Commercial

I filmed a commercial last Friday and it's left me a bit shaken.  Because it turned out to be wickedly difficult, and although every person involved was overwhelmingly nice to me, I left feeling inept.  Inept at the thing I do to earn money.

Now, I'm trying to give myself a break.  I'm still fairly new at the commercial world, and there were some mitigating factors that made it harder than it had to be.  The text I had to say was pretty long for the 8 seconds they wanted me to say it in, and although they were very very specific about the words, they'd waited on purpose to give me the script about an hour, maybe two hours earlier.  They do this on purpose, because they don't want you to memorize it in a certain way and be unable to change, but sadly, I sort of did get stuck saying it a certain way because my brain was always scrambling frantically to remember what came next so emphasizing certain words gave my poor brain catch-up time.

All of the above are excuses.  My job was to say a string of words in the right order in 8 seconds however these people wanted them said.  And I found that very very difficult, and it's possible I did not succeed, that they just gave up and took "good enough" because it was clear I wasn't capable of anything else.  Not that I'm sure that's true, I just know that is a possibility.

BUT I'm still trying to give myself a break.  The poise and concentration you need to execute these scripts are learned skills, and they are hard to attain when you're also just frightened to death, when the pressure and lights and attention are all on.  I didn't have them last Friday, and I suspect the resulting ad will be hard to watch, to say the least.  But maybe next time I'll feel more confident?  I can hope so.

"A pupil in the art of walking a tightrope, fearing every moment he will fall, cannot be expected to achieve the easy smile of the adept."

I can hope for the easy smile, but I'll have to earn it the hard way.