This must be phase 4...

Retirement Life

Since I'm now entering my third year working (barely) in the TV and film industry as an extra, I guess I'm now officially entering Phase 4 of "The Four Phases of Retirement" - Reinvent and Repurpose. When I started doing this "background" work (called BG in the industry), I thought to myself, "I'll give this a try, and if I get bored, I'll just stop doing it.". Admittedly, there has been some other engagements that I have booked through my Principal agent for commercials, video shoots and still photo modelling, but most of what I've been doing for the last two years has been BG.

"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV" (Supergirl)

As mentioned in the previous post, there are days of paralytic boredom... sometimes 5 or 6 hours of waiting around before you even get to set. But after a while, you get to meet some great people, and look forward to those BG bookings where you have lots of friends there to help you while away the time. There are also lots of funny things that happen on set, especially when you have fun actors and/or directors around.

Like the day that Kevin Smith was the guest director on an episode of Supergirl; to keep us entertained, he walked through the BG crowd between takes, with boxes of Timbits. And while I'm not the kind of guy that gets star-struck, it is pretty neat working on a set where you are standing next to some Hollywood A-listers. But after a while, the novelty of standing next to Jessica Biel for a couple of hours does kinda wear off.

Closeup on "Salvation" when the world learns about the asteroid 

The other fun thing about doing BG, is pretending to be someone else. I was booked on a show called Salvation as a Colonel in the US Marines; it was a "continuity" role, so each day, I showed up to put on my uniform so that I could walk the halls of the Pentagon, or sit at a briefing in the Oval Office. Not something everyone gets to do in their day-to-day job, that's for sure.



Probably the most fun so far in this "Reinvent and Repurpose" phase of retirement, was a commercial gig I booked for the Rocky Mountaineer (you can read more about it here). It's a train trip that takes you from Vancouver, through Southern BC, and winds its way to the Rockies, ending in Jasper, Alberta. It was two days of "work", which entailed riding on a beautiful train, through amazing scenery, and pretending to eat and drink throughout.

At the end of 2018, I summarised my reinvention stage with:

• 56 days on set
• 455 hours as an extra
• 15 TV shows
• 4 feature films
• 1 movie of the week
• 2 zombie encounters
• 4 days in the White House
• 1 promotion to ‘full bird’ Colonel
• 6 meetings with the President (not that one)
• 2 nuclear crises averted
• 32 auditions
• 9 callbacks
• 3 commercial gigs
• 1 lead role
• 2 photo shoots
• 21 assorted pastries
• 2 dozen doughnuts
• 23 books read
• 8 Netflix shows watched
• 3 nights in Whistler (thanks Jeff!)
• 2,039 kms auto
• 3 train trips (one real, two on-set)
• 2 plane trips (one real, one on-set)
• 1 visit to the North Pole

 Anyhow, I think it is safe to say that I have officially been repurposed.