5 Reasons Why I Still Do Extra Work

A shot of me on a Navy Vessel where I was playing an
extra for a TV drama. 

As an actor, one of the things I heard a lot is that once you are getting speaking roles, you shouldn't do anything less than that anymore, because you only want people to see you doing good things. After 7 years of experience though, (and having some pretty substantial roles in things) I still like doing extra work for a lot of different reasons, and I think I will continue to do it for at least a while to come. Here are the five reasons that I still love to do it from time to time.

1) Experience is Experience and Any Experience is a Good One.
The fact of the matter is, when you are doing extra work, you aren't going to get much in the way of acting experience or screen time. Quite frankly, you will be lucky if anyone sees you in the final cut. At the same time though, one thing you can get a lot of is set experience. You can see how different directors work, how different sets are staged and dressed, how certain special effects are achieved and how things generally work and flow on bigger productions. Extra work is also a great way to learn about the bizarrely particular culture that the entertainment industry has, and a great chance to continue honing your own particular code of conduct on set- all while still getting paid and doing so in a context were your position is virtually inconsequential. The last thing you wanna do is seriously screw up while you are on a major production- if so, it could be your last for a while.

2) A paycheck's a Paycheck
Speaking of getting paid, another reason to keep doing extra work is the fact that plainly and simply, it's a paycheck. Granted, it's a substantially lower paycheck than when you get a major or substantial part, but speaking frankly I don't know if I've ever met any non-A-list actor who works 7 days a week, and every little bit helps. Most actors that I know of all have other things that they do on the side to get by- even fairly successful ones- but the fact of the matter is, unless you are the company president, an uber-successful Youtuber or someone else, who can set their own hours, the regular commitment required from most regular jobs will always be putting you in a position where keeping that job and moving forward in your acting career will always be at odds with each other.

One regret I've always had is that I was invited to an audition for a TV commercial that I had to skip because of my regular job schedule at the time. The person who ended up getting the lead in it (An African American who was about my age, weight, build, look) ended up having an incredible career (that is still going) launch from it. Who knows, had I made that audition, that might have been my career instead of his. At any rate, the point that I am making is that in doing extra work instead of another regular job, you can keep your schedule totally open so that when that one big opportunity comes, you can be available for it. (And thankfully, since that fateful lesson, in keeping my schedule open, I have been able to nail my share of huge projects. (Last year I was in the one of Japan's biggest movies of the year, the most popular drama of the year, and the biggest video game of the year all at the same time).

3) Networking
Another reason that its good to do extra work is because believe it or not, you can do some amazing networking that way. Sure, a lot of. people who are working as extras are doing so as a way to work their way into the entertainment industry- but not all of them. If you talk to everyone who you meet that way, oftentimes you will come to find out that some of the people working as an extra on that day, are assistant directors, directors, indie producers, stunties, visual effects people and all kinds of other members of the entertainment industry who just happen to be free and are looking for something to do. Even if none of these people are casting agents themselves, the fact of the matter is, in this industry, work can come from anywhere. Sometimes if they are working on a project, and they only need one person, actor, voice, narrator, and you are experienced, they will call you directly for it, so they don't have to deal with the rigamarole of having to call a casting agent, deal with auditions, etc. At this point in my career at least 30% of the work I get is freelance direct calls, and a lot of these are from contacts I made doing extra work.

4) Locating Scouting
Another great reason for doing extra work is for location scouting. While the advantages of knowing and seeing more locations is obvious for people interested in working behind the camera (production assistance, assistant directors, directors, etc), there are also advantages to knowing locations for actors as well. The fact of the matter is, no actor makes it on their own without self promotion. Self promotion includes getting lots of great photos taken, making demo reels, and at times, producing shorts of your own so that you can show yourself acting in the kinds of characters that you really want to play. In order to make these kinds of promos however, knowing a range of beautiful, breathtaking, grimy, dangerous-looking, or sophisticated locations is key. The location plays a greater part in a story than you can ever imagine, and it's the "story" (whether photographic or cinematic) that sells you.

5) (Paid) Freetime to do Stuff
Aside from all the other reasons that it is good to do extra work, there is still one other reason that I really love to do extra work- FREETIME. The fact of the matter is, as an extra, more often than not, most of the time you spend on set is just sitting around. As such, if you have other things that you like to do, or need to get done, when working as an extra, you can take care of those things, while actually still getting paid to do something else. As an actor playing an important role in something, you still may have your downtime, but often that time is spent practicing for your scene. As an extra, if you have to act at all, it usually isn't anything that you really need to think about, practice for, or seriously concentrate to do... And as such, you are free to spend 90% of the time concentrating on something else. For myself, this includes things like studying languages, cleaning out unnecessary photos or memory zappers on my phone, or the writing of blogs (like this one). In doing so, I can earn income, eat for free, and get time consuming things done all at the same time. Gotta love it.

As your acting or entertainment career progresses, the temptation to turn your nose up at extra work may be strong. In fact, it might even seem to make sense, as you wouldn't want to seem as though you are still doing "bottom-of-the-barrel" work when you are starting to do well. At the same time however, there are a lot of distinct advantages to it as well. Beyond that, insomuch as Ive seen, no one ever remembers the extras anyway. For everyone from the casting agent to the director to the other main actors, their main concerns are all much bigger than who is there as an extra and who is not. By definition, extras are supposed to be the people who they have to worry the least about. Furthermore at least as far as my career has shown, doing extra work doesn't seem to have had any detrimental effects on my getting good work in the least. If anything, it's had the opposite effect, because my agents appreciate the fact that I am so flexible and easy-going and push for me to get more good work.