this post brought to you by the urgings of Dayni

and as such I dedicate it to her Hawaii-nized self.

What extra work is like:

A girl I just met invited me to take part in some extra work for a short movie being filmed in San Jose.

So Sunday I went down to the Mission Ale House in San Jose and whatdoyaknow, nearly everyone there I know from SJSU. All my past classmates are working (unpaid, of course) on this short indie that was going to Cinequest. It was odd to see them working together because in my class everyone was a director and had their own projects. And I saw Jeremy, for example, the best student directors I've seen, working the boom mike on this.

Anyway, the only one who wasn't a student or from out of SJSU was the Director himself, Ken Karn (I believe that's his name.) I don't know where he came from, but I liked him. He was nice to us extras.

I hung out with the extras and got some makeup put on and changed my clothes into something a little more casual.

I guess I should break in here and give you a run-down on what the movie was about -- mind you, I figured this out over the course of the evening. It's not like they give extras scripts. I didn't even know the title of the thing for a good few hours.

The movie is called Objects. Eric Allen of Los Angeles wrote it, and then my New York buddy Brian got ahold of it while trying to get a job at Cinequest and was asked to produce it, which he did. The script went through about three rewrites, apparently. I guess Brian mostly casted it and Ken Karn was sort of attached as the director to begin with, but Brian put together the crew.

Basically, the movie is a role-reversal. Two men come into a bar and are surrounded by women who treat them like so many slabs of meat, complete with leering, lascivious eyes, untoward comments, and then the actresses had parts where they'd try to pick the guys up in the way women have had to deal with feeling like it's mostly their boobs that are being asked out. And the guys are all, "I miss my cat" and drinking pink martinis, etc. So it seems funny.

Pretty soon after I got there I met another extra, Kimberly, and we hit it off. Brian and the Director gave us meatier extra roles. We actually had words to say! Kim is funny so it was pretty easy to have a good time because she would keep cracking me up.

One bit we did was at the bar where we were supposed to talk and be animated but without sound. We had a good time with that. It was hard because we kept having to keep our laughs silent.

We finally got out of there after midnight, not because anyone remembered to tell us they were done with us. They were still filming more but they didn't need us any more.

I had to sign a contract which said I would be paid a dollar, which I wasn't. That's too bad. I was going to frame that dollar. My first paid acting assignment.

So the movie will be shown on Sat. March 13th at 5 PM in the University Theatre of SJSU. I get in free but I don't know how much it is. It's part of a forum about making a movie in 48 hours with some sort of equipment that they used.

Anyone who wants to go let me know! You can meet Kim, she's hilarious.

Watch for me -- I'm the one who says, "Hot damn!"

:)