Chapter 649 (1/2)

“We’ll begin after you change into the clothes you have brought.”

Maru changed into a shirt that the staff provided for him. The other background actors changed into the clothes they brought as well before gathering up.

“It should be fine if we don’t change our clothes. I mean, we just walk by, don’t we?”

“That’s true, but people in the audience with good eyes can catch it. If someone that just walked by walks around the main characters wearing the same clothes, it breaks the immersion. That’s why they change the clothes of the background actors so that they don’t look like the same person as much as possible. They might change their hairstyle too.”

Maru responded with that to the woman wearing glasses, who was standing next to him. She said that this was her first time doing this part time job, and that she didn’t know much. As this job didn’t require any special skills or a long time investment, there were many people who chose to do this job as a part time job. Most of the time, they only do it once, but there were quite a lot of people who did this for a living.

“Oh, I know how that feels. It does bother you.”

The woman with glasses nodded. Another woman, who had freckles, spoke after listening for a while.

“Me too. I usually don’t care about things like that, but once I do catch one, I keep looking for people in the background instead of focusing on the main characters. If I find the same person again, then it’s fun because it feels like I found a flaw in a jade or something.”

“Right, that’s how it feels.”

The two clicked with each other since they were friends. Behind the two was the woman with the sleeveless shirt. Her name was Choi Minae, huh. She was looking at the director like a lovestruck girl. She was clearly obsessed. Maru wondered just how shameless a person could be.

“The shoot is getting delayed.”

It had been thirty minutes since they were told to gather, but the camera wasn’t showing any signs of rolling. The director had been talking to the camera director for 10 minutes now. Maru couldn’t hear their conversation, but from the expression on the director’s face, it didn’t seem like things were going smoothly.

“But hey. Do we always have to wait so long?”

The one who asked was a man wearing a baseball cap. He was in his fifties, and he said that the grocery store he was running went out of business and that he came across this job while looking for a job. He was a man who had to quit the business he had nurtured from scratch and then jump into a totally different field. Maru could only treat this man well since he willingly stood up to fight against unfamiliarity in order to solve the basic problem that was living. A father, or a husband with a family to take care of would probably feel the same as him.

“You said that the first place you went to was a drama shooting scene, right? In Seoul.”

“Yeah, that’s right. Back then, I sat around in a large hall for around one or two hours, I think? I just drank some canned drinks while feeling the cool air from the air conditioner. After that, they just told me to go home since they were done. It was so easy that it made me wonder if that was really okay.”

“It really depends on your luck. There are some where you get to sit around casually before leaving, and there are some, like this one, where you have to slave away under the sun. If you’re planning to do this in the long term, you should register yourself at a company and get close to the leader. Also, avoid historical films in the summer and winter.”

“Are historical dramas that hard?”

“It can’t be helped. There’s the outfit as well, but the more important thing is that most of the shoot happens away from the capital, so the trip takes a lot of time and energy as well. Doing it during Spring and Autumn is relatively okay, but if you run around wearing armor under weather like this, you might be having an interview with the grim reaper. He’d probably ask why you came so early when it’s not your time.”

“I’ll remember that. Thanks for telling me all this. I was kinda nervous last time because I didn’t know anything. The younger people moved around busily as though they knew something, but I didn’t know anything.”

“I was also dazed when I first worked this job. I just found out some tricks after doing it for a while. If you feel like you can adapt to this job, it’s not a bad idea to keep doing it. I’ve seen many people who’ve started off as background actors before proceeding to become minor actors. It’s easier if you’re older because the industry people would call out to people who are known to be decent.”

“Do you think I can keep doing this job? I’m not sure about standing still like this, but I don’t think I can do anything that requires me to move around busily. Acting is not my thing either.”

“You don’t have to worry that much. It’s just like selling groceries. It might make you feel embarrassed and might make you wonder why you have to smile at strangers in order to sell your stuff, but after you keep doing it, you end up smiling naturally and become a smooth talker, am I wrong? It might seem rather cocky of me to say this since I’m young, but the jobs in this world are generally similar.”

The man with the baseball cap nodded with a faint smile. When he finished talking, Maru realized that people had gathered around him. They were the people who had gotten to know each other during break time while chatting with each other. Another woman started speaking, saying that she had a tip as well. Following that, other people gave their tips and precautions as well. They talked about this background acting job in this small network that had formed.

“If you\\\'re not doing this short-term, then it wouldn\\\'t be bad to exchange contact info and share things now and then. The place I worked at before did things like that. It works like this: the leader would get access to where people could work, and then they would send out information and get people to contact each other. People get their work from each other, and it’s also easier to have someone else fill in for you if you can’t make it to a certain job on short notice.”

Maru added that midway.

“So it’s like a fishing net huh. I was actually thinking about doing this properly, so I’d love to have people I can contact.”

“Me too. I’m trying to do this in the long run.”

“I’m not going to do it that often, but I hope I can get to know a lot of people. We can help each other out when we have a hard time.”

“Should we exchange numbers? I think that’s a good idea.”

“Well, they say you can’t have too much information.”

About fifteen people gathered in a circle before starting to exchange numbers. Maru quietly looked at them. Due to the nature of background acting, there were a lot of cases where the actors were bossed around by the brokers. Since it wasn’t a regular job, it was hard for the workers to form a relationship with each other, and as a result of that, they would scatter and work individually. In the market, an individual worker was just a target of exploitation so there were a lot of cases where they would get scammed. He had also seen many cases where the leader just took ‘fees’ and did not give them any work. This happened because the individual workers did not have access to the bare minimum amount of information. However, these people were probably going to be okay now. Once they shared information among themselves, they would no longer be scammed out of their hard-earned money.

“Hey, what about you?”

That voice was directed at Maru. Many eyes were looking at him.

“It was you who talked about it. Since it’s like that, let\\\'s exchange numbers and share information if we come across one. Or perhaps you don’t plan to do this job long term?”

“Maybe he’s only here for today because he’s still young?”