Trying no to burn out, but having a blast...

The NY 1 music, all the stings and bumps, jazzy underlays and poppy promos, are buzzing through my head as I walk home from an extremely hectic shift. One of several in a row due to a huge server crash that left us all sort of picking up the pieces in media. Granted, I broke up the days with work at CNN and work on a film shoot that, lucky for me, wound up being located in Sunset Park (This means I've worked all four of my freelance jobs, both paid and unpaid, this month). I had a fun time this weekend despite being exhausted and despite it slowly dawning on me that I'm smack dab in the middle of 17 straight days of work, not always at the same job. I have 9 days left now.

The weekend's film shoot was fun for a variety of reasons. I got to work slate so the bulk of my work meant just keeping track of which take we were on and giving a hand with continuity issues whenever I spotted them, occasionally wrangling the kids involved with the shoot and bringing breakfast food both days (at one point I even had to go looking for an open 99 cent store that sold gray socks because our principal actor had forgotten to wear the same socks on day 2). And yes, I said kids. That was half the amusement. There was a flock of kids who came with parents, some of them with release forms already signed, and then there was a bunch of the neighborhood kids who would have been there anyway playing softball that day. So it was kind of neat getting to see and sort of interact with a cross section of the demographic in this neighborhood because, up until now, no one has really ever spoken to me in the neighborhood.

The second day was much better for weather, in fact, it was a perfect day to be outdoors, such that I didn't mind being on my feet for most of the day. Our shoot the first day had consisted of standing in the occasional drizzle, filming the kids playing softball and grabbing a few lines for the narrative here and there. The second day, we were filming a scene with the main character, (a boy named Mustafa, who was playing an Muslim child who was struggling to fit in with boys his age while having to wear the traditional attire), where he meets a young girl playing hop scotch and she tries to teach him the game. We spent the better part of the day trying to get lines of them meeting and interacting on two different days. The principal female character had her mom and older sister hanging out with us most of the time helping out as well, saying lines from off camera or shading the camera lens when the sunlight changed direction. The older sister was neat to talk to because she had been in several films as an extra, one of which (a film called the Babysitters), she said a line and managed to get the director to make her a principal and pay her even more for the day. Funny, because that can always go one of two ways; either you get made a principal and get paid more if the director takes to your improvisation, or he/she could kick you off the set. The whole experience of seeing these kids, on both days, interact with the film crew and show an interest in what we were doing made me almost wish that I had heard ahead of time about the movie Patch Adams shooting in Chapel Hill, NC when I was in high school. I had friends then who got into that one. I might have tried out to be an extra had I realized how cool it would have been.

All this time getting to chat with cool people and watch the park visitors come and go all day, I got to stand out in the beautiful weather watching the sun on the bay and the sailboats going by, for eight hours, occasionally clapping the slate and then erasing and jotting the next take on the board. It would have been spectacular, admittedly, if I had been paid as well but, in a way, I was paid. These film shoots with Joel are a great opportunity for networking and each time, I meet more people that I can connect with, not only for potential composing jobs but for other potential film and TV work. The cinematographer yesterday works at another production house that often needs projectionists.

So I certainly didn't waste my weekend, even if I didn't get much sleep and I'm half worried about burning out from all this work. At least the bills will get paid and maybe I'll put some money away. Let's hope. For now, I'll spend all day tomorrow finishing writing and recording the music for George's film and trying to wrap that up. Tomorrow night I go in to NY 1 to help with the primary debate coverage. City politics, oh boy. Good night all.

Hudson River Flicks and The day I almost saw Jennifer Aniston...

Today I was supposed to be an extra in a Jennifer Aniston picture called "The Bounty." I snagged the ad for extras on craigslist probably about 45 minutes after it had been posted and knew that if I hesitated to contact them, then there would be no need to bother. This is, as I've learned, why they post the ad on the day before the actual job. Otherwise, they'd be inundated with emails...well, they probably are anyway, but imagine if they had to sift through several days worth of emails of people wanting to be extras as opposed to just a few hours worth of emails.

