Payment for standing all day in the hot sun — $80. Woo-hoo!

Well, to be honest, I wasn’t expecting lots of money. Working as a non-union extra earns you about $7 a hour. I did get time-and-a-half for the overtime, but still the pay didn’t even cover gas and lodging in Nashville.

I am not upset. In fact, working as an extra in the next Hannah Montana movie (to be released next May) was an educational experience, if not a lucrative one. Ideally, you would have to be a local resident (which most of my co-workers are) to justify even taking the job.

Union extras get paid more, but to become a member of the Screen Actors Guild you have to have three separate speaking roles to qualify. A speaking role apparently means you say at least one line of dialog. Apparently, yelling “Hey, Hannah!” doesn’t count.

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July 2nd, 2008 | Tags: , , | Category: General stuff, Media | One comment

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The start of a new career?

So, today I’ve been on location, being an extra in … “Hannah Montana: The Movie.”

You ask — why is a 50+ man in a Hannah Montana movie? Serendipity. The blame falls on my wife, who heard an announcement on a Louisville radio station about an extras casting call in Nashville in April. Her idea was to bring one of our suitably aged nieces down there (our daughter being a tad too mature to be a HM fan). We convinced our 16-year-old niece (and her parents) to give it a try. We sprang for some nice photos taken the day before the casting call, then zipped down to Nashville one sunny Sunday.

A casting call for a pop princess vehicle is more like a cattle call. Signups were at Sommet Center. The line started at the front entrance and by the time we three arrived had already circled the block. The line was just as long by the time we made our way around to the entrance three hours later. Girls aged 8 to 13 were overwhelmingly the bulk of the would-be actors in line, but of course there were plenty of adults, too.

We got the Niece through the line, walked into the arena proper to hand over her paperwork and there one casting director told me they were looking for adult extras, too. Who knew? They took a headshot of me, and sent us on our way.



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June 7th, 2008 | Tags: , , | Category: General stuff | 8 comments

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