That's right people, I've been a very busy bee. For any of you who are a little foggy on the concept of schmacting, I have two a perfect examples today!
This last Wednesday, I got a call from my local agent asking if I would be available to work Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. I said of course! For the past few months, I'd been put on hold for this same job and then released over and over again. Apparently, the client liked my look but kept changing their mind. Whatever!!! Turns out, at the last minute, one of the other girls got fired for missing the orientation, so they settled on me. The next day I reported for duty.
The gig was selling exercise equipment at a convention. May I remind you that my talent agency booked me for this. This type of job is called "promotional modeling." Its such a good example of schmacting because you basically spend all day standing around in a foolish outfit schmacting like you love the product on display. The idea is that a group of attractive girls standing around in tight clothing attracts people (men) to your booth. The fact that we're actresses is so funny to me, and the fact that people don't seem to put this together is even more funny. Men will approach me with these super specific questions regarding the mechanical workings of the equipment. I have to schmact my way out of revealing that I'm an actress being paid to be there and couldn't really give a crap.
The best part of the whole weekend was that this company was based in Sweden and they (at great expense) sent 15 sales reps to San Diego to sell the machines. The problem was that they didn't all speak English!!!! Hilarious! The poor guys just kept referring everyone to us schmactresses!! Needless to say, after spending three consecutive days demonstrating weight machines, I'm super sore. Its not acting, but I was getting paid to do what I should be doing for free. Life could be worse.
My second example, for those of you who are new to schmacting, comes to you by way of a callback I had today. At the original audition for this commercial, I had to pretend to eat chicken, enjoy it (but not too much), then look over as though I just saw someone enter the room. Apparently, I was freakin amazing at fake eating chicken, because I got a callback for today. They called at 11am to let me know I needed to be in Santa Monica at 2:30pm! Typical. I abandoned my job, jumped in the car, ran home to change into the outfit I'd worn yesterday (per their request), grabbed a Cliff Bar and zoomed up to Santa Monica. I got there about 20 mins early and proceeded to wait around for about 1 hour and 15 mins. I couldn't figure out what was taking so long. When it was finally my turn, I was taken to another holding area. The casting director came out of the room and explained to us in, great detail, that we would not only be pretending to eat chicken, but pizza as well!! Oh my! Pizza too!!! However would I communicate this emotional complexity? Seriously, this was what was taking so long! Take a moment for yourself right now and pantomime eating a chicken wing, now pantomime eating a slice of pizza. Am I being narrow-minded, or are these two actions pretty darn similar? Is this schmacting? I say aye!
Oh, and it took me 4 hours to get home today! That sucked! The end!
No comments:
Post a Comment