Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – The Extras Scam

People are told that one of the gateways into the film industry is through being an extra.  You pay your dues in the background of other movies while you make contacts and get to know your way around.

When I first moved to LA in 1995, there were a number of these agencies you could sign up with that had their own ways of finding you work.  Some of them charged a fee up front for you to sign up with them, and they took a very small finder’s fee whenever they got you work; others took no fee up front but got a larger percentage with each job they found you.

Over the years these other agencies dwindled until only a few remained, and only one truly dominates the industry, Central Casting.  Central was a company that charged an upfront fee and took a small percentage of your paycheck.  There was also a yearly fee to remain in their databank.  They made huge amounts from starry eyed hopefuls like myself who had been told this was the gateway to working in the film industry, and by offering our services to multi-million dollar movies for minimum wage.

In order to get work, we had to call in and wait through a long list on an electronic message saying what types of people they needed the next day.  You had to call in over and over, waiting for several messages hoping they needed your type.  If your type didn’t come up, you had no work for the next day.  Of course, you had to give up taking any other work, and when you did get on a set, you were paid so little it didn’t come close to making up for the days you didn’t get anything.  And we continued to pay our fees to remain with Central Casing year after year.

But this is what we were told we needed to do, so we kept doing it.

Then in 2011, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office started cracking down on extras casting companies that charged up front fees.  This issue had come up when there was a scourge of complaints from people who had paid to be included in services but never received work.  Being at the height of the Great Recession, the issue was much more serious, and agencies were required to provide true employment services like in any other business.

In some ways, these agencies were caught in the middle.  Movie studios and production companies have a long history of shafting employees at the bottom.  While they make movies and shows chastising the wealth gap, they have the largest disparity in payment.  Their “above the line” stars, producers, etc. will make millions while the “below the line” extras and production personnel make minimum wage or less.  They are infamous for having an over-abundance of unpaid interns who are supposedly lucky to be there and are “learning” the craft as they get their bloated employers coffee.

It was these studios and companies which were pressuring the extras agencies to provide them with cheaper and cheaper labor, all along expecting fancy offices in the wealthiest areas of town.  So the extras agencies had fallen in line to remain open, passing on the charges and low pay to their employees.  But after the City Attorney’s crackdown, many had no choice but to shut their doors.

But not Central Casting.  They were big enough to last a bit longer; long enough to come up with a different solution.  Recognizing the annoyance of their employees needing to call in to find out about work, they began to provide a service that could call in for you.  No longer would you need to sit on the phone for ten minutes at a time wading through listing after listing, then having to call in again a few hours later if there wasn’t anything for you.  Now you could get a call-in service to do all that for you, and they would call you to let you know you have work.

Of course, this could all be bypassed if Central Casting simply placed their listings online so people could see at a glance if they fit anything.  Or, god forbid, they could do the casting and simply call the people they felt were appropriate for the parts, rotating in actors who hadn’t worked the day before so everyone gets even amounts of work.  But Central Casting isn’t going to bother with all this, you know why?

Because the call-in service is even more profitable than the original payment to register.  While it used to cost about $25 to register and the same to renew each year, it now costs $70 per month to get the call-in service.  Of course, you can choose to bypass the call-in service and call in each day yourself, but you’ll find that there are only very obscure and extremely specific listings; such as little person with a nose ring and a tattoo on his neck, or people who are missing limbs.  Occasionally they’ll offer jobs to people who have fancy, classic cars, but let’s face it, you aren’t getting any of those on an extras salary.

This is because the call-in service gets the listings first.  They fill it with their list of customers who are paying $70 a month, and the only listings that are making it to Central Casting’s messages are the obscure ones the call-in service couldn’t fill.

This obvious scam only gets by the City Attorney’s Office because they opened the call-in service under a different name, Extras Management.  It’s not particularly subtle, however, as the management office is directly across the street from Central Casting, and they even tell you at Central Casting when you register that you should go over to Extras Management and sign up to ensure you’ll get work.

Of course, work is not assured.  In fact, even when you’re called onto a job, it’s still not certain.  Even though you must have your schedule cleared for the day of a shoot, accepting no other work, if the production company decides to cancel, they can do so, even up to the last minute, and you are not compensated.  This means that, from the moment Extras Management calls you, you cannot accept any other work.  You must be available for the shoot, and you must show up.  But if the production company changes its mind or falls behind schedule, it can cancel your job, even if you drove clear across town and turned down other work.

