of the industry, and if they don't look good or can't represent you accurately, it's really almost as if you didn't have them at all.
Then came the check-in with Central. You call a number and listen to recorded messages, checking to see if you physically fit the description given for the extras needed. If you do, you call another number for that show (for the purposes of the blog, show=TV show, Film, or Commercial) and the game begins. Said game is the process of having the patience to redial the number for an hour or more trying to get it to ring instead of getting a busy signal. It's really the only way it can work. Remember that line about hours of patience? Yeah, bonus.
While I was battling the "doot-doot-doot" in my ear, I took the time to reorganize our DVD collection, which was significantly fattened by Christmas gifts. We also finally purchased a DVD player (I know, ridiculous) so that we can play DVDs on our really cool, really inexpensive TV. We're gradually knitting together a life from little pieces. It's like a mammoth human quilt.
Somewhere around the letter M in the DVD alphabetizing, the line actually rang through. There's some adrenaline for you. Short version: I got lined up for Kath & Kim on Thursday.
The epicosity of this has not fully sunk in.
I gigged out while I digested the fact that I was within days of being paid (however little) to work on a TV show, and I thought, "Well, call back again, maybe there's something new for tomorrow," fully expecting there to be nothing.
Turns out, in the hour of redialing, there was something new. I called on that one for about twenty minutes and got set up for a shoot tomorrow on Trust Me. Alicia's spiffy little Zoom-Zoom car got me that one.
We have passed epic and gone plaid. I know I'm mixing references here, but an event of such mind-blowing immensity can usually only be encapsulated by mixed fragments of thought.
Without weeks of pain, I'm being paid to work in Hollywood. My dimmest dreams are suddenly an arm's reach away.
Granted, this is two days of work, not a running gig, or a speaking role, or a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Membership...but there's a physical reality to it. I've never been paid to do anything theatre, film, or otherwise art related in my entire life. That ends tomorrow.
For a final note: there's irony in the fact that tomorrow, on my first Hollywood job, I'll spend the whole day driving.
It's been a week since I moved back into my apartment. I've only been home to visit two or three days a month since June of '07, so it was really like moving in for the first time. Everything needed to find a home, and then get rearranged for efficiency. That is not a small or simple process, as you might know or imagine, especially when one is folding one's belongings into a house that has been set up and running like a (mostly) well-oiled machine for a year and a half.
I knew I needed to do a few things beside just move in so that we might not be broke at the end of the month. I needed to take a couple of days to recover from the 7 day per week schedule of an over-the-road driver. I needed to get registered for Central Casting (a background talent service). I needed to find a headshot photographer I liked...it's been years since I last had headshots, and while those were awesome, and free (more awesome), they don't look like me anymore. I needed to generally get the ball rolling on finding work and getting paid.
Having spent a year and a half driving...behind the wheel 8 or 9 hours a day (and then some) with most of that time pretty much available for idle thought...I've had plenty of opportunities for self-examination. Extra work or no extra work? Is that limiting? Can we afford all of the start-up costs with three people and no income? What are good places to look for auditions? for headshots? for Other Work? What kinds of Other Work should I even look for? Will there be any auditions? Can I even get cast?
You get the picture.
This is where the "Step into Traffic" mantra comes from. There are a hundred thousand variables in a life in the film industry, and you can control one of them.
Will you show up?
Okay, two of them.
Will you show up? Will you keep showing up?
Will you step into the stream of traffic in order to have a chance at getting clobbered by the opportunities when they go whizzing by?
This idea is especially applicable if I believe in what I supposedly believe: a God that's looking out for my best interests, and that's actively involved in the world. If that's so, what is the loving point of worrying these variables until they're worn through? If it is to happen, it'll happen. If it's not, it won't. If it doesn't work out, I still have a future, it's just somewhere else. When I can embrace that, anxiety fades away.
