Background to Gossip Girl- OMG, YOU TRAMP

While I’ve drifted out of the realm of acting as my allegedly primary career, I still do the bit of background work that flits my way. It’s fun, you get some good conversation, eat way too much, and pick up a couple of extra bucks here and there.

Sometimes you even get to actually act.

I’ve done some shoots recently, and heard some really crappy things about a show I really dig.

I’m thrilled that Gossip Girl is shooting in NYC. It needs to be shooting in NYC to be anywhere near authentic. Well, authentic as a show like GG can be.

But the way they’ve been treating background is just plain crappy.

First, they’ve finnaegled some SAG concession that allows them to pay extras like, $98 bucks a day. That’s before taxes and what not.
And the expenses of maintaining the clothes you need to bring to fit into the the GG world.

Next, to save bucks, they’ve had actors who appear in scenes with principles mime their responses, and then loop in voice overs later.

You see this 2 or 3 times in the season two episode, ‘The Dark Night.’ Anypoint in the show where you see a featured actor talking to someone, and the reply sounds like it’s either the voice of god or someone speaking in a completely different room.

This may mean they don’t have to give the extra a bump to featured background, or avoid a waiver, or what ever. It’s save some bucks, and screws actors out of a chance to get some bucks, maybe even a role they can honestly put on their credits.

Instead of the way we all not so-subtly inflate our rolls.

GG isn’t the only show doing this, and in all fairness, a lot of this is from… well… gossip in holding.

I also get that GG and the CW are so frigging desperate for cash that they have to cut corners to just stay on the frigging air.
But W.W.D.H.D. if he saw the corporate bigwigs, pushing drug abuse and irresponsible sex, consumerism, AND screwing the little guy in the process?

Well, he’d likely write about it in his diary and be mocked by B, but he wouldn’t like it.

No,sir, he wouldn’t like it at all.

Tags: acting, Gossip Girl, New York City