Job prospects

So I just signed up for a talent agency. I thought it'd be a good idea while I have all this idle time waiting for call backs from full time jobs, to get a piece of the movie extra pie. I kept seeing ads for talent agencies looking for movie extras on craigslist and thought why not. I looked up as much information as I could find, the best of which is well summarized here. Pretty educational. Most of the terms I already knew, having been a film major.

Anyway, I think it'll be fun. I don't expect to make it a full time thing but a few jobs a week at $100-$300 a day could be some nice pocket change on the side. I'm sure there'll be some down side to it all that I will at some point discover (first guesses: the jobs aren't going to come as fast and it'll be on the low end of the pay scale when they do, it's going to be a lot of standing around and a lot of getting yelled at by the assistant director, or maybe my wardrobe might not be up to par) but how will I know unless I try it, right?

NY 1 news' recruiter finally returned my call this morning. They haven't begun the interviewing process yet so my hassling them was slightly premature. The recruiter told me to email my resume again (this is the third time) and she emailed me right back confirming and saying I should expect to be contacted next week.

So I feel I've been pretty productive today but I'm going to spend another half hour searching the job listings and then call it a day, or even a weekend. All told, I applied for six jobs this week, not including signing up for the casting agency. The other side money makers, submitting stock photos to shutterstock.com and signing up for a profile as a pet sitter on sittercity.com, didn't pan out, or haven't panned out yet (much more optimistic there). Shutterstock rejected every single one of my photos. My problem there was that I submitted photos that weren't taken with stock photography in mind so the composition of most of them was of no commercial value; that and most of them had white balance or lighting problems because, again, since they weren't taken with professional use in mind there were all sorts of photographer rules I was breaking out of laziness. So, I resubmit in 30 days. No big deal. But I might want to try another camera, preferably an SLR with lots of manual overrides, or I might want to spend some time with my camera and submit some of my photos to the online forum to see if I can get some pointers.

As for sittercity, I haven't really paid it much attention this week. But perhaps I'll take a look at it presently.

Being unemployed is not half as bad as I had thought it would be. I thought I would feel useless but I'm already doing everything I can daily to make sure I don't stay this way long. There is a bit of freedom that comes with it. And I don't just mean free time. I mean freedom to go in new directions with my job hunt, freedom to try new things. Years ago, I would never have thought to try being a movie extra; never mind the fact that I was in a city that had no major film work going on. But this sudden survival instinct that kicks in when you don't know where your next paycheck is coming from has really boosted my confidence in myself, purely out of necessity. If I didn't have confidence in myself I would curl up into a ball and do nothing and just wait for the perfect job that I'm fully qualified for to come along.

I can't wait for that though. I don't have the luxury. In fact, I don't have any luxury right now. This isn't even my internet connection.