So I had stuff to do. But I knew I needed to pace myself, because even with a fresh understanding of Who's in control, I know that I get freaky and start to focus on the what-ifs. I've launched enough what-ifs into the air in the last months to give the FAA an ulcer.
I got registered at Central yesterday. It was no sweat to find (trucking skills paid off), no sweat to park (a small car and trucking skills paid off), and really, no skin off my nose to register. To invoke Dr. Allen (my mentor at University), it really helped to be a person. I realized what 18 months on the road has done for me.
This ain't my first rodeo anymore. A short drive down to Burbank in a small car is pocket change compared to a 650 mile day in a 72 foot truck. A new and different place is just a new and different place. It's not scary anymore. I know how to pay attention; how to glean information by keeping my eyes and ears open. I feel comfortable waiting in lines. I've got hours of patience now instead of minutes. I know how to ask questions and be communicative, and how to be at ease in idle conversation with people I don't know.
What I don't have yet, however, is a good way of monitoring my stress levels. While I've gotten pretty good at noticing when I'm freaking out because I doubt anything will work out, I've got a massive blind spot when it comes to to the stress created by believing that things might actually go well.
I got home from the registration, and I promptly crashed out, taking a three hour nap in the middle of the afternoon. I wasn't all loaded down with fear, I was tapped out from feeling like things were looking up and that I was doing everything I knew how to do. What a flipping concept! It was unexpected moments like this that were part of the calculus for slowing myself down a little bit.
When I emerged from my sleepy fog, the schedule for the day was shot...but it was okay, because I had some wiggle room. Instead of emailing the photographer I had found, I saved it for this morning and just signed up for access to Backstage. I think I can get good use out of the boards in order to find work, but of course, that remains to be seen.
I took a side trip to Babies R Us for a high chair for Matt. It won't be long before he's eating solids, and Alicia wanted to get him up at the table so that he can get used to the family table idea. It's nice to tool around town now and feel like I really live here for the first time. I'm not too familiar with Santa Clarita, given that I only lived here full time for a month before packing up and shipping out for OTR driving. It's a strange feeling to run these errands and not have the reality of a reload hanging over the whole thing. It makes California a little bit more of an attractive place to live. I guess we'll see how I feel about that in July, when I can't just drive away from the triple digit temps.
Today I rolled out of bed at 630 or so, a few minutes after Alicia, who was a few minutes after Matt. I spent the morning poking around online for job possibilities and getting the hang of the Backstage User Interface. I also sent an email to the photographer. I think I'll like him. In less than an hour and a half we'd sent four emails back and forth and I was booked for Saturday. Huzzah.
A note for the theatrically illiterate: headshots are basically the key to auditions. You go in and read for a casting director, and you leave a headshot behind. If the casting director (who sees a lot of people on any given project) can't go, "Aha! That's that guy!" Well, you're never going to get work, cowboy. So headshots are the currency of the industry, and if they don't look good or can't represent you accurately, it's really almost as if you didn't have them at all.
Then came the check-in with Central. You call a number and listen to recorded messages, checking to see if you physically fit the description given for the extras needed. If you do, you call another number for that show (for the purposes of the blog, show=TV show, Film, or Commercial) and the game begins. Said game is the process of having the patience to redial the number for an hour or more trying to get it to ring instead of getting a busy signal. It's really the only way it can work. Remember that line about hours of patience? Yeah, bonus.
While I was battling the "doot-doot-doot" in my ear, I took the time to reorganize our DVD collection, which was significantly fattened by Christmas gifts. We also finally purchased a DVD player (I know, ridiculous) so that we can play DVDs on our really cool, really inexpensive TV. We're gradually knitting together a life from little pieces. It's like a mammoth human quilt.
Somewhere around the letter M in the DVD alphabetizing, the line actually rang through. There's some adrenaline for you. Short version: I got lined up for Kath & Kim on Thursday.
The epicosity of this has not fully sunk in.
