Tuesday May 08, 2012
An easy weekday downtown
The afternoon before I received an email from Alice Ellis Casting providing information for this date regarding calltime and location information for a Nissan commercial gig. Just before phoning my calling service, they called me to confirm the booking. I replied to the email as needed and checked the MTA schedules to find it an extremely easy transport.
I arrived for my 8am calltime at 7:35am, with more than enough time for a nice scrambled eggs/bacon breakfast. The base camp was at 6th and St. Paul, at which the bus stopped, and from which I would have a choice of two buses headed back.
Wardrobe loved my outfit, the only change was having me go tie-less.
Our background wrangler for the day was a friendly fellow named Steven (whose name mysteriously appeared nowhere on the callsheet); he was pleasant and extremely respectful of the background performers, as well as everyone else.
The location was at Hope and 3rd, being a weekday notwithstanding. Generally such car commercials are done on Sundays or Saturdays. Steven indicated the production didn't have the capability to do it on a weekend. Later in the day I was speaking with the project's location manager Rod Weiner, who said that his own first emails about the project reflected that very question. Another slight problem facing production was being in the concrete canyons of downtown Los Angeles, where many of the two-way radios of the crew were not getting to their desired recipients and vice versa. Cast and crew members' Smart Phones and my Not-Smart Phone also barely received Internet reception.
In the second half of the morning I did some sidewalk crosses across the street, in front of a prop flower stand that'd been set up. We broke for lunch around 12:30, returned to the location where, after being set up for a sidewalk cross, the main A.D., a pleasant-voiced Brit who I was told was named "Kennedy" (whose name was also strangely nowhere on the callsheet).
One of the aspects of working on commercials, both as principal and background, is the higher level of respect of the entire crew and cast (now and then a project will defy that rule, though in that case, it was the Higher Ups, not those on site). Location manager Rod had indicated the location was "lost" to the production at three o'clock, though there was in reality a one hour margin, so they really had it until four.
At one point, shortly before she was wrapped, I was speaking with pleasant Ava Rivera, and my favourite subject of the paranormal came up, and we swapped several of our respective experiences.
The location was a wrap, and those who were not previously utilized with the flower-stand scene were taken to the next location at Wilshire and Grand, while those of us already from that shot were wrapped. We were returned to basecamp at 3:35pm where Steven signed us out at 4pm, which was generous though while it didn't really supply any overitme, it looked good on paper. Literally within a minute of reaching the bus stop the few steps from the parking lot gate, the 3rd Street bus arrived, the connection from which was a mere two or three minute wait. I literally arrived back at my place by 4:20pm.
More when the commercial begins to air...