Lights! Camera! Keep Your Mouth Shut!

This is my final entry into my attempts to try to do something in the artistic performance field. After this, I pretty much gave up.

While I wasn't able to get into the live theatre scene when I lived in San Diego, I found that I was capable of getting cast in student films and independent projects beginning in 1993. I still didn't get paid, but it was nice to have people wanting me for their films.

I auditioned for a lot of student films at San Diego State University. Everyone had their projects all due at the same time, so they all held auditions over successive weekends. The auditions were typically held by production teams. There was nobody attempting to do the film all by himself. When I auditioned, I had to do it in front of the entire team. Normally, they would videotape the audition. They mostly consisted of me cold reading the material. Under most circumstances, I got to read the entire script. I have to say that I wasn't too impressed with the writing. It was like the school focused on the aesthetic aspects of filmmaking, without that much emphasis on writing good dialogue.

But I just wanted to do stuff since I had a lot of free time. A couple of the teams I auditioned for called me back to appear in non-speaking roles. I couldn't complain. It was better than being completely rejected (and I got paid the same amount of money as the lead actors).

I think the title of one of the films was "4 Minutes in November." It involved some stuff happening on a film set. I played a member of the set crew. At one point, they had us standing in front of a fan that was cooling us down. Another shot we did involved moving the camera back to reveal a tornado scene featuring a model house turning around and someone swinging in a cow costume. The interesting thing was that the film professor instructed the crews to not have cameos in their own films, but the director somehow wound up in that last shot anyway.

I can't remember the name of the other film, but it involved a man being haunted by his past. It is revealed that had seen his mother get attacked. I got to play the attacker, but I was only seen from the back. I showed up for the filming and rehearsed a little with the actress. She started getting mad at me because I wasn't being rough enough with her. I started flashing back to this acting incident in college. I was getting mad, but I knew I had to keep it under control. I didn't see the point in possibly injuring her before the actually filming took place. We shot the scene a couple of times. The actress put up such a struggle while we were shooting that my arms ached afterward.

There was another film that I remember auditioning for. It was called "Route 260." It was about two college women going to Las Vegas and their car breaks down. I read for the part of a Vietnam War veteran. The two female students producing the film laughed during my audition, so I thought I got the role, but they never called me. I'd gotten to read the full script. I didn't think much of it, but it didn't appear to be any better or worse than the two films I appeared in.

The next semester, those two students held auditions for their next project. I auditioned for that film as well, and this was before the Film Department held a public showing of all the student films from the previous semester. I had been told by the crews of those films that the screening was going on and I was welcome to come and pay $3 to get in. I wanted to see how the films turned out.

The first part of the student film festival showed projects that involved shooting on black and white film with only music featured on the soundtrack. The second half showcased the advanced productions, including the two films I was in. They warned ahead of time that some of the films were still works in progress. This helped to explain why some featured out-of-sync dialogue soundtracks, poor exposure and rough edits. The two films I was in weren't anything special compared to the other entries.

Then they showed "Route 260." The film began with the sound of an engine starting and the title flickered in sync with the sound effect. Already, this film had my attention! They shot the entire film outside, so it was constantly well lit and the dialogue track was in perfect sync. It was seriously the best film in the festival and the audience cheered at the end. I actually wished that I'd been in that film. After the festival, I found the two students who had produced it and told them it turned out great. I had hoped that my compliment would lead to me being cast in their next film, but they never called me.

I appeared in one more student film that semester. It was a parody of "Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom." It featured two explorers studying the species known as college students. At one point in the film, they put tracking devices on the students' ears. In the scene I was in, the woman sitting next to me in a classroom had one of these devices on her ear. About ten years ago, when bluetooth was all the rage, they reminded me of those tracking devices and everyone looked like they were under observation.

The scene I was in featured several students at a lecture. During the scene, I had to pick up a bag of chips, dump it out on my desk and start cramming them into my mouth. But I actually did this like a real professional. After each take, I would immediately run to the nearest garbage can and spit out the chips. I had put them in my mouth in such a way that I couldn't possibly eat them. It was a good thing, too, because we did at least five takes. I don't think I could have eaten that many chips. Besides, I had to make room for the pizza they provided to the cast and crew that day.

I never saw that film because I couldn't make it to the festival that semester. A few months later, I ran into one of the crew members. He wanted to send me a videotape copy, but I lost the guy's phone number after he gave it to me.

I also appeared in a hobbyist's video project. It was done by a man around 50 years old. He was casting for a crowd scene and needed a few bodies to fill it out. The scene we shot featured him moving out of his apartment and telling us what he was going to do next.

I was supposed to have a line in this one. He didn't give out any scripts, but he assigned lines to a few of us and gave us the cues. We got to rehearse it once before he started shooting. The only problem was that there was this twerp among the extras. If the director spoke the cue to your line and you didn't respond within a half-second, the twerp would say your line for you. So what you saw was the twerp saying the line and the person assigned the line saying the exact same thing about a half second later. AND the director didn't even seem to notice. I know I threw my hands up in the air on one of the takes when the twerp did it to me again. It would have been worth making my arms ache to wrestle that guy to the ground while the camera was rolling.

I never did get to see how that project turned out, either. The odd thing is that you would think that these student films would be all over the place on YouTube. I mean, we all signed releases that permitted the creators to do whatever they wanted and make as much money as they wanted with no obligation to us. But I guess that all the crew members had equal ownership in the films and someone would have to get permission from the other members before posting on YouTube. This means I'll probably never ever see those projects. I guess you know you're a real actor when you wind up doing so much stuff that you never get to see everything you're in.