I gigged out while I digested the fact that I was within days of being paid (however little) to work on a TV show, and I thought, "Well, call back again, maybe there's something new for tomorrow," fully expecting there to be nothing.
Turns out, in the hour of redialing, there was something new. I called on that one for about twenty minutes and got set up for a shoot tomorrow on Trust Me. Alicia's spiffy little Zoom-Zoom car got me that one.
We have passed epic and gone plaid. I know I'm mixing references here, but an event of such mind-blowing immensity can usually only be encapsulated by mixed fragments of thought.
Without weeks of pain, I'm being paid to work in Hollywood. My dimmest dreams are suddenly an arm's reach away.
Granted, this is two days of work, not a running gig, or a speaking role, or a SAG (Screen Actors Guild) Membership...but there's a physical reality to it. I've never been paid to do anything theatre, film, or otherwise art related in my entire life. That ends tomorrow.
For a final note: there's irony in the fact that tomorrow, on my first Hollywood job, I'll spend the whole day driving.
The Opening Salvo
Back into the blogosphere, a few pounds lighter and a few years older. I quit updating my old blog in December of '06.
Here we are, one recession later and seven states to the left.
My wife (Alicia) and I moved down to the Sunny South(land) in May of 2007. We tucked ourselves nicely into a little one bedroom dealy in the low foothills just a few minutes north of Los Angeles (depending on traffic of course).
I knew I wanted to act, but wasn't ready...for a number of reasons that will probably be enumerated, eviscerated, masticated and generally hashed out in the body of this new blog-tastic experiment.
So, for the last 18 months, I've been Mark the Trucker...Sometimes happily, sometimes very, very unhappily. I drove a semi-truck for a major company all across the map, hauling everything from firewood to recycled plastic pellets.
In February we got a little surprise. We found out a baby was coming! Whoops!
Little Matthew was born a strapping 8 pound 1 ounce lad on the 10th of October. He's trying not to go to sleep as I write.
On the 31st of December I checked my battered old Century Class Freightliner into the headquarters yard in Salt Lake City, Utah, gave back the keys, and was free of my obligations to the company. Though I booked an economy car for the drive home, God showed a sense of humor. They gave me a brand new Sebring Convertible. Seems to follow that a convertible isn't the most attractive vehicle for the 30 degree mean streets of Salt Lake. Better for the sunny climes of Burbank, where I turned it in.
We lumped New Year's and Christmas into one happy ol' day, and now I think we're all caught up.
Thus cometh the days of Mark the Actor.
This will be interesting, if nothing else.
Here we are, one recession later and seven states to the left.
My wife (Alicia) and I moved down to the Sunny South(land) in May of 2007. We tucked ourselves nicely into a little one bedroom dealy in the low foothills just a few minutes north of Los Angeles (depending on traffic of course).
I knew I wanted to act, but wasn't ready...for a number of reasons that will probably be enumerated, eviscerated, masticated and generally hashed out in the body of this new blog-tastic experiment.
So, for the last 18 months, I've been Mark the Trucker...Sometimes happily, sometimes very, very unhappily. I drove a semi-truck for a major company all across the map, hauling everything from firewood to recycled plastic pellets.
In February we got a little surprise. We found out a baby was coming! Whoops!
Little Matthew was born a strapping 8 pound 1 ounce lad on the 10th of October. He's trying not to go to sleep as I write.
On the 31st of December I checked my battered old Century Class Freightliner into the headquarters yard in Salt Lake City, Utah, gave back the keys, and was free of my obligations to the company. Though I booked an economy car for the drive home, God showed a sense of humor. They gave me a brand new Sebring Convertible. Seems to follow that a convertible isn't the most attractive vehicle for the 30 degree mean streets of Salt Lake. Better for the sunny climes of Burbank, where I turned it in.
We lumped New Year's and Christmas into one happy ol' day, and now I think we're all caught up.
Thus cometh the days of Mark the Actor.
This will be interesting, if nothing else.
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