Over the weekend I had my first rehearsal for my first role in my first motion picture! Well, actually, its kinda my second motion picture. The first was “No Problem” where I was an extra, and was still holding on to a full time job. I remember Kay Siu and Swee Lin both “chiding” me for being stupid when they came to know about it.
“Why you so gong, pay money to be extra?”
He was of course referring to fact that I actually took leave to act on that day and that my leave pay for a day was much more than the measely $30 they pay me to be an extra.
Fast forward a few years later, and here I am, trying to negotiate a higher pay for my roles. As I arrived at the production office on rehearsal day, I could not help but feel the producer treating me coldly. And I wondered if its because a few days earlier, I was trying to get a higher pay for the role. I didn’t succeed of course, and I thought that was the end of the story. But judging from the cold treatment I was getting, I guess, apparently not.
The thing is, this production has quite a number of the poly students I worked with in my previous short films. Back then, I was working pro bono for them. So I’m thinking the reason for the cold treatment was that the producer was prolly miffed that I, who was willing to work pro bono for her kah kias (subordinates) before, have the audacity now to ask for higher pay. Why, the very nerve of me! 😛
This may sound absurd or warped, but besides this reason, I really couldn’t understand why I’m treated coldly by the producer. I mean, I really don’t know otherwise. Hopefully, I’m just being over-sensitive and things will get better once the shoot starts. We’ll see then I guess. Incidentally, all my shoots seems to start early in the morning. Liew.
Its times like this that I kinda wish I had a proper agent. Cuz, if let’s say this was really the case, then at least the agent would be the one that is pissing the producer off and not muah. *sigh*
