What I learned on my first commercial
June 29, 2011 | Filed Under Jobs | Leave a Comment
I actually heard about it from my acting teacher. She sent out an email to all of her students about a local bus company looking for unpaid actors for a new commercial.
I was thrilled. I immediately sent an email to the woman in the contact block at the bottom on the email. Saying that, while I was new to acting, I was very interested in participating.
But this was a Saturday. I had to wait TWO WHOLE DAYS to hear anything.
On Monday, she contacted and wanted to know a little more about me. I told her I didn’t have a head shot or anything. But I mentioned I was taking acting classes and I sent her a picture from a recent business event.
The funny part was that since I was wearing a suit in the picture, she picked me to represent their “Business Class Customer”.
I’ve never been so excited to work for free!
One thing that I learned was that there is a lot of downtime between scenes. For us it was a lot of driving around Bethlehem Pennsylvania on a bus. But it seems downtime is common in shooting.
But everyone I met was great. We were all pretty new to the acting thing. As a matter of fact, some people were just friends-of-friends and didn’t consider themselves actors at all.
I haven’t seen the final ad yet. But I’m looking forward to it. They are supposed to send me a copy when it’s done and I’ll post it when I get it.
Actually technically I didn’t work for free at the end of the day, we all got an envelope labeled “Talent”. Talent? Me? Cool!
And in the envelope was a $50.00 gift card to Outback Steakhouse.
This spawned my new motto:
“Will Act For Food!”