18 Emails and Counting

You may have noticed I haven't updated my blog in almost a year.  I'll be honest, the impetus to write hasn't been there.  It's not just that I haven't written any blogs, it's that I haven't written anything.

I've been stuck, unhappy, and uninspired.

But I think that may be changing...  Maybe it would be more accurate to say I hope it's changing.

Rewind to July...(or was it June?) I finally signed up with Central Casting, a sort of agency which casts background actors or "extras" in movies and TV filming in NYC (and LA, but I don't live there, so...).

This New York branch of their company is relatively new at only around 6-7 years old, and it's no wonder they decided to take advantage of this budding market - filming in NYC is suddenly very popular.  Of course there were always the few odd TV shows (all the Law and Order's for instance) and movies which would shoot here, but there has been a definite growth in the last few years.  I routinely walk past productions in my own neighborhood.  And when I looked out my window one night to find a film crew directly across the street from me, I finally decided there were no more excuses.

Now, after I signed up and got my little online profile, it still took me a while to actually book a job.  A combination of my going out of town for vacation, having to work extra at the store because one of the girls was out of town, and my own lack of self-confidence meant that I submitted myself to very few projects.

(Let me explain the process of booking a job: I get 5-15 emails per day regarding productions shooting usually within the next three days.  In the email are descriptions of the types of background actors they are looking for, e.g. upscale bar patrons or hipster pedestrians. If  I think I might fit one of those descriptions, and I'm available on the shoot date, I submit my profile to the casting director.  He or she looks at my profile and decides whether or not I'm what they are looking for and either calls me to book the job, or moves on to the next profile.  If they call me, that's it, I'm booked, and I show up when they say and go where they tell me [more on that later].)

Anyway, I finally booked something, not through the usual method of my submitting, but by Central Casting calling me directly and asking if I would be available for such and such date.  I didn't answer the phone when it rang (I have a bad habit of screening my calls which I should really stop) but lucky for me, they left a message.  At first I was sure I would have to refuse because I believed that I had agreed to work at the store that day while the girls were at trade shows.  But when I rechecked my calendar I found that trade shows were the following week.  I called them back within 10 minutes, my heart racing (I'm not sure if that was due to excitement over the prospect of booking a job, my heart tends to speed up whenever I'm speaking to a stranger over the phone anyway...I think it's an introvert thing) and got the details.

And just like that, I had booked a job.  I was going to be on a TV show!  Sure I'd done this sort of thing when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago, and a wholly different experience; for one thing, I would no longer have my mommy with me on set.  I would be on my own, taking direction, learning about the process of film making, and, yes, acting (even if it was really only for me...we'll see just how much of my "acting" can be seen when the show airs).

I showed up a half hour early and barely awake.  My call time that day was 7:30AM which is very early for me (little did I know, it can be so much worse, the other day I had a 6:15AM call time, blah!).

The shoot was on a Wednesday, and the previous Friday I had gone to the studio to get fitted in three different wardrobe changes.  The show is set in the 80's, so the costumes were pretty awesome, and very bright.

I got into my first "look" as they called it, and then went to hair and makeup.  They asked us to come "camera ready" meaning makeup done, so they didn't do much to me except 80's up my eyeshadow.  Hair, on the other hand, was a much bigger deal.  Most people were getting their tresses teased into enormous side ponytails or voluminous buns.  Since my hair is short, we went with a stylized bangs-straight up and swooped to the side look.  I tried to take a picture when I got home, but they all came out blurry for some reason.  I'll try to pick the least blurry and put it up for you to see.

Once that was done it was off to the prop truck.  I handed over my driver license in exchange for a backpack (I was supposed to be an artsy New School student).

Then came my only moment of panic in the whole day.  Up until then I had been dealing with this new situation really well, in fact, I was having fun!  As an introvert, new situations where I don't know what to expect or what is expected of me can make me really anxious.  Instructions on what to do up until then had been clear, and I could always watch what someone else was doing if I was unsure.  But once I got my prop, I headed in the direction other propped people had gone, (the props came out of a truck a block away from the building or "holding" where we got our wardrobe and made up) which was back toward the holding area, but I didn't know if that's where I should go.  They were setting up to film on the block in front of the holding building, and I didn't want to be in the way, and everyone else seemed to know what they were doing except me.  But this only lasted a moment, and next thing I knew the AD (assistant director) was telling me and another girl to come with him.  We followed him right to the end of the block and told us to walk up the block toward the camera, smiling and miming chatting.  One by one, he gave all the bg actors similar tasks, some in pairs, others by themselves.  When everyone was in place we waited for someone to say "background!", a call that was passed down the block by several crew members, the last of which was stationed on the corner behind us trying to direct pedestrian traffic from walking right through the shot with their iPhones in their hands.  (1980's, remember, no iPhones allowed.)

A side note: New Yorkers are remarkably difficult to corral.  Rather like cats.  Our poor crew man was reduced to chasing after people saying "excuse me, sir!  Sir!  Could you walk on the other side of the street, we're filming...sir?" and having them walk right passed with a stubborn set to their chin and an annoyed look on their face.

Anyway, they called "background" and we walked slowly up the block smiling and chatting quietly to each other (we actually had a lovely conversation about bg acting and what drew both of us to it, and what we were each hoping to get out of it, and how we had come to live in NYC, yadda, yadda, yadda) until we got within a few feet of the camera and began asking each other under our breath where exactly we should go since he hadn't told us how far to walk, and obviously the scene wasn't finished, and then I saw a few other bg people standing in the space that led down the stairs to holding and decided we should turn in there, since it was clearly out of the shot.  I pointed us that direction acting as though we'd been looking for this address and I'd just found it, and we turned in and waited for the scene to be done.  We stood for barely a second when "cut" was yelled, followed by "background reset".  Back we went to the end of the block ready to do it all again.

And that's what I did for my very first scene as a bg actor in NYC.  I walked up the block pretending to be a New School student who had just moved to NYC and was very excited to start classes and trying to find the address of a new friend for my first NYC party, and then I walked down the block as me, trying not to fall over in my heeled boots, or pass out from the intense heat, and very excited to be performing in my first NYC production.

When that was over, we went back into holding to change into our second look, got new props, headed to a new location and started the whole process over again.

It wound up being a high of 94 degrees that day, and we were all dressed as though it was Fall.  By the end, my feet hurt from the heels, I was melting from the heat, and I fell asleep on the subway home because I was so exhausted.  But I loved it.  The next morning I was on my computer first thing, checking my emails to see when I could do it all again.

Not only that, but my mood has improved considerably in other aspects of my life as well.  I had been feeling very burnt out at the store, coming home angry and miserable every day, but now that I've mixed in doing something that I love, I have a much better attitude.

It even made me want to write again.

I don't know if the blog is revived for good, but I have long wanted to push the previous post out of the top spot because it was such a downer and every time I looked at it I felt miserable and lazy and wondered what was wrong with me, and why I couldn't write anymore.

I always thought unhappiness and deep, dark thoughts spurred creativity.  Certainly some of the greatest writers in history had some emotional storage units.  But it doesn't seem to hold true for me.  Not that my storage unit is gone; it's still there, I just don't feel like I have to live in it.

I'm working every day at the store this week because the girls are in Paris, which makes me a little sad because I wish I could be submitting for more projects.  But it's only a week, and, if my inbox is any indication, the busy filming season has barely begun, 18 emails and counting...