booked, worked, stoked.
I know that I talk about how busy things have been but one has to admit–it must be a busy time indeed if I can book and work two spots since I last updated this thing.
I am still not sure what I can share, but suffice to say, once the spots go live, I will get videos and put them on my site.
While the first spot was really fun (I got to work with my friend Michele and do a scene with her brother Lee) it was much a much more basic day of work than the second job, which was easily the most complex acting I have ever done, by far. You know those “making of” documentaries where the actor sits in makeup chair and talks about spending hours and hours getting stuff done to his or her face? I am proud to say that I am able to make the same “complaints”. The spot involved me going from clean shaven to basically completely covered by hair during the scene, so I had to get several different appliances put on my face, trimmed up, styled, approved and finalized...over and over again. I’ll post the end results when the spot airs.
The commercial (which will be for ComCast and be similar to the ones you can see here) was directed by a really talented guy by name of Mike Maguire whose work I have seen before and really enjoyed, so it was really cool to get a chance to work with him.
But I am getting ahead of myself. When I wrote about “how it works” I actually referred to this spot a few times. The way I got on the job was really random. First, I had the script for the spot the night before, so I had it ready when I went into audition. But instead of being about some guys that end up dealing with hair, the one I was auditioning for featured some guys dealing with rats. Real rats, the kind that crap on you during your first audition with them. I did the audition, handled the rats (which I had never done before) and felt the whole thing went pretty well. Which it did--I ended up getting called back.
When I got to the callback, I was all set to deal with the rats, but for some reason was told to read for the one that deal with hair–the one I had been called for in the first place. The audition was really, really crowded since they were casting three commercials, each with several people in them. So, I was going to read with this one guy and then this girl showed up and then she was going to read with someone else, but then she was paired with us and we kinda worked on the scene a bit, but we were so cramped (we were all in a hallway near the bathrooms, there had to be 20-30 people just standing around, waiting) that we just kind worked on it, then sat around. We figured out which parts we would do (there were two guys and a girl), read it, talked a bit, then just...waited.
Once we got into the room, a guy who turned out to be the director instantly gave me the role I hadn’t really prepared (of course) and walked us through it. First thing he told me was to bring down the reactions; at one point he said, “You do that kind of thing you are going straight out that door!” We went through it a bunch of times, it felt like almost 10 minutes (probably only half that!) with him constantly making changes and corrections, which was both fun and unnerving. I thought I had done well (I could hear the agency folks laughing at some of my lines) and the director told me “Mike, very funny stuff,” as I left (or something to that effect), but still, I wasn’t sure if I would get the spot or not. Happily, I got a call the next day saying I was on avail, and the morning after that, I got a call telling me I got the spot! What’s great is that all three of us were cast together; Mike told us later that when we left the room, he turned around to the producers and the agency and remarked, “Well, we just lucked out on that one, we found our cast!” And yes, it is really nice to hear that kind of thing.
There is actually no better feeling than looking forward to a gig, and this was no different. This was more complicated because of the special effects and I was required to to an FX shop to deal with all the hair and makeup that would be used on the actual day. It wasn’t difficult, by any means, to sit there and get stuff glued onto my face, but it was really hard to get the glue and the makeup off! It was a lot of fun to hang out in this little warehouse and look at all these robots and models and masks and props. Definitely a childhood dream came true, being able to hang out in a place like that and be part of the work, not just visiting or dropping something off. I mean, I got paid to hang out all day with special effects people, asking them questions about other projects they had worked on, how they made this kind of robot or how one could even mold an 8’ tall Statue of Liberty head. It was awesome, no doubt.
As the day of the shoot drew near, I actually started getting kind of nervous. I was excited, of course, but I had the most lines and my character kind of drives the action throughout the piece. If I screwed up, if I was not professional, if I wasn’t able to hit my marks and perform at least as well as I did on the audition, this would probably be my last job. While I have been in other commercials, the work I was doing now was going to be scrutinized much more carefully and I honestly just had not been in that situation before.
This was a different job for me because this time it was going to be filmed on a stage in Universal Studios, as opposed to on location. When I walked through the doors, I was really just in heaven, I must admit. There was the set that we were going to be using and it looked awesome. I mean, when you walk onto the stage, all you see are the back walls of the main set pieces, but when walk inside, you are instantly transported to this high tech lab. I guess working on a show like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica would be similar, lots of sets in a huge studio. I was surprised, though, to see the areas all around the sets so crowded. There were be a series of tables for the production staff, a little hair and makeup corner, lots of props and set pieces along one wall and even a very nice little lounge area for the producers and the ad agency folks, where they could sit on cofy sofas and read fashion magazines or use their MacBooks (100% Mac environment, by the way) while they watched the video monitors of what was going on during the actual filming. Again, this was all very new to me, so I was quite thrilled. I love being on a set of any kind (very few places I would rather be) and this was just so interesting and I was just relieved that I actually finally made it here.
