In the meantime, I've started "recruiting" people who are registering (or re-registering, as the case may be) for background work at Central Casting, to join my calling service, which is essentially the background actor's "agent" - someone who helps find work on a daily basis, and a service for which one pays a modest monthly fee.
I love the film industry but I have always hated having to market my (obvious) skills for any of the work I've been asked to do. If I could find an agent to book my Script Supervision or Assistant Director gigs, I would pay for that service in a heartbeat. As it is, I pay my calling service to find background acting gigs for me. Even with my schedule at the dance studio, I've maintained my ties with the calling service, because somehow I must have known all along that I'd find a way to get back to it.
So what I've been doing since last week is talking to folks who are waiting to sign up at Central, and handing out flyers to the youngish, hipster-looking or professional (white-collar) looking folks I talk to, and I give them advice on how to be a professional background actor, and I make suggestions about film careers in general, and I hope that some of them will follow-up with my service, and that I will have spoken to the service's actual target market. If I can help to increase our roster, it makes the casting directors' jobs easier, and in turn, my service will likely try to get me booked FIRST. Luckily, they still have two weeks of me distributing flyers at Central before I'm fully available for them to get me booked anyway, so it's a great transitional period.
I'm going to want more naps over the next two weeks. But it's only two more weeks. I think it's gonna be great! And I'm already "back"!
... I'm just not sure about this "monovision" thing... I might have to swap out my left contact for an appropriately-corrected-for-distance lens, and pick up a pair of cheap readers at the drugstore to deal with the short-range.
In the meantime, here's Cocoa, for your viewing pleasure:
I don't understand this "calling service" thing. Are you in business for yourself? Are you handing out flyers for someone else - for no pay? I'm confused. Cocoa is still quite beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI've been in business for myself ever since I entered the field of film and television. As a background actor, I make payroll wages, but I'm able to write off a lot of things as if I were self-employed. Sometimes, as a PA or AD or costumer's assistant or set teacher or Script Supervisor, I make payroll wages, and sometimes I make 1099 "wages", and always, I have deductions to write off as if I were self-employed.
DeleteThe calling service that I have been paying to keep me in their roster to find me background work is one of those "self-employed" expenses. Right now, I'm helping them build their business by handing out flyers, and they will eventually pay me a bit for my time (that pay schedule is complicated, in that it covers hours "worked" as well as "referrals" and discounting the fees I pay them). I think all parties involved in this particular "gig" are hoping that it will be productive and lucrative and not last more than a month or two, because the business will have been built up enough to not have to recruit anymore, or at least not as urgently or frequently. And my hope is that, as soon as I am more available, I will be back on set (and unavailable for THIS gig).
It's just one of the cycles of film life.
And yes, Cocoa is my sweet girl, and quite beautiful as ever.