So, um, I just got notified that I've been "preselected" for a callback for another ad...
This one is a little different though. The advertisement is for an anti-smoking campaign for British TV.
That's perfectly fine by me. That's something I support.
BUT they asked me if I'd ever smoked a cigarette. I replied that "no, I've never smoked a cigarette in my life". I've never taken a single drag off of a lit tobacco cigarette.
Time for some full disclosure which will inevitably surprise my family and some friends too...
Next, I said that I had, indeed, smoked other things in my lifetime. (I've tried pot only a handful of times in my life and I haven't done it in a long time because I never enjoyed it. Plus, I like my throat and my lovely sounding voice. Thus, I'm never going to inhale anything except second hand smoke evermore.)
So, anyway, the casting agent's next question was: "Oh, well then smoking shouldn't be a problem for you then."
To which my response was roughly "actually, it is. I don't want to inhale a single breath of tobacco smoke. I don't mind holding a lit cigarette, but I won't inhale."
So my principles are conflicting with a potential job. If the fact that I don't want to take a single drag off a cigarette disqualifies me from the campaign, then I'll be amused by the hypocritical nature of the disqualification... But I won't be upset.
Why the hypocritical nature from me? Because I've respected my grandmother's wishes that I never smoke. My mom has also been a big factor, as she's a rabid non-smoker and that has rubbed off on me. I don't see marijuana as a problem because most pot smokers are not chain-pot-smokers. Heck, if I had the chance I'd legalize and regulate pot.
Maybe I should run for office...
And now I should inform you of other goings on in Iain Land.
First, I'm a little stuffy right now. I don't mean sick. I mean big-headed. I mean thinking that everybody recognizes me...
You see, the TV ad I acted in started airing this past weekend and has, apparently, been inundating the populace with promises of fast and easy loans ever since. My smiling face can be seen a few times in the ad.
To prove how ubiquitous it is, I turned on the TV last night to see if I could see it... I saw it within two minutes. My friend's friend said that she had seen it no fewer than three times in one day (and I imagine that was only in a period of a few hours).
This, of course, has gone straight to my head. It's funny because I know it's ridiculous since most people don't remember faces from advertisements in general. I think more people are staring at me only because I'm staring at them, thinking that they recognize me.
Yeah, anyway, it's floating around. I've looked a bit on the internet to see if I could find the ad, but I've had no luck just yet. I'll keep probing and hopefully I'll get a copy myself to post one of these days.
I auditioned for a UK anti-smoking ad today. I had to pull and throw myself around the room as I was supposed to have been hooked by the mouth by the cigarette companies. It would be fun to get it... But, even though I've mentioned this audition (or any other auditions, for that matter), it will always be safe for y'all to assume I didn't get the role unless I say otherwise.
On other notes, I played in a frisbee tournament this past weekend. It was my first ultimate tourney since March or April, due to my bad knees. My bad knees are still bad, but I wore an enormous and strong knee brace on my right knee when I was playing and my knees don't feel any different today than they did on Friday, before the tournament, so that's good, I suppose.
This was the 4th year I've gone to the same tournament in Kimle, Hungary. I almost wish it had been in Budapest, just so I could get a first hand glimpse of the shit going down there. Big-time happenings going on there, for those of you unaware of it.
I saw my most excellent friend Szilard Palinkas when I was there. He's a newly anointed father, but unfortunately due to inclimate weather, his wife Ildiko and (very) young daughter Petra stayed home. Of course, the inclimate weather never came and instead was very sunny and very, very hot. A summer by any other name is... October. (It's kinda windy right now but my window is wide open and I'm only wearing jeans and a t-shirt - it's still quite warm here.)
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING! NUH-UH. NO SUCH THING.
I have my absentee ballot and will be sending it out post-haste - pun... intended...?
I have a plane ticket for December and into the new year. I'm flying to Indiana on or around December 14th or 15th. I fly up to Minnesota after Christmas sometime and will spend about a week there, including New Year's Eve and New Year's Day.
I can feel my body changing. I've been swimming and I've been lifting and doing abdominal exercises and my body is adjusting. My upper body is much stronger and sturdier (despite a slight injury to my left shoulder suffered this weekend playing frisbee). My abs, while still retaining their beautiful cushion of fat, are much harder underneath.
Er. I think that might be all. I'm excited for tomorrow since I'll be doing something new business-wise - see my earlier post.
Finally, it's come around. I finished taking notes. Phase 1 is complete.
Now comes the fun part, the creative part.
