Thursday. SR (with 9 people in the class!) and No.8 Conrad Siever. Took direction from T on my first rendition and was very pleased with how it turned out. T gave me a very good. Next week is a discussion on any of the SRs we want to discuss further followed by a grand finale SR performance in two weeks' time. Then it's onto nursery rhymes - seriously!
Home again then off to sunny Santa Clarita to work background (yes, starving artiste with a wife and monkey to support - yes, I do background sometimes) on a Wal-Mart commercial! Thankfully the directions were spot on as the in-car GPS in which the maps haven't been updated in three years (they charge a lot for them!) and it showed me driving off-road (with absolutely NO details at all) as I was looking at huge developments of houses and retail parks. This place has spread like a rash in the last couple of years...
Anyway, this absolutely gigantic WM was to be my office for the next 8 or 9 hours while I stood around showing the camera a shoulder or an ankle or an out-of-focus body - yes, background work is glamourous folks! But, you don't do BG work to be seen, you do it for the money and for the food. The wonderful, amazing, FREE food. Met some nice peeps on the shoot and we passed the time until about 3am when we decided to go shopping. Well, you can't NOT go shopping, can you. It's amazing that there are people actually shopping at 3am but there are. Poor souls who work nights and background artistes, that's who! Dead of night, middle of the desert (SC is in the 100s most months), quiet as a graveyard, save strange people who shop at WM (my god, there were some weirdos, 'largies' and vacant people shopping there while we were shooting... dodgy eyes, inbreds - your typical WM shoppers - no offense). Pretty empty roads for the drive home - one plus point to driving at 3.30 in the morning.