Anyway, I went back to steeping the grains for my homebrew and waiting for my friend Mike to show up to help out with the rest of the process, checking back on my yahoo account every once in a while. Somewhere between taking the grains out of the pot and dropping the first dose of hops in the boil, I got an email back from them with a ton of info on the shoot, what I'd need to bring, where it would be, what kind of ID to bring, how to confirm I'd be coming. This is good because it certainly makes them look more legit. At this point, I had the epiphany that this has to be the closest I've been to getting an actual paid background acting gig. I was in. I had an effing number and everything. All I had to do was respond to the email with my name and phone number saying I was legal to work in the US and was non-union. And then, after 10, they wanted me to call the hotline to check in and get info on where to meet the van that would be driving out to Elmont, Queens where they'd be shooting a scene at the racetrack there.

Mike and I got the brew cooled down and pitched the yeast around 4:30pm with very few mishaps (okay, so I did accidentally spill a bit of the beer all over a dish towel, the microwave cart and the floor when I was trying to take a gravity reading before pitching the yeast in). I showed him my new guitar processing software and we messed around with that for a good bit, passing the guitar back and forth. At around 5:30 he headed off and we planned on meeting back up in Chelsea for the last of the Hudson River Flicks outdoor screenings. The movie last night was Pineapple Express.

I figured, when the movie was over, I would call the hotline and check in as they had asked. Hopefully, it would be not too early of a call time and I would be able to get to the van with no problem. Getting to Elmont on my own steam was sure to be a ridiculous adventure without their transportation.

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I used Mike's Blackberry to check my email again, because I hadn't thought to actually write everything down before I left the house, and, since I didn't have a pen with me at the time, I texted the instructions to myself and then saved the phone number in my phone as Jennifer Aniston's. When I called, I was sort of expecting to talk with a human but instead got a pre-recorded run down of the day's events, where to get the van (33rd and 3rd in Manhattan, Dad), what kind of outfits to bring, what colors not to wear, and a whole lot of other stuff that I can't remember right now, because the person on the recording was talking fast, monotone and haphazardly injecting 'um's' in her speech. The first thing that the recording said, unfortunately, was that numbers 160-270 needn't bother showing up because we weren't needed. I was number 258.

I really wanted to be typing this blog about my first experience with background acting in NYC, too. But, regardless, I've finally got a real strategy for getting background work and that I'm sure is a little more legitimate than taking my head shots to another "casting agency." When I called, instead of just dialing option 3, and then dialing 21 like they told me to in the email, I listened to some of the other menu options. This agency apparently casts for Law and Order SVU, and some other movies, Morning Glory included, that I happen to know are in production right now. So they sound pretty legit, and they didn't make me pay to be listed with them. This was an actual gig, unlike the other week when I went into that talent agency WMT casting that turned out to be a scam. So, now I know, the only really good way to get my feet wet doing this is to scour craigslist the day before one of my days off and respond as soon as the ads pop up. There's no use looking a few days in advance. So, now, with this deliberate plan, I think I'm going to implement it next time I have a day off...which may not be for over a week. I work 6am to 2pm tomorrow, have a film shoot on Saturday, 10am to 6pm on Sunday and then, from Monday to Friday, I work 6am to 2pm. If I can survive this, I can do anything...including pay rent.

Anyway, after I hung up the phone from that disappointing recorded phone call, I rejoined Mike and his friend in Vynl, a club/diner/bar on the corner of 15th and 9th Avenue in Chelsea where his friend worked. The menus were all old vinyl ablum covers. The bathroom door had Justin Timberlake's name on it, as though it were his dressing room. Oh, and Pineapple Express was a pretty funny movie. Kind of ridiculous in a way but entertaining despite that. Here are some pics on the pier where they show the movies, that Mike informed us was actually the pier where the Titanic should have docked...oops.

Hudson River Flicks

Another job! and the perils of finding background acting work in the city...

My, how quickly things unfold. The friend whose picture I'll be scoring referred me to a friend of his who works at CNN and told me to contact him regarding freelance work. Wouldn't you know it, half a day after I did that I got a call from this guy's manager, not asking to interview me, but asking me to come in and train as soon as I could. Awesome.

