There is an opening passage to a chapter in one of David
Sedaris’ books that, I think, captures so well my experience thus far of making
money as an extra. In his passage he
writes about being unemployed and thinking about what to do for money. He soon finds a $20 bill on the ground and
calculates that if he mooches a place to stay, he can probably live on $20 a
day reasonably well, so is quite heartened by his find. The next day he writes his findings are not
so profitable, something like finding a one dollar bill and a paper clip, then
the next day his only profit is a dime and a broken comb. The crushing blow
comes on the fourth day when all he finds is a peanut and a ball of lint. I’m taking a lot of liberty with recounting
that passage but I think you get the drift.
When I signed up with my first casting agency, they told me
Extra work paid between $150 and $175 per day—flat rate, they keep you as long
as they need you. I’m thinking, hey,
that’s not bad money. I proceed to have
two very good experiences in working on commercials—my only extra experience up
to that point. One day for 7 ½ hours and other day working 6 hours. I’m feeling the pay is pretty good at $150
for each of those shoots—getting $20 to $25 an hour. What I come to learn on my
third gig, which is for a TV show, is that is the pay scale for COMMERCIALS,
not TV. TV shoots pay at best for
non-union Extras $96.40 for the first 10 hours of work, so $9.60 an hours,
though I think you get paid that fee regardless if you are released from set
before the 10 hours—still trying to figure that one out. After the first 10
hours then you get time and a half, so about $14.40 an hour. The lunch break is also not figured in to
that ten hours so really the magic starts at 10 ½ hours from call time (when
you are to arrive at holding). The worst
pay is $86.40 for 10 hours with overtime of
$13/hours. Mind you, Union BG
actors are making twice that with overtime starting for them 8 hours after
arriving at holding. The average $$/hour
breaks down pretty fast once TV wages enters the picture. I once got a sweet deal of working a last
minute two hour gig that paid $80 in cash. Now that was a sweet deal. I went from a brief high of $25/hour to my
current average of all jobs worked being $13.88/hour and quickly declining as I
get more and more TV work—I won’t ever get to the peanut and ball of lint level
but visions of wads of Benjamins went poof pretty fast. This could all be upended if I get featured
in a commercial (those can go upwards of $20,000) or can manage to get some
print work – SOMEONE’s face needs to be on those bill boards and magazine
ads. Landing print work can be a real
gold mine. I met a woman on set who made
$60,000 on a Bayer Aspirin print ad. It’s so crazy. She did warn me to never agree to be
photographed for stock print. It pays a
one time fee of $100 and then your image becomes public domain---meaning anyone
can use it for any purpose and never pay you anything for continuously using
your image. My mind instantly goes to seeing
my face next to some porn site or hawking for some sleazy poison spewing
corporation.
So now, I just put in for anything that might catapult me to
some upper earning echelon. I mean, why
not right? It can’t hurt to try….at
least I don’t think it can. My latest attempt is I submitted to a notice asking
for talent (that’s code work for “person”) to co-host a Time Life program with
Peter Noone from the Herman’s Hermits pop group, on the British Music Invasion.
It pays $6000 with travel and lodging provided.
I probably have like a 1/100,000 chance of being considered but
psychologically I feel like it is really good practice to just throw myself out
there. Gotta lose inhibitions and take a
more bold approach. Sometime gumption is
rewarded.
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