That’s A Wrap!

This past Thursday I had the most amaaaaazing experience!

I shot my first…dun-dun-dun…commercial! 😀

<insert happy dance here>

I had the best time, I don’t have enough descriptive words in my vocabulary to properly describe how it was, think of every word that means amazing/stupendous/awesome/over-the-moon, string all those words together and that might come close to how much fun I had…maybe! lol

A paid acting job – can’t get better than that! 😀

It is a commercial for a local company and it is an online commercial so you won’t randomly come across it when watching tv but if I find a link for it once it is up online trust me when I say I will for sure share the link lol

The director and camera guy and sound guy and make-up lady and well, everybody that was there was nice, super friendly, gave me great feedback and was so much fun to work with! Couldn’t really have had a better time. 🙂

The commercial was set in a grocery store so that is where we filmed, first in the parking lot of a grocery store then when the shop was closed we were inside. Some random things I learned about grocery stores are:

– they never ever ever turn the music off

– the produce misters randomly mist during the night

– they are creepy when there is only a small group of you there and you know the store is closed

– the staff bathrooms are nasty

Some things I learned about myself after extended time in a grocery store:

– the longer I am standing in an aisle the more interesting the food in that aisle becomes

– I didn’t know you could buy iced tea in such large jugs

– it is instinct to want to reach out for items that are on sale so I can buy them, even though there is no staff to buy them from lol

We shot three different scenes, meant to take place on three different days, I am not sure if they will pick one they liked the best and use that for the commercial or if they are creating three separate commercials, that is not the type of information I am given. There were four actors total for this section of the commercial, there were others scenes being shot today that those of us that filmed in the grocery store won’t be in. I had to be on set for 5:30pm and be ready for filming by 6:30pm, that gave me enough time to do wardrobe and make-up and discuss with the director what I would be doing, oh, and also for meeting the other people I’d be in the scenes with. Some of the actors didn’t have to come till later in the day because the scenes with them in weren’t until later. I wrapped (that means I finished on set) a little after 4am, so a 10.5 hour shoot which is about right. It could have been a little shorter, well, a lot shorter I suppose, but after the sun was too low and we couldn’t film outside anymore we had to wait for the grocery store to close at 11pm before we could start setting up and filming inside. That gave us a nice break where we could get a hot drink, get fed (they feed you on set), hang out, do whatever. I didn’t go anywhere because I looked horrible lol My character is this really tired, defeated mom so my make-up was smudged and my hair was messy and my outfit was, um, not attractive lol Perfect for the character but nothing I’d want to go wandering around in…though I was quite comfy. 🙂

I got exceptionally awesome feedback from the director, he said I did a great job, he loved working with me, he said all kinds of good stuff but it’s rude to brag so I’ll stop with that lol

When it was all over I got home and arrived to this at my door…

large, pretty and nameless lol

They are from my landlord and his wife, they are from the garden. I don’t know what they are but they smell quite nice. I was reluctant to bring them in because the last time they gave me blooms from the garden there were ants in them and well, yuck! I carefully inspected these ones and they seem to be bug free, I’m hoping I didn’t miss the little buggers, I can’t abide insects in my place, *shudder*. Even though they weren’t left for me as a “good job” or “congrats” for the acting job I sort of pretended they were, well, for about a minute lol, then reality set in and I realized they wouldn’t remember that was the night I was filming and they were just being nice, shrug.

Oh and get this, as if getting to be on set wasn’t enough to make the day awesome prior to filming I had an audition, so it was a day filled with acting, acting and more acting! 😀 Oh how I wish all my days were like that, sigh.

I am determined that this is the beginning, the first noticeable step, from here on out it will be bigger and better and one day I’ll be making my living from acting, not just squeezing it in between day jobs!

Tags: acting, audition, commercial, filming, on set, positive thinking, the begninning