Facebook - My first 24 hours

Okay, I have to admit it. It was a lot of fun playing on Facebook. After a few years of LinkedIn, Facebook feels like a party. It leads to deeper relationships much more quickly and is not about your resume. It is really about relationships. I admit, I believe you must need a sense of humor and perhaps be somewhat liberal and creative in your thinking to really understand facebook.

What I think Facebook does extremely well in the "adult" world is to appeal to a demographic which LinkedIn sore misses, "The Creative Class". This class is not about recruiters and jobseekers and vc's. It is about creatively connecting with each other in ways, I could have believed to understand.

As much as there are 3 degrees of separation, somehow on day 1, I have become "friends" with Michael Moore, who I admire for his newest movie Sicko. His e-mail address happened to be in my address book, so when I first set up my profile in Facebook, it asked me if I wanted to invite people from my address books. I was able to go in and select people to invite to connect. It turned out that Michael Moore was in my address book. So instead of sending him a long and boring, why do I want to connect, once connected, I "sent him a drink"...yes, there is an add on that allowed me to send him a drink of my choice, in this case. a glass of champagne to toast his new movie. Also, as part of Facebook, you see what groups and other activities people are involved with so you can also join. There was a group for his movie Sicko, so I joined that. I also saw a group called "I love Michael Moore"....Do you know how I found out about it?...I was looking at my profile screen on LinkedIn and saw that Michael Moore (my Friend) had just joined this group. It was right there on my screen.

For an example: (click on the image below of my friends status updates)



This is somewhat voyeuristic, however, we have a real way to take a peek into other peoples lives. From this screen some friends are traveling by train into London, going to the gym, sleeping off a party, or finishing a project. Another, as found a new band to be a guest for her podcast.

A friend from New Orleans has invited me to join her humor club and also sent me a "bite" to become a "Zombie". Again, a funny way to say to someone, let's connect and have some fun while we are doing it.

To me, day one on Facebook has been a blast and actually has in some very unique way, helped me to become better friends or deepening relationships, by showing more of my life and personality online.

So, you want to be an actor - my first acting class

Vince Paul, casting director of Gospel Hiil, called me this week to tell me how much he liked the mediamensch blog and the stories and photos from my nascent acting career. Vince is not only casting director, but an actor,author, producer, agent, and entrepreneur.

We began to discuss his business and background. Vince authored a book and DVD called "The Talent Guide" which is a beginners guide to acting and modeling. He wanted my advice on how to create some awareness and sales momentum on the internet. I told him about my "real job" as a sales and marketing technology strategist for my company called eWarrior LLC and my knowledge of these cutting edge areas such as "Blogging and Social Networks (www.linktocharlotte.com is one of my ventures)

Vince invited me to his beginning class class for actors called "Launching your Career", so that I could get a better idea of who he was and what type of information would be on the DVD.

I arrived Saturday morning, to his offices and led to the back where he had a classroom with about 25 students watching part of a DVD about acting and modeling career. As in any industry, sometimes the smallest advantages in moving forward and getting ahead quickly comes with being prepared. That is what this 3 hour class taught us.

The first subject was regarding how to put together your head shot and resume. We saw various "before and after" headshots, which were the ones that were originally submitted or used by the actor and the after, showing how makeup, clothing, lighting and background. We clearly understood now that actors come in all ages, shapes and sizes from babies to senior citizens. For different ages there are different ways to handle the photo or headshot submission.

On the resume side, I found this to be very informative and asked a few questions because now I actually have experience with over 10 days on a film production. An actor resume is basically three columns, the show you were in the role you had and the director, production company or location. The resume unlike your regular business resume includes you height, weight (we were told not to lie), age, hair color and eye color.

For the basic beginning actor, many times an extras casting director, will choose you because he sees you have experience on a set and know what is called "set etiquette". Also because most days of filming are long (12 to 14 hours), they like to see that you stayed on the set all day and didn't leave. This is so important because once you are in a movie or scene, if you leave and the need to shoot anothe part of the scene, for continuity of the film you need to be in the shot, no matter how small your role.

The other thing I learned was the difference between applying for a modeling or print ad job and an acting job. For the modeling jobs, your picture IS your resume. The trick with your picture in this case would be to make you picture look like an ad you might see in magazine. He showed us an example of a child's photo resume or what is known as "composite card", where it was posed like a GAP store advertisement.

We also learned about the difference between theater, commercials, television and film. There are many differences in being in each medium and success in one does not guarantee success in another.

One thing I did learn and was not clear about, was the difference between an agent and a casting director. The agent represents the actor and the casting director works for the production company working calling on agents to find specific talent they need.

The last part we discussed was pay and what would be realistic pay for work. For jobs that were professionally shot and where an agent was involved an actor with some experience might expect $500 per day or more for a corporate training film or commercial. In some cases, agents may also be able to negotiate "residuals" for an actor in which an actor would be paid for each time the commercial is shown. I had a flashback to my first job at WNBC radio where a few of the other interns I worked with were in roles in "Milk is a Natural" and "Coca Cola" commercials. I didn't realize how much they were making....If I only new then what I know now.

Now, go "Break a Leg"

Leatherheads - The Clooney Project and MediaMensch Link Up

One of the interesting things about writing a blog and being on this journey are some of the unexpected opportunities to meet people you would not ordinarily come in contact with.

