It’s been a while since I’ve posted but there hasn’t been much going on so far this year. The first few weeks were completely dead with absolutely no auditions the first few weeks. Then it was one commercial audition a week until a couple weeks ago when I finally got a feature film audition. I do suspect things will start to pickup as the year goes by, but I was beginning to feel like my survival job was becoming my only job.
The Audition
I was contacted through Backstage about a month ago and asked to submit to a project called Silly Philly to play the role of Chef Willy. The project was for a spec ad for Philly Cream Cheese. The shoot was scheduled for 3 days in Savannah, Georgia and was being made by SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) students and had a budget of 10K. Normally I wouldn’t have auditioned for something like this, but it’s been a while since I’ve done any acting and the project paid my minimum day rate and covered all travel, housing and food. I sent in my audition a few days later, was contacted and asked to do anther scene and then a callback was scheduled.
The Callback
The callback happened my following Monday off and consisted of myself, the director, the producer and a first AD. During the callback I learned that the role I was up for was for the lead. The project was for a national spec ad competition, focusing on some real companies. Most of the callback was just talking about the project, but they had me do some actions described in the script as there was very little dialogue and most of the role was facial expressions and movement. The Zoom call ended with them telling me they had a couple more callbacks but that they would reach out by the end of the week. 24 hours later I was contacted and told I had the role.
The Shoot: Day 01
After a Friday night shift of bartending, I ate dinner, made a list of stuff I needed to pack and went to bed. The drive to Savannah from Atlanta is about 4 hours and I needed to be on location at 2:30pm, so i set my alarm for 8am, got four and a half hours sleep and got to packing.
I got into Savannah about 90 minutes early and checked into my accommodations. They had me in a room on the main level at the Manor House. The house was an old 3 story Victorian house right across from Forsyth Park. The house was massive, had a common kitchen and king-sized beds with full baths. They also provided continental breakfast between 7:30 and 9:30am, but my call times were always earlier so I never got to experience it.
Location was about 30 minutes away at UGA Aquarium. Actually, it was about a mile before the actual aquarium on the side of the road and into the woods. I met with some of the crew and walked out into the woods where they were setting up. There were over 20 crew members.
The first scene was ‘not using Philly would be as bad as’ getting lost in the woods with no pants while being chased by a tiger. The customer shows up in the woods where he has no pants and then sees a tiger. He bolts and I pop out from behind a tree and then see the tiger and I run also.
Since there were only 2 shots scheduled for day 1, we were done by 5:00pm. We then met for dinner, which was Zunzi’s and I headed back to my room.
The Shoot: Day 02
Call time for day 2 was 6:30am, but location was only 6 minutes away. After about 5 hours sleep, I got cleaned up and headed to location 2. Location 2 was an improv comedy club. When I arrived, they were already setting up and there was equipment and people everywhere. My guess was 30 crew members, 10 background actors and 3 principal actors. Scene two’s scenario was ‘not using Philly would be as bad as’ your little brother reading your diary on stage. Willy is in the audience sitting behind the older sister, who is in the front row. Once she sees that her little brother is reading her diary out loud, she runs onstage, screaming and tackles him. We wrapped location 2 at 11am, packed up and headed to the SCAD building right down the road from location 3. It was used as a holding area and all the makeup was done there. A lunch of Cuban food was brought to the holding area and we ate and waited for the crew to setup before we headed to location 3.
The second half of day 2 was what I was really looking forward to and why I wanted to do this spec ad. Scene 3 was ‘not using Philly would be as bad as’ losing your glasses during a zombie apocalypse. We had 8 actors in full zombie makeup who were driven to location in the back of a truck. Location was an old brick and metal warehouse that was abandoned years ago and falling apart. The part I was looking forward most to was being dragged away by zombies. The first half of the scene was the actor looking for his glasses as zombies attacked him. My part was the final shot of the day. There was a stunt coordinator on set for my part and we had a long conversation about how we would do the scene. We had two options; one with me falling down onto the concrete before being drug away and one where I fall onto a mat and then get drug away. The shot was from ground level and directly in front of me so we had to do it onto the concrete. The stunt coordinator brought me his knee pads, which i put on under my slacks and we practiced the fall a few times. Then we practiced being dragged. Since I was being dragged across concrete, the apron I was wearing began to get a small hole in it and since they only had one backup apron, we had a limited number of takes before we couldn’t shoot anymore. We ended up doing it 4 times before the director was happy with the shot. I think his exact words on the final take was “that was fire!”
The day wrapped at 6pm and the call sheet went out about an hour later. I was tired from lack of sleep and the call time for day 3 was at 5:30am, but I had an audition I had to do before bed and my reader wasn’t available until 9pm, so I grabbed some dinner and setup my equipment in my room. I had only brought my camera and tripod, so I had to rearrange some lights and furniture to get the best quality I could. Also, there was only one blank wall and since the bed was so big, I had to setup my camera on the bed.
THE SHOOT: DAY 03. FINAL DAY
I was really lucky with locations as most were only a few minutes away from where they had me staying. The final location was a Japanese restaurant 4 minutes away. Checkout was also that day, so I woke up at 4:30am, got cleaned up, packed, loaded up my car and headed to location. The final day was shooting the first and last scenes of the commercial which setup the whole premise. We had 15 shots scheduled and had a hard out at 3pm. The restaurant was opening at 4pm and they needed their space back to prep for dinner. This was also the only day I had lines besides screaming.
There was some miscommunication as the director had thought he relayed to the housing people that he wanted my room until Tuesday, but I needed to get home Monday night so I could get some things done before work on Tuesday. Once the director and AD realized this, they rescheduled the shot list to knock out all my scenes first so they could get me on the road as soon as possible. I wrapped at noon and headed back to Atlanta. This was a fun shoot and the students were extremely professional, motivated and passionate. It’s been a while since I was on set and I’m so glad I got to be a part of this project.
My next project is a feature film and is set to shoot in 11 days in Columbia, SC.
Simon Shih 