Actor Growth

Today I am back on the set of The Tooth Fairy. I believe today is suppose to be the absolute last day they are allowed to shoot at the UBC Thunderbird stadium as well and so it could be a really long day as they need to make sure that they get every shot.

So far this set has been pretty lax I’d say though. I met a lot of people as well which has been a lot of fun. It just was a little overbearing to have back to back 12 hour shoots which means by the time I get home I only get to sleep for like 5 hours before having to wake up again for another day.

All comes with the territory though.

So I am still in the midst of researching about all the principal talent agencies here in hopes to find one that is better suited for me. One of the largest ones here is an agency called Lucas Talent. The interesting thing though was that I recently saw a phone number from that agency that was also attached to one called “Red Talent Management”.

That was kind of odd I thought and then while browsing even more I saw this listing:

So according to that it makes it sound like Lucas Talent is either changing its name or they have merged into a bigger agency. I guess the other possibility is that since they have so many divisions this could be a way to break it up.

Recently there was an audition posting for a short film and initially it sounded like it was a very action oriented piece. Afterwards, they decided to change it to something more suspenseful and the character in the film would have to pretend to smoke a pipe. The thing is, smoking and cigarettes is one of those things in film that I will not do and I had to unfortunately tell them that I didn’t feel I was right for the role and wouldn’t be auditioning for it.

I guess a big reason is that I don’t smoke personally and actually dislike it very much. Some people say it is just acting, but my other thought is that I feel I would kind of be promoting the idea that smoking is good if people saw me do it on screen and I wouldn’t want that to happen.

I know a lot of actors have their thing in terms of what they wouldn’t do as well. Thinking about the long term too, I wouldn’t ever want to do a role where the person is like a chimney and so this will help to remain consistent in terms of the type of work I do and what I want to portray when it comes to professional film work.

So myself and some other actors are seriously contemplating about creating some kind of simple web series that we would create mostly for fun with the hopes that we can make something great out of it. As mentioned, in the group it seems like there are three of us that are dead serious about making things happen.

This might be interesting too as I am personally very comfortable and knowledgeable about publishing on the Internet which will come in handy. At this point the main idea that was thrown around is similar to a past idea where since we are all actors we would film our journey’s on like a weekly basis and the public can follow us.

Other than that, we were thinking of a semi reality and scripted story of some sort which all revolved around something comedic. Needs more time in the think tank though as we want to do something that is within our capabilities from a production point of view too.

Recently my background agent sent a few of us details about upgrading our statuses to become a union background member. From what I read, one needs to work 24 days in a year to be able to apply as a UBCP background extra. To my understanding this is different from being a union actor who happens to be doing background work.

I have heard mixed thoughts about this as a lot of people say it is not worth joining the union simply as a background extra member as you have to pay extra fees as well you will now not be able to do non union work. As well, you only getting treated differently if there is not enough regular Union members to cover the requirements of a film set as you are simply a “next in line” type of person.

In some ways I was thinking it might be worth it for me though as I do background work mostly for fun and experience and increasing my odds to get upgraded might be better than worrying about not being able to do non union extra work. I only need to do about 5 more days to be eligible for this, but for now I am still debating about it.

So I was working on the set of Cats and Dogs 2 yesterday and the conditions were kind of bad I must say as it was raining and people were essentially expected to pretend it is a summer night. This meant no jackets too for many and a lot of people got soaked in the rain as apparently the camera did not pick it up.

Interestingly enough, some of the background workers simply walked off set as from what I heard they did not want to jeopardize their health for a movie. Understandable in many ways I suppose, but at the same time they had a lot of the information ahead of time and I would think it would be more professional to tell them beforehand if they didn’t want to work on that set as a result.

I’m back on the set today and it is another night shoot except I start even earlier.