ASHEVILLE, N.C. For Kevin Patrick Murphy, Asheville actors seeking stardom on big — or small — screens need more than personal drive.
They also have to be, well, “willing to drive,” said Murphy, an actor with 20 years of experience who moved to the area five years ago.
Aspiring and established actors like Murphy are choosing to settle in Asheville for the quality of life, and travel sometimes hundreds of miles for work on film and commercial sets throughout the Southeast.
“The amount of work I have had since moving to Asheville is ridiculous,” said Murphy, who moved here from Los Angeles. In the last year, Murphy booked acting jobs in six major television series, three parts on films and three commercials.
“Most of it, unfortunately, is out-of-town,” he said. “It is really nice and a nice treat when it is here, but most of the work is in Charlotte or Atlanta.”
Murphy also runs The Actor’s Center of Asheville, one of several acting schools that have opened in the past five years and have spearheaded the growth and success of the region’s film acting community.
One of Murphy’s students worked on the “The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1,” and is one of several local actors in two blockbuster films in local theaters this week, including “Dumb and Dumber To.”
Both movies were filmed partly in Atlanta, which is quickly becoming the Hollywood of the Southeast.
The first film in the “The Hunger Games” series was filmed in Western North Carolina in summer 2011, and sparked a new wave of hopeful actors in the area.
Jennifer Trudrung is a part of that wave, who since first working as an extra in “The Hunger Games,” has gone on to act in a variety of regional television shows, film projects and commercials.
“We all started with ‘The Hunger Games,” she said of a group of friends she made during the production in Shelby and Charlotte. “Now it’s our career.”
Trudrung recently signed with an agent and has been taking lessons at The Actor’s Center of Asheville for about a year.
“There is a huge acting community here,” she said. “I think there are many opportunities to enrich your craft, work on your craft, make connections and move forward.”
Trudrung was cast as an injured citizen at a hospital in District 8. “It was really cool,” she said. “I got lucky. I got to be right in the middle of the action. I am sitting right next to someone with a speaking line.”
Trudrung also worked on 2013’s “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” which recreated the fantasy world of Suzanne Collins’ best-selling science fiction adventure trilogy in Atlanta and Hawaii. “The Hunger Games: The Mockingjay — Part 1” filmed again in Atlanta, as well as Boston and Los Angeles.
CITIZEN-TIMES
‘Mockingjay Part 1’-I know why the caged Katniss whines
She also got to have a total “geek out moment,” she said. “I had a burn on my arm and it wasn’t reading well (on camera), so (makeup artist) Ve Neill came over to fix my burns.”
Neill, who has won three Academy Awards, also appears on “Face Off,” a special-effects reality TV show on SyFy. “I left the experience really enjoying the creation of the scene,” Trudrung said. “It is so cool when you can be so close up to the magic.”
Trudrung’s face appears in one of the promotional shots for “Mockingjay,” which has made more than $370 million worldwide.
Still, she said, she tries not to think too much about whether or not she will actually appear on the big screen during the filming.
16-hour days
It’s one of the realities of background acting work — or, really, any acting job. Even a star’s entire role can be cut from a final film, like Kevin Costner in “The Big Chill.”
And all that effort comes with financial and time expenses. She noted most of her work is in Atlanta, so she has to factor in the cost of travel and lodging when making decisions about a role.
“You have to really want to work on the set,” Trudrung said.
Background work is “very intense and there can be very long days,” she said. On some sets, she’s spent 16 hours working, with about six hours of that shift sitting in a makeup chair.
Pay can vary wildly based on the productions, as well as if an actor is a member of the SAG-AFTA, an American labor union representing more than 100,000 television, film and background actors.
Here’s an example: A background performer can make between $124 daily, with $23.25 per hour overtime, according to the CW Supplement Wage Tables from SAG