What’s worse, they can require that you clear your schedule for several days, then decide they don’t need you after the first one, even if it’s too late for you to find other work.  This was exemplified in a heartbreaking way on a set I was on a while ago.  There were over 50 of us who had been told we had three days of work.  We all showed up and worked through a hectic schedule, standing out in the hot sun and trying to get shade since they didn’t have an air conditioned area for the extras.  (Of course they had plenty of air conditioned units for the “above the line” people in this show that made fun of elitism, but nothing for the extras.)  After 5:00, when it was too late to find other work, we were all told they wouldn’t be bringing us back the next day.  I’ve never seen so many people break down in tears.  I’m certain that if you were to watch that episode of the show and look into the background, you would see a plethora of wet faces.

This was during the Great Recession.  Many of these people were counting on the work to pay for rent.  This was near the end of the month, and several said they would now be evicted because they had no chance of making rent.  Some smuggled craft service food off the set because it would be all they would have to eat.  All this while the producers who made these decisions were going home to large houses and hefty paychecks for making a show deriding greedy rich people.

Oh, and by the way, Central Casting still pays only minimum wage for the days you do work, and they take a percentage out for themselves.  This means that the $70 a month one pays Extras Management isn’t even covered in one day’s worth of work.  It takes a day and a half before you become profitable.

It is a shameful racket, one that Central Casting profits from under the table.  One might have hoped Schwarzenegger might have done something about these practices when he was governor, but he was part of that “above the line” elitism that never sees the suffering of those at the bottom.  He had the air conditioned room that never even saw where we were.

The New Schedule of Relic Worlds

After reviewing what’s been working and not working for me in publishing, and where I am in terms of Relic Worlds, I’ve reworked the schedule for the second book, short stories, and pick your path books.

The second book will now be released at Wondercon at the end of March.  The short stories will continue to be released up to that point, and the fourth pick your path book will come out on Christmas day.  In fact, the fourth pick your path book and the first novel will both be available for free on Christmas as an incentive to get people to reading them.  I might make all the pick your path books free on that day as well.  The idea is that people will be getting new Kindles on Christmas, and they’ll likely turn them on to see what’s available for free, so I’m hoping they’ll pick these up.

I plan on having a lot of events between January and March to build interest in Relic Worlds, and to generally have fun with it.  Overall, Relic Worlds is intended to be fun, so I want people to enjoy some events and games that relate to the adventure and science fiction of the story to get into the series.  Some of these will include geocaches, programming, online treasure hunts, etc.

For now, it’s time to release more short stories and continue building up the website for the immersive experience that is Relic Worlds.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker – Running Into Spielberg in Vegas

When I moved to Los Angeles in 1995, my mother was moving to the area as well.  She and my father had just gotten divorced, and she was starting where she had left off when she married him in the ‘60s, Loma Linda.  I had met some people who promised to help me get my career started; I just needed to get out to Southern California.

My mom and I were driving in a two van caravan; her in a big mover, me in our family van.  This was the days before cell phones, so when we wanted to chat, we either needed to pull over, or I had to run over to her at a red light.  At one of these interchanges, I accidentally locked myself out, and when the light turned green, I couldn’t get in.  Luckily, my mom had a spare key, and as cars drove by honking, I ran over and got it from her.

I was listening to audiobooks along the way, and as we pulled into Vegas, I was finishing The Diary of Anne Frank.  Great material for Sin City.  As such, my mind was wandering and I was looking down at the sidewalk rather than up at the bright lights.  I remembered something from Schindler’s List and was about to say to my mom “In Schindler’s List…” when I smelled something rank.  I stopped, looked up, and found myself face to face with a drunken stranger I had almost run into.  He was talking to someone beside him as he stared at me, wondering why I had almost plowed into him.  He was wavering a little on his feet, and had clearly drunk a lot.  The smell I had detected was his alcoholic breath.  And it immediately dawned on me.  This was Steven Spielberg.

I froze in place, unsure what to say or do.  My mother hadn’t noticed.  She was further down the sidewalk unaware what I was doing.  Then the light turned green for Spielberg and his friends and they walked across, leaving me behind.  At that moment my mom finally realized I wasn’t with her, and came back to me, asking why I was slack-jawed.  I pointed at the street, at the man in white pants, and said, “Spielberg.”  She looked and recognized him and said, “huh.”

I took it as a good omen, and was walking on cloud nine the rest of the day.  Screw Vegas, I just saw the most successful filmmaker in history on my way to the city of movies.

