5/31/08

What they all say, right?

So, I want to document this because I don't have the photos and none of my friends will believe me, but for the last two days I was a model. For a brand of jeans and clothes that they sell all over the rest of the world, except for the US. The idea is that the jeans are "real" American, so I guess they don't sell them here.

I was scouted on memorial day in the park while I was walking with Jenny. I gave the producer and the art directors (none of whom, I later learned, were actually connected to the client company, they just produce ads). They called me in for a model casting on Wednesday.

At the casting I was incredibly nervous. The other people there all had modeling agencies, and portfolios. The two art directors were there, they're from France. There was a really nice woman there, a stylist, I guess, for the campaign. She told she thought I was really cute. The two French directors said I looked like Lou Reed. They took a few photos of me wearing sunglasses and sent me on my way. I did not expect anything, but they called back a few hours later saying they really liked me and hoped I could make the shoot.

It gives a certain specific thrill, model casting. It's like, they like me for my face. My look. Something I have little control over, and do almost nothing to maintain, got me a job. With, in fact, a lot of money. Ok.

The first day of shooting involved make-up and styling, and trying on different outfits. I met the photographer, a hotshot Swedish man who speaks French with the directors. As soon as he saw the very sweet stylist putting acessories on me, he said to the directors "Ah. Je l'aime beaucoup son visage. Sans lunettes, c'est cool, ah?" which was encouraging. One of the directors did, for a moment, telll me to suck in my stomach. Other than that, everything went pretty smoothly. i was worried, initially, that I'd be found out as a fraud, that everyone would laugh at me, when i realized that they were not paying so much money for people to humiliate me: you can do that for free. They don't want me to feel bad, they want to take a goodd picture. Everyone seemed happy with my posing, walking around Brooklyn and leaning on walls as directed. I was afraid that I'd have to act a bit more butch, but they enccouraged me to go off on my model machinations, limited in the past to walking around my bedroom in my underwear. I did get a bit of a sunburn, but that's fine.

The second day of shooting involved packing six models into a 40-foot big black tour bus to take us to a set upstate, about an hour and a half. We arrived at a parking lot in a park, next to a specifically chosen 12-foot high hill. The concept for the shoot was, apparently, hipsters rolling down a hill. We have only some vague knowledge of where these things will end up. They may end up as silhouettes. I don't know. They're making, apparently, composite shots of hipsters in weird clothes and records and boomboxes rolling / falling down a hill.

At the set, we all got cchanged and styled while a team of assistants set up a craft services tent, a PA system for listening to music, and a photo tent at the base of the hill where the director and photographer would take our photos, giving us directions through a loudspeaker. Another team manicured, raked, and generally "set-up" the hill for us.

We had some basic training with a stunt coordinator, who set up big puffy mats for us, and met the on-site medic. The other boys, much tougher than I am, rolled down the hill doing backflips for hours, while I made good friends with the caterers. "Are you a model? That's so cool." for my shots, I was paired with a beautiful european girl model who couldn't have been more than 80 pounds. We were instructed to roll down the hill together, but after a few shots of me riding the poor girl down the grassy slopes like a bobsled, they decided to shoot us seperately and composite them together. The bad news is: I'm all banged up and I think I may have broken a rib.

The goood news is: there's nothing you can do for a broken rib and I am supposed to get $400 for each othe days we shot and I'M A FUCKING MODEL.


ok.

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