Poll: What do you do for a living?

Post by **Jeff-20** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:27 pm

How much does an extra make? How does one become an extra? I wanna meet celebrities too!

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Wed Sep 15, 2004 6:34 pm

An extra makes about 50UKP a day, but that's only on the days you work. Sometimes they will feed you, sometimes you have to pack lunch. You usually get tea/coffee provided.

The days can be long >12 hours is not uncommon and it involves a lot of waiting around.

The easiest way to become an extra is to send a CV to some agencies. Good agencies don't charge for this as they get paid to provide the bodies to the film companies.

The chance of meeting stars is minimal but the work can be fun.

Lee.

Post by **Jeff-20** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 10:32 am

Does an agent cost money (like some initial fee or annual charge)? Or do you get paid only when you work?

Leeeeee · Post by **Leeeeee** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 6:10 pm

A good agent won't charge when you're not working, they get a %age of what you're paid for each job you do. The more work you get the more they get paid.

E.g. My agent gets 15% of what I'm paid. This can be done two ways, the company pay her and she deducts her fee and passes the rest on, or the company pays us both directly. It makes no odds which way it's done except that the last way is more immediate for the actor, you usually get paid by the day on the day.

A good agent will also allow you to sign up with multiple agencies as if they're good they will be the one getting you the work (and the fee for doing so).

If you do sign up with more than one agent let them know in case they both end up recruiting you for the same job.

Got some more work on the Demi Moore film end of the month, you may see me there. 8^)=

Lee.

brain · Post by **brain** » Mon Sep 20, 2004 9:14 pm

My hobby got me where I am today, which is an Applications Architect in a large financial services company.

My VIC-20 cemented my career choice (computers).

Jim

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 1:37 am

As a coincidence, there was an ad in the local newspaper about a company hiring extras, but they would charge 100 SEK ($13) in registration fees per application. Maybe that is their only income, and then sell or give away the lists of suitable extras to the production company.

Tepic · Post by **Tepic** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 2:12 pm

I drive trains for a living. Nothing to do with Vic's at all.

carlsson · Post by **carlsson** » Tue Sep 21, 2004 3:24 pm

It reminds me, I have a fairly decent VIC game where you have to sweep away all the dirt on the tracks before a train arrives, and also stay out of the way. It is a ladder game, with one train set on each platform.

There also seems to have existed a series of interfaces (6051, 6023) to connect a Märklin model train with a computer like VIC-20, Macintosh etc. While I believe the trains you drive are in scale 1:1 rather than 1:87, it is an interesting find.

Tepic · Post by **Tepic** » Wed Sep 22, 2004 11:36 am

While I believe the trains you drive are in scale 1:1 rather than 1:87, it is an interesting find.

There was a web site where you controlled a Marklin layout over the web. That was ...interesting...

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Mon Oct 04, 2004 5:44 am

I worked as a system designer/programmer (C++) for a year and then the project was canceled so I had to go. It was a friend's own company (at most we were 5 people) and he was planning to sell educational software to schools. Before that, I studied computer sience at the university for a about 4-5 years. Still, 99% of the my computer knowledge was obtained at home on my Commodore computers. Now I have no job. No real job anyway. I am working on my music. I will try to release a real CD on a real label (or sell songs to other artists through some agency). Right now I'm working in my home studio. Just a couple of more nice tunes and I will begin to send out CDs to the big record companies to see if anyone is interested.

/Anders

Post by **Jeff-20** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 1:26 am

Bring back a very old thread. The newbies (that is, since 2004) have yet to answer this question.

Schlowski · Post by **Schlowski** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 3:30 am

I have a sort of mixed job in a small software company. I'm developing and programming new software, do some consulting and sometimes give short time "programming classes".
All in all a nice job but sometimes it makes me feel "oh no, no more programming in the evening" which is really bad considering the lovely VIC and 6502...

MacbthPSW · Post by **MacbthPSW** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 4:09 am

My computer interests as a kid and teen made math and computers classes easy, so I continued on with that and took Computer Science at university. From there I got hired by the local independent telephone company (Thunder Bay Telephone, now called TBayTel). I've been there ever since: first working the Internet help desk phones, then working on customer's computers when we launched ADSL back around 2000, then the internal help desk, then as a networking guy, then as a programmer.

Meanwhile I landed the gig to work on the C64DTV, and that led to other projects in the game industry, most recently a Nintendo DS game ("Crayola Treasure Adventures").

Early this year I quit my full-time position at TBayTel and have been working part-time shift-work there as a network/phone-line tester/dispatcher so I could focus more on the game projects.

Boray · Post by **Boray** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 4:52 am

My plans for a musical career that I wrote about (in 2004 it seems) is put on hold for a number of reasons. One of them was that I got problems with over sensitive ears, but that is much better now. I now have an "extra job" as webmaster, but that's all.

ral-clan · Post by **ral-clan** » Fri Nov 02, 2007 5:32 am

I work in the museum/history field. In the summer I work at one of the larger 19th century living history museums in North America (one of those places where the people are dressed in clothes of the period) as an assistant cabinet-maker (I use 19th century hand tools to make and repair furniture and other stuff - like Roy Underhill on PBS).

In the winter I work on an archive & database of historical research documents.

I also make Irish wooden flutes on a small scale on the side.

I'm also am a semi-professional Celtic musician - by semi-professional I mean I've been in regularly working bands in the past, but not currently (however, I'm always keeping a finger in that pie in case anything comes up).