Phase 2 will lead me up to implementation and posting of the website. It involves scripting. It involves recording. It involves creating the website itself.
This should be fun! I'm excited to be able to move onto something different and new.
One thing I discovered from Phase 1 is that I'm going to eliminate it for future cities should I be able to expand outside of Prague. It's time consuming and I can always just sit at my computer with the books and directly script, rather than writing notebooks worth of notes by hand.
So, I'm finished with Phase 1. Yay, me!
Hey everybody: friends, romans, countrymen,
I just saw that Northwest Airlines has a really good deal on cross-Atlantic airfares, so if anybody wants to come and visit me before I head home on Dec 14th, you SHOULD!
Which brings up a good point. I'll be in the two states (IN and MN) from December 14th to January 3rd. Prepare to be called upon.
I woke up today (at 5:20) feeling better than yesterday but I'll be going to sleep today with a massive headache.
I was the first to be picked up for the shoot. Why I was even picked up at that hour is beyond me. There must've been some miscommunication somewhere.
We drove around the city in the dark of a holiday weekend Sunday, picking up three others on the way to the shoot. The shoot was for Ceska sporitelna - a bank here in the Czech Republic. I was to be one of four principle actors in the non-speaking commercial.
The other three in the van were not actors. They were part of the crew. The van was Mercedes and gave directions to the driver in Czech, although the menu for the direction program was in English.
We arrived at the set around 6:30 a.m.
I had eaten a small, Mueslix-only breakfast before hopping in the van, so the free breakfast they provided was unnecessary. I ate some fruit nonetheless and drank some orange juice and coffee.
Shortly after breakfast, I was sent to costuming to get into my banker outfit, aka a suit (sans jacket).
I was in costume at 7:15. I was told not to cross my arms or do anything that might wrinkle the outfit. Sure thing. No problem. I'll film and be free by 3 p.m. and free to cross my arms. Oh, not to mention, from that moment on the only way I had to judge the time was to either look outside or ask somebody, because I was given a watch with the incorrect time. Of course, it was raining for most of the day so I couldn't judge by the sunlight either... So it was really left to asking people the time.
I did some of my Czech class homework out in the food tent before being invited into the bank where we were filming. The director, Graham, was English and so was the cinematographer, Dave. The main main main actor who figures in every shot almost is named Andrej and he's from Ukraine.
Due to the nature of the shoot, they started by filming the first few shots and then jumped to the very final shots - none of which involved me - and the total time it took to film those shots brought it to 2:00 p.m., which was the first time I asked the time.
I did some work for my work during the morning hours before my hand got cramped from taking notes. I also read some of my book and did other Czech homework.
As we finally started in on my scenes, the generator that powered the massive amounts of lights and other accessories started to crap out. It went down, they got it up again... Only to have it go down after they got two takes in. The generator was overheating, which was causing it to blow out. So they brought in another generator shortly thereafter, which shut down filming for another 15 minutes.
Eventually, we got to my first close-ups. This is where confidence is key and having not been in front of a film camera on a fictional basis in over 5 years, I was more than a little nervous. It didn't help that the production was full of people, whereas all my previous filming experience was guerilla filmmaking with very few people around. Suffice it to say, I was nervous and as my mania got its vices into me, I begin to mess up more. I was tense and unrelaxed.
We did maybe 4 or 5 takes of my close-up before moving onto another shot. Something happened after that though and I loosened up. I just said to myself "screw it", if I screw up, I screw up and there's nothing I can do.
Around this time, the sun came out outside, which was nice considering that it had been raining all frickin' day until then. It turned into a beautiful day but I had no alternative other than to bask in the sun in between takes and/or shots for a brief few minutes.
By the final shot of the day (around 6:45 p.m.) I had found my groove and was back to being my usual camera-friendly self. The director complimented me afterward on the final take saying that it was remarkably well underplayed. I'll post the commercial or a link to it as soon as I have it!
I then changed back into my civilian clothes, gave myself a rash on the chin taking my make-up off and made the stupid mistake of not knowing what I was gonna do immediately afterwards. I didn't have enough food in my flat for dinner, so that was out of the question, but simulatneously, I was too exhausted to go out. I contemplated going shopping and settled on that idea. By settling on that idea, I passed on a production-sponsored ride back to my flat.
Once I was actually in the metro system, I decided that maybe I would just go home after all. I have some cheese and crackers and maybe a piece of fruit or two and the good ol' fall back of cereal.
And so here I am. I still haven't eaten anything. I'm more exhausted than I've been in a long time and really don't wanna bother even slicing a few pieces of cheese for myself.