Parks and Recreation!

I had an interesting day yesterday.

In addition to radio work, I also freelance as 'talent' for Artistic Enterprises. What that means is that occasionally I audition to be on tv commercials, training videos, and stuff like that.

I received an email a couple of days ago from the agency, asking that I be at the statehouse for a video shoot involving the Indiana Department of Parks and Recreation.

So I get dressed up in an outfit that I haven't worn since my TV traffic reporting days and meet with 15 other people who were also asked to be there. No one knew exactly what was going on. We all thought it was a political commercial, or some kind of public service announcement.

After we all gathered in the lobby, we were ushered to the house chamber. Still no clue as to what was happening. I had never been to the statehouse before, not even on a school tour. I was soaking all this in, taking pics with my phone.

Once we got inside the chamber, all of us had to sign releases. That's when it hit us. On the release, I saw the words, "NBC" and "Parks and Rec". At that moment, we realized that this was no ordinary assignment. We were going to be extras on the hit NBC show!!! Clearly a mistake was made somewhere, at least as far as my involvement here is concerned.

We were told that we are supposed to act like politicians pretending to listen to a speech at the podium, and we are supposed to be bored as we listen. 15 people  were scattered around the chamber sitting in random chairs.

I was lucky enough to have a different assignment. I got to be a photographer pretending to take pictures of Amy Poehler. So while everyone else was sitting around, I actually got to move around a little bit.

WTHR, the NBC affiliate, was there as well doing a story about the whole thing. I got to talk to reporter Kevin Rader and told him about how I got involved in the shoot. I again stressed how some kind of mistake has been made, and what the heck was I doing there?

What an experience! For about 2 hours all I did was take a bunch of fake pictures of an empty podium. I was a little nervous at first, but once we got started, the time flew by. When we finished, everyone looked at each other as if to say, "That's it?"

The footage that was shot is going to be used in the show next season. A part of the chamber is going to be re-created in Hollywood. Then the stuff that was shot here will be combined with the stuff there. All in all I'll probably be an inch tall on your tv when the episode airs.

So..how much did I make? Well I honestly don't know yet. I did get reimbursed $14 for parking!

So I've got THAT going for me...which is nice.