Networking & Watching on "Law & Order."

I spend Wednesday and Thursday as a paid non-union background extra for the new series in the "Law & Order" franchise, Law & Order: Trial by Jury being filmed at the Kafman Astora Studios in Queens Astoria, not too far from where I live in Brooklyn. It's the largest sound stage between Hollywood and London. Desiree (a 'talent manger,' not 'agent,' as she's corrected me) booked me for two days this week.

The real benefits, as far I can tell, of working as a background extra, is 1) some pay, but more importantly, 2) getting to absorb how work is done in a professional television production house (in Law & Order's case, it's "Universal Network Television," the fully-integrated television production and distribution arm of Vivendi Universal Entertainment (i.e., Universal Studios + USA Networks, Inc = Vivendi Universal Entertainment, a global media and communications company formed in 2002), and 3) networking with other extras and day players on the set.

Working as an extra in film and television has certainty impressed upon me the 'business' side of 'show business,' and it's definitely a business. Becoming a professional actor means mastering, at a fairly high level, the ins and outs of the 'business,' a task that I found at first overwhelming -- it's still overwhelming, but I'm finding that by working as an extra, I can wade into it all, learning quite a bit from just talking to the actors/extras on the set (or listening in on conversations) -- I've got books on the subject of the business side of acting, and I've plowed though one, but just being around people who are in the game and talking to them . . . bit by bit, I'm picking up the business side of it all.

I think I understand about 2% to 5% of what I'll need to have a working knowledge of, but it's a start, and I think as I go along, it'll get easier to acquire and integrate what I need to know. And one of the things I need to do now is pick a copy of the Ross Reports to look for agents that work with non-union actors. I'll be compiling a list over Christmas and sending out headshots and resumes -- I'm shooting for more paid and professional work in '05, at least as much as a non-union person can get.

The balance is between Art and Business -- next year's goals are to go more deeply into both and learn to to use them to reinforce each other.

Understanding the 'business' side of acting is a vital component of becoming a professional actor, and finding ways to acquire and integrate knowledge and experience so that one isn't overwhelmed & confused is an important step. I suspect it takes a couple of years to reach some threshold of understanding where one knows pretty much how it all works and what one needs to do to get to where one needs to go (and so clearly defining specific personal goals is important). Anyway, easy to get overwhelmed with it all.

Perhaps most important, as always for me, is watching professional actors work -- breathing in and absorbing what they're doing, and even imagining myself doing it. It's not so much that I want to be a "star" or "on TV" as it is to be able to be as clean and as clear as they are. David Roland, The Confident Performer, talks about how athletes employ a form of mental imagery to improve performance, from mentally rehearsing a specific performance to simply imagining themselves doing what they'd like to doing:

I memorized a couple of actors performances on the set, i.e., how they moved, how they broke up their lines, how they empathized certain words, their pace and rhythm -- I'm trying to feel what it's like to dance like that (for want of a better word). I'm not thinking about what they did -- I'm just trying to breath in what they did, letting it (whatever "it" is) simply come into me. I think this helps give me a target for my own performance (at least for TV and film work), and hopefully my body and unconscious will guide me, over time and experience, to that target