Tag Archives: los angeles

Dealing with Homesickness

November 9, 2015 Shelly Hacco

By Kevin Paley

I recall being thirteen years old when I visited my oldest cousin in college. I couldn’t wait to hear stories about what crazy college life is like. In Portland, Connecticut, where very little changes and everyone is white and middle-class, the prospect of college was the golden opportunity to leave small-town life behind. However, I recall being shocked at how serious my cousin Jillian, a sophomore at Syracuse University, was about homesickness. At the time, I figured that girls were just more sensitive to that kind of stuff than guys.

Fast-forward to being seventeen and applying for colleges. Aiming for a degree in Theatre, I auditioned for four east coast schools that would keep me close to home and one out in the other worldly west – the University of Southern California. I had no intention of actually going to school in Los Angeles but figured that my application would give my family a good scare and give me a good fantasy to get through the last years of high school.

As luck would have it, USC offered me enough financial aid to make rejecting this school impossible. Life got real; I shipped out in August of 2008 to see what LA had to offer.

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L.A. Life

Bridging Old and New

September 21, 2015 Shelly Hacco

By Zachary Cantrell

Earlier this month, I closed my first professional show in Los Angeles with Downtown Repertory Theatre’s production of William Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing. Though one of The Bard’s most treasured comedies, this production was far from typical. In an attempt to bring the story to a modern audience we decided to contemporize it, setting it in an Orange County luxury resort called The Messina.

And what better place to put on this show than Olvera Street?

Also referred to as El Pueblo De Los Angeles, Olvera Street is considered the birthplace of the City of Angels. It is a place
that seems simultaneously frozen in time and humming with everyday modern Los Angeles activity. I did not know what to make of it. Business men and women bustle to and from Union Station (located across the street), and tourists snap pictures of themselves on the back of a painted stone donkey, while local families salsa dance in the square. On this tiny street, all walks of life mix and weave among each other, creating a bizarre collage of Los Angeles life.

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L.A. Life

Fading Into the Background

September 11, 2015 Shelly Hacco

By Kevin Jiang

Living in Los Angeles, you are bound to see a celebrity or two walking around. I mean, Hollywood is the heart of the film industry and you can’t walk a block without seeing some sort of filming activity. Consequently, this summer I came upon an interesting opportunity to be a background actor.

To quickly explain, background actors , or “extras”, are all those silent people in TV shows or movies that walk around in the background, cheer in a crowd, fill a party, or sit in a café. Whether you notice them or not, these “extras” are an important part of filmmaking. They make the action on screen believable.

I only got into the background business a couple weeks ago, but I’ve already worked on multiple sets, from the long-running television staple NCIS, to tween programming on Nick and Disney, to a small unannounced feature film. The experience, besides teaching me EXTREME patience due to sitting and waiting for hours upon hours until needed on set, has also given me an appreciation for all the work and coordination that goes on behind the scenes of a TV show or film. I mean, you’ve all seen the credits that roll after a show or movie has ended and you’ve probably wondered, “Who are these people?” Being there on set and witnessing the intricate network of communication and the complicated set-ups for lights, sound, and camera, I fully comprehended the importance of each individual and their role in the crew.

To film a single scene, you’ve got your actors, of course, whose job it is to come prepared, but then there’s also the hair and make-up artists who must execute the vision of each character’s aesthetic, and the lighting and sound crews who are in charge of creating the perfect atmosphere and ensuring the sound quality, and the camera crew who needs to get the exact angle and camera movement. And, last but not least, you have the background actors who must get into place and know exactly what to do when the camera starts rolling. All together, it feels like organized chaos, like when musicians in an orchestra all tune their instruments at the same time. Of course, however dissonant the sound is while they prepare, the cacophony is immediately forgotten once the conductor raises his wand and leads the ensemble in melodic harmony.