So, without too much fanfare, we started working once we Sean and I got into costume and were finished with our makeup. We started filming around 7:30 in the morning and broke for lunch at 1:30 or so, and I was on my feet the entire time on shoes that I had bought several years ago for a play I did in New York–I really need new ones– and both Sean and I were getting really tired. It may not sound like you are doing all that much, you walk to a certain point, say a line, repeat many, many times (but differently, or perhaps, the same), but it does take a lot of energy to make it seem that each time you do it is the first time. Mike’s quite an active director, he would leave the camera on and just make you go through the lines over and over again without saying “cut” so it was really free form and quite a bit of fun.
As you have probably seen, when one is acting in front of the camera, the actor is working within the confines of the shot, but there are tons of things happening all around you that the camera is not picking up: there must have been about 15 people sitting around and watching us, other people were scribbling down notes, others were working on hair pieces, etc, and this was just in the immediate vicinity of the shot itself! So, while you officially working for an audience of one--the camera--there are a lot of other people in the room watching you as well. There were quite a few takes when I had to react to someone who wasn’t there at all, just a piece of tape on the far wall. I mean, none of this is particularly surprising, but again, it is one thing to know about something and another thing to actually experience it. But I do remember muttering to Sean as we approached lunch, “Am I actually getting tired? I mean, I have been wanting to do this for the vast majority of my life, how could I be getting tired?”
There are lots of little details here and there that come to mind that I will just list here:
- one of the extras came up to me during lunch and asked me if I was “that guy on Ed” (Thomas Cavanagh) I told him I was not but I guess I must really look like him. It was really kind of odd, I must admit, to be a principal and not an extra (I got my SAG card by doing some commercial extra work). I mean, I just never met any of the extras before we started shooting, they just appeared once we got ready for the shot to go. I thought perhaps we would get introduced (our characters worked together, right?) but that never happened...it was just interesting to be on the other side.
- did you know you could get little printouts from the video feed during the shot? Well, you can--Brooke asked for one toward the end of the shoot from the video guy. Totally cool.
- While the camera is shooting film, there is also a video camera filming what the camera sees so the producers, agency people and everyone else can watch what is going on, which is how you get those printouts in the first place
- there were these storyboards propped up near the agency/producer’s lounge and in the sketches, the guy who was me actually looked like me! It was like I was in a comic book or something (the artist uses the actor’s headshots as a model for his drawings). Now that was different--having someone I don’t even know drawing me doing all these crazy things. Very, very cool.
The whole shoot was very fun and went very smoothly. Mike took me through my paces, I gotta say. He gave me all kinds of characters to play, all these different line readings (as well as totally different lines) and I just kept up with him as best as I could. It was a blast. There was even one point where he had given such a hilarious suggestion to Sean that I actually just couldn’t hold it together during the take--I just burst out laughing and had to stop. I never though I would be doing that, either, but everyone laughed and it was more than okay. Seriously, I tried to keep it in but I just couldn’t help it!
Finally, around 6:30, we did a take, did another one, and then, all of sudden, we hear “That’s a wrap!” and suddenly--it’s over. The first AD ran up to us and shook our hands, thanked us, the Mike came by and did the same thing and the we were shuttled over to makeup and getting our faces back. Literally within 10 minutes I would say 90% of the people were out of there, on the roads getting home. It was really amazing. I was able to talk to a few folks as I was filling out my paperwork (and got some very, very nice feedback, I will admit), and was able to thank the director as he was running to his car--I told him this was my first “big” spot and he was like, “Really??” which was quite nice.
And then, 13.5 hours after I had arrived, I was back in my car, covered in glue, sitting there, realizing that my work was done. All of that time all of that craziness, it all lead up to this day and now this day was over. It was a bit sad, but I was mostly thrilled because, honestly, the day could not have gone better, both personally and professionally. It went the way I, well, fantasized about my first job going, both in terms of the work I did and the reactions I got from the people who brought me on board and who were working with me. It was awesome, just awesome.
And, of course, as I was driving home, I got a call from my agent--I had an audition the next day for another commercial!
More soon...
Monday, April 2, 2007