Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Extras Long Story, Extra Short Story

After a totally relaxing day yesterday I looked up where I had to go for this extras job. Channel 7. The Dreaded One said she thought it was in Pyrmont, just down by Darling Harbour. I looked it up, she appeared to be right. I got her to drop me off with 10 minutes to spare. She drove off and as I entered the building I just knew something was wrong. This was Channel 7, but this was no studio. It was their admin head quarters and the studio is to buggery away. Agency hadn't given me a contact number and they should probably have mentioned the suburb Epping when telling me what time I had to be there. I called the agency, called The Dreaded One and there was lots of stressed swearing from all concerned.

Few key words to cut a long story short: Epping. Far away. Dropped Dreaded One back home, drove with one eye on road map. Epping road at peak hour is referred to as Epping Car Park. Little blinky light insisting that tank was empty. Stress headache. Not cool for extras to be one and a half hours late.

The guy at the gate insisted my name was not on the list and I started thinking violent thoughts if the agency had put me through this for nothing. Turns out that they had also failed to tell me that I was replacing someone and the list had not been updated to include my name. Calls to assistant directors and things were finally cleared up.

I spent the next four hours in the green room reading my Jeff Noon book, with about 20 minutes or so on set being an animated blur in the background of the emergency ward.

Also, this morning I put the finishing touches on another short story I'll be entering into competition. Way excited about this second one. Even if it doesn't rate a mention in the comp, like the first one now that I have renewed enthusiasm for it (thank you Amra), I'm still going to push them post comp because I am happy with them.

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