I got the call when I was waiting in line for the audition which turned out to be slightly to moderately lame, depending on what angle you view it from. Upon arriving on the second floor and finding the suite where the casting agency was located, I slid into a small room with a window and a booth, where sat a totally uninterested girl who chatted on her cell phone for a full minute before noticing I was standing there. She asked my name and slid me an application through the hole in the glass and told me to go ahead in. I opened the door into someone who was standing by the door filling his application out against the wall, and subsequently realized how full the room was and that it was not the room but a hallway turned waiting room with seats along each wall and a TV sitting on a stand playing MTV (bad pop music videos). I found a seat among the gaggle of people that mostly ignored me and finished my application, leaving blank my suit size because I didn't know it off the top of my head.

After what seemed like an inordinate amount of time, someone opened the door through which I had come and said, "Yo bounce! They gonna make you pay!" So half the room did just that. I decided I'd stay and one guy sitting across from me mumbled something about at least seeing what they were about. So four of us stayed behind after the room cleared out. Next, the guy comes out who's going to be interviewing us, a pudgy guy with slicked back black hair, simply oozing with every Hollywood cliche you've ever heard of. He's about to call three people in but he stops short when he realizes how the crowd has thinned out. "All right, I just need one person," he says. A minute or two later, he's back and asks for three of us at a time. He sits us down in three stools in front of his desk and asks us each at the same time, "You guys trying to make it in the business? Have you ever done any work like this before? Do you have head shots?" Each question in rapid-fire succession. Dumb looks from our side of the desk and he realizes he should probably ask us each individually if he wants to accurately record our answers. I tell him when he gets around to me that I don't have any experience yet and that I left my head shots home because I didn't have time to reprint any but that I'd bring them tomorrow if I needed to. Then, he starts to go through a list of the projects that they have on a crinkled and stapled together stack of papers pointing rapidly at each one, three to a page, before turning the page before any of us can actually read them. (Some of these films I'd heard of from working at Technicolor and they even had listed the movie that was being shot at NY 1 a few weeks back). After that, he asks me if I can bring in my head shots tomorrow and then, he escorts me out (a different way then I came in), as though I couldn't find the door on my own. A little put out I went on with my day and figured I'd try to get my head shots printed at a Walgreen's and get them to him later that day. I'm still debating it honestly. But I did find this after Googling, "WMT Casting," "NYC," and "scam." Seems to be an even split of disenfranchised naysayers and happy campers.

It sounded in the ad like they had a specific project they were submitting us to but in reality this is just a casting agency and I assume that what that guy meant by, "They make you pay," is that they make you pay to be listed and then maybe they'll call you if a director wants you. Bullshit. I'm already listed for free with another casting agency. If they want to charge me I'm not going to pay them.

Anyway, I left and went down to NY 1 to pick up a copy of the film I'll be scoring for my co worker and I've yet to look at that. I filled the rest of my afternoon with researching whether or not Walgreen's still had my head shots on their website from when I uploaded them a month or so ago and eating lunch in Union Square. A family of French tourists sat down next to me on the benches as they argued in French about where they were going to go next. I offered up my seat so they could all sit together and the lady said, "Merci," forgetting she was in New York, I guess and I said back, "Je vous en prie." It was a nice day in the park all around despite the bleeding heart guy who stopped me on the street in front of the old Virgin Superstore to make me feel bad about not being able to donate $20 to starving children in Nicaragua or wherever. I promptly left Union Square and walked down Broadway, intending to catch the D at Broadway Lafayette, and then I remembered that the Grace Church on Broadway has organ concerts during the week and it's usually Bach or something Baroque. Being a sucker for free live music of any kind, I stopped in to rest my feet a bit and meditate. After that I shot back to Brooklyn to write this blog and try to figure out what else to do with my day off.

I need to make a list. Half of me doesn't want to do anything else for the rest of the day but I need to be semi productive. Even though I feel like rewarding myself with a laid back evening for snagging another job, however hapless it may have been. Half of me just wants to take these days off and really enjoy them since I worked a lot earlier this month and just finished a seven day stint at NY 1. And I kind of have, Coney Island was nice and even though I had the "audition" this morning I had a laid back afternoon for the most part. I am also going upstate to visit my aunt and uncle on Sunday through Tuesday, about which I am very excited. So that'll be nice. Meanwhile, I have a movie from Netflix to watch tonight and a monstrous hunger that needs to be satiated somehow.

For now, a new idea I've had, to put up a playlist of what I've been listening to every once in a while:

End of July