On July 16th, 2010, I got to work on Day 1 of filming for the new Joseph Gordon-Levitt feature film, "Premium Rush." It's an action/thriller, and here's the plot according to IMDB:
An action story set in New York City, where a bike messenger picks up a package at Columbia University and subsequently catches the attention of a dirty cop.
The scene that I worked on takes place in China, and I played a Chinese person who was trying to get illegally smuggled into the U.S. Since filming takes place in NYC, we had to act in front of a green screen, which will most likely be projecting the image of a China port. Since having lost a lot of weight in the past few months, none of my old clothes fit, so I had to purchase new clothes for wardrobe options. However, I'm now small enough to fit into the wardrobe that they have, and actually wore a top picked out for me from wardrobe. It resembled something my grandmother wore, and I got to wear some huge very 80's-looking glasses. I was quite a fashion fiend on set, and actually, the 2nd Assistant Director loved my ensemble the most out of all the other background actors!
One really cool thing about being a part of these film shoots is the "movie magic" that happens on set. For this shoot, they created "rain," and we basically got drenched. It was actually very nice and quite welcoming, considering that it was 90 degrees out. We all wanted them to bring on the rain!
What made this shoot special was for me was that I RECEIVED MY VERY FIRST SAG WAIVER!!! I had never received one before, so needless to say, I was SUPER PSYCHED when I saw that this was a gig that was waivering non-SAG. It was really nice to be treated/paid as Union talent, and even though I still need 2 more SAG waivers to earn my SAG card, it feels AWESOME to know that I'm now on their radar!