Review of What Worked for Two Gun Hart

Now more than six months after the release of Two Gun Hart, it’s time to review what worked and what did not with its release and promotion.  I point out six months because that’s typically the amount of time after a book’s release that promotions last before it is labeled a “backlisting.”

It’s hard to believe it’s been that long as it seems like it just came out.  But the time has flown by because I did so much for it; and yet it feels like there’s been so little result, or at least far less than there should have been.

The promotional plan was broken into four parts, each lasting three months, so I’ll go through each one here.

6-4 months before release:  The plan was to give people an idea of the story; sort of get them primed, if you will.  I did this by promoting the sister book, The Great Heist.  This had one chapter in it that covers Two Gun Hart, and the idea was to get people curious about it.  I also used this time to get it to reviewers so they’d be done with it by release.  This worked moderately well.  The Great Heist was difficult to sell as people didn’t know me or the book, and it would have probably done better just to give it away for free.  I did have a free giveaway for the Kindle at one time, which I think did the best good, but it would have been better to get it into more hands.  As for reviews, a lot more people promised to review it than came through.

3-0 months before release:  This was the big period where I tried to generate interest and did a pre-release.  Most importantly, I tried to get onto every radio show I could and to speak on every blog and podcast that would have me.  I also tried to get as much press coverage as possible.  I wanted everyone to buy during this time because all pre-buys would count as having released on the day of release, thus giving me the best chance of a best-seller.  I worked all day practically every day sending out press releases, emails, calling places, etc.  One press release I sent out got picked up by stations all across the country, but they all talked about the story and few even mentioned the book.  As for radio stations, especially NPR, I was mostly ignored.  Since I wasn’t a major publisher, they didn’t care.  As for fellow independent bloggers and Youtubers, there was silence.  Some even said they wouldn’t have anything to do with self-publishers, which is funny since they are self-publishers.

0-3 months after release:  My celebration of the release was to go and talk at as many places as possible.  This was mostly in Nebraska and Iowa where I had a tour with the Hart family.  Everywhere we went had a large reception, and everyone bought the book.  This was the best time of sales.  Any time I could directly talk to people, they were fascinated with the story and immediately wanted a copy.  Radio stations in Nebraska and Iowa had me on… scratch that, in Lincoln and Iowa had me on.  Omaha and most of the rest of Nebraska ignored me.  Strangely, Omaha is very much uninterested in independent endeavors; you can tell by the fact that few independent stores are anywhere in the city.  As for bookstores, only a few would take the book.  Even independent bookstores would say that since it’s an independent book, they weren’t interested, all the time not recognizing their hypocrisy.  I did manage to get it into the Barnes & Noble system and a few stores bought it, but not many.  There were a couple of the ones that have always been supportive of me, such as A Novel Idea and The Bookworm, both of whom had signings for me.  And then there were a few other stores that opened up to me since I had it printed through Ingram Spark which made them returnable.  But I only made a little bit above what it cost me to have them printed through that company.  I’m not sure that even includes the listing I paid for that went out in Ingram’s catalogue that supposedly goes to bookstores everywhere.

4-6 months after release:  I learned along the way that a lot of clubs, such as Rotaries, want authors to come speak, especially if they wrote about an interesting non-fiction subject.  The bookstores were often empty when I went to speak at them, but organized events were typically pretty full, so I gave it a try with a new visit to Nebraska.  This has worked better, with the captive audiences always enthralled, and almost everyone buying a copy of the book.  It’s a bit inefficient, however, as I have to go to each one, and after a two week trip to Nebraska, I just barely paid for my flight there and back.  I also learned to sell the book at specific markets that are interested in this sort of thing.

All in all I learned two important lessons.  First, the way to sell a non-fiction book is through personal interaction.  If you have an interesting subject, people will want to hear the story, see the pictures, then they’ll give it a chance.  It’s a good idea to have elements from the book, such as pictures, clips, and evidence of what you’re talking about, so people can see for themselves that this is true and fascinating.

And second, I learned why someone said something I read a while back.  He said that he published his fiction independently and his non-fiction through major publishers.  I didn’t understand why at the time, but now I do.  For non-fiction to sell, you need the aid of news and radio organizations to give you some legitimacy.  There aren’t as many online locations to build interest in your work.  There’s also a stigma with non-fiction in self-publishing.  People believe that if it’s traditionally published, it’s gone through a gambit of editors who are checking on its accuracy.  This is not true, as editors with big houses are looking for what is profitable, not what’s true; and the idea that they’re checking over your accuracy is a myth.  In fact, traditionally published books are less likely to be accurate because of their motivation to make money.  But most people don’t know this, so they’re only likely to buy a traditionally published non-fiction book.  To add to all of this, most history readers are themselves traditionalists, and are more afraid of technology than embracing it, so it’s very hard to reach your audience.

