Freelancing

I'm officially freelancing now. Had a couple of weeks of auditions, mostly print but a few commercial ones, and sat in an office for two days looking at movie one-sheets and print ads.

Then I had an introduction at an ad agency in Long Beach and they ended up giving me a project to do. It's not an easy job. I can see why they were so willing to give it to a complete stranger. Hopefully, I'll do a good enough job for them to hire me more often.

I just submitted myself to a movie directed by David Mamet via a site called Actors Access. It's the actor site for Breakdown Services and it's a place where you can self-submit for a role.

Generally, thousands of people have gotten what's called "the breakdowns" through various sources and then self-submitted themselves to a casting director for all kinds of stuff. What sometimes happens is you get a call for an audition. What often happens, however, is you get put in the slush pile among all the other self-submitted actors who got their breakdowns through various sources.

Honestly, these casting directors don't like self-submissions. It circumvents the process that was put into place decades ago and it circumvents the power of the agent or manager.

But now that there's several actor websites devoted to self-submissions, the whole thing has gotten some credibility. But don't expect it to work overnight. I get calls on maybe 1 out of 10 submissions. At $2 a submission, that's expensive!

I'm not going to bitch and moan about the inequities of the struggling actor here. Truthfully, I'm not eating dog food for dinner every night. But it isn't easy to pay for the bills here in Hollywood, especially when they're discovering new ways every day to take money out of your pockets.

Right now, I'm having some mild indigestion from some pasta I just ate. Hmm, what was in that meat, I wonder...