One my blog and in my e-mail, I decided to experiment and create an automatic search for news on George Clooney or Leatherheads. Every few days, I would see an alert with a posting coming from a website called "The Clooney Project". The Clooney Project is a site which seems to do a great deal of research to blog or write about anything related to George Clooney.

After filming in Statesville, NC. I was quoted in an article regarding the film "Leatherheads". Also in the article were pictures from the film set from the newspaper of a police officer in the movie in authentic 1920's uniform.

When I went to The Clooney Project to read the article, it occurred to me that I have a great picture of George Clooney directing the film in Greensboro, NC. The shot has him looking through a camera to set up a shot where the fans are entering the stadium for a championship football game.

I contacted the editor/owner of "The Clooney Project" and told her it would be great if we could "cross-promote" each others blogs. One of my goals when I started blogging about six weeks ago, was to become a well known professional blogger. One of the secrets of doing this is gaining credibility from being linked to credible sites.

An article was posted on The Clooney Project with a link back...

Another step in the journey is complete.

Leatherheads Day 6 - The play of the game

Most of htis week is filming of a football game. As you can imagine like most sports films we have important plays in the game. Today, they worked on the final play of the game all day. I started in the end zone on the home team side next to some "band members". I reminded me of a smaller version of the Stanford Band. A friend playing a police officer was also nearby. I was basically just background at this point as the play was taking place way down the field.

I have learned from the assistant directors that movement is preferable in a scene so I walk up the sidelines once they yell action. You actually hear the words,
Pictures Up!, Rolling, and then "Background Action" to know when it is time to move about in the scene.

As the play moves up the field toward the endzone of I move with it and by the end of the morning end up next to the cheerleaders 3 men and 3 women and end up doing my pantomine talking and photography.

They continue to move fans in the stands around behind us as fillers. They fill in the first 5 rows of the stadium in about 6 sections. We have a long hot morning.
Ginger who is one of the wardrobe people, comes up throughout the morning to work on extras to make sure they are authentic and their scarves, hats and coats are on correctly. She has straightened my hat a few times. Our pants also need to be hiked up to show our socks...think of an old man pulling his pants over his belly and that is what a lot of us had to do during filming. Of course this was hidden by our overcoats.

Ginger, who has a resemblance to Carmen Diaz was really in her element as a wardrobe expert. She was really a stickler for detail and even noticed the little things such as whether we wore the same tie each day or how our winter scarves were tucked under our coat. As far as my brown jacket, I would have these wardrobe experts tie a square knot to make it look authentic.

Most of the day was fairly uneventful, except it occured to many of us it is taking 6 days (60+) hours) to film these scenes. George Clooney is all over the field that day. He is a player on one of the teams. Both teams are on the filed for most of the day. Some are professional actors such as Ed Miller (who is from Los Angeles), others are from local casting.

The players were having to do many of the scenes repetitively while camera's and audio folks captured a variety of shots from closeups and dialogue to shots from a distance...This is a romantic comedy, so there were a couple of scenes that had George Clooney laughing right after shooting.

The players on both teams were playing in the "elements" (which I can describe in detail, we'll have to wait for the film promotion to start) and they had "heaters" on the sidelines to warm them up when they were done shooting.

We are told they need an extra day to shoot so we will be back on Tuesday...

MTV Redux - New Networks

In 1981 a few of us ventured into the land of MTV, The Movie Channel, Nickelodeon as part of a company called Warner Amex Satellite Entertainment Company. Over the past year many of those executives who spent the last 25 years building that company and lauching shows such as Spongebob SquarePants, Rugrats and networks such as NickJr, NickatNite have recently left to form a new company called New Networks. The plan is to have 101 internet channels of special interest. Herb Scannell, former, President of Nickelodeon and Fred Seibert, former head of Hanna Barbera and CEO of Frederator.com have teamed up.

Herb Scannell and I worked closely together at the Movie Channel including teaming up on the Star Wars "Robot Giveaway". Fred was learning his way around creative areas of on air promotions. This New Network is going to an interesting laborator to watch.

Leatherheads starring - George Clooney, Renee ZellWeger and Me

Well not exactly. The phone rang a few days ago. The person on the other end of the line said in her "southern accent", "I am calling from George Clooney's production company about Leatherheads, a 1920's football movie. Will your schedule allow you to be a paid extra in our film over the next few weeks.". I said yes and then she spent the next 10 minutes explaining the role and with a list of everything I needed to bring.

She explained "We will be filming in an older football stadium in Charlotte called Memorial Stadium. Your part will be to be a fan in the stands. There may be closeups and ther shots so you need to bring and where the same clothes for those days."

Filming starts on Monday, April 16th for these scenes. This is the first time I have been on a movie set running multiple days. A close friend of mine was an extra recently in the Ricky Bobby movie with Will Ferrell filmed here and was in the movie for about 10 seconds at the bar. I know my years of a Knicks, Rangers, Giants and Carolina Panther fan will now be paying off.

A white dress shirt
A dark tie
A Fedora (hat)
Dark Pants
Plenty of water
Books and other things to occupy my time.


I am looking forward to this mini-adventure.