Fiction, on the other hand, has a lot of readers who are likely to try something new, especially in the areas of science fiction and fantasy.  As a result, I’ll be focusing my efforts on releasing and promoting Relic Worlds and my fantasy story, then doing non-fiction on the side from now on.  It’s unfortunate, but I want to make a living writing, and if readers, and especially the media, refuse to see the value in independent non-fiction, there’s nothing I can do about it.

Began the National Writing Month Challenge

I have begun working on the fourth Relic Worlds Pick Your Path book. Today I collected the outline and the title and set everything up. I begin working on the interior content tomorrow.

The way I create the storyline and outline for a Pick Your Path book is this. I start by figuring out the overall feel and where I want to go with it, meaning some of the things I'll want to be sure to include, etc.

When I'm ready to start laying it out, I write 1, then fill out the introduction. I then give several choices, lining each one up in order. So choice 1 will be "go to 2." Choice 2 will be "go to 3" and so on. I then go to 2 and write what happens there. The choices are right after the last choice in 1. So if choice had 3 choices, the last one would be #4, so entry 2's first choice would be #5, and so on. In the physical book version, these numbers translate to page numbers. However, I try not to think of them as page numbers as they will also be selection points in the Kindle and PDF version.

Tales of a Failed Filmmaker - The First Time I Learned About Star Wars

My first movie experience was almost Star Wars.  I was six years old and my father wanted to take me to this new science fiction film.  But my mother, being a responsible parent, stopped him and said that he should watch it first to see if it would be appropriate for someone at my age.  So my dad took my brother to see it while my mom took me to see Benji.  Yep, my mother’s sense of responsibility made Benji my first movie rather than Star Wars.  Damn you good parenting!

My mom, sister and I got home first and we were in the kitchen when the door opened and my brother rushed in with his eyes wide.  My father was right behind him, his own eyes wide as well.  It was as though he had just seen a ghost doing gymnastics.  He told her that I had to go see this movie.  Not should, had.  Still being the responsible parent, my mother asked if it was age appropriate, and he vigorously nodded his head.

Soon after, we went to see it at the Stuart theater in downtown Lincoln.  It was a former stage theater from the days of grand productions.  It looked more like an opera house, complete with deep cushioned, plush, red seats, and etched mirrors in the lobby; and it played only the biggest movies.  I remember only bits and pieces of watching it.  In particular, I remember that I didn’t know what “terminate” meant, and when my mom explained that it meant to kill, I couldn’t believe they were thinking about killing Princess Leia.  It was the first time I remember feeling fear.  I didn’t understand yet that the good guys general win these movies; my exposure to television thus far had often been football, and in that, either side could win.  So I truly didn’t know that the rebels would win.  (Oh, spoiler alert.)

I also remember going to the bathroom during the scene when Obiwan Kenobi turned off the tractor beam, so I didn’t understand why the characters were able to leave.  For some reason I remember another older black kid in the bathroom with me.  I think I remember this because it was one of the first times I was using a bathroom alone, and I didn’t know how I was supposed to react to a stranger in a bathroom.  I wasn’t nervous with fear, I was nervous about my manners.  Am I supposed to look?  Am I not?  I think men and women react differently to bathrooms; we never get over our fear of looking at one another while in them.

After the movie, I remember going to the apartment buildings my dad owned and jumping in the pool.  We had taken a family friend, Jon, and he and my brother Trevor were reenacting scenes, especially the one in the trash compactor as though the walls were going to smash them in the pool, and the snake creature was underneath.  I remember one point when Trevor said, “we’re all going to be a lot thinner” and Jon responded, “At least I won’t have to iron my clothes anymore!”

In the years to come, it would prove to have an impact on me as strong as my dad predicted; especially with the toys.  My best friend Ryan and I collected as many figures as we could and created stories with them.  This became my first efforts at storytelling.

And then my father purchased making of documentaries on laserdisc.  I began watching them over and over and over.  I was obsessed with how people made images that went on the screen; how storytelling could be visually explained, and how those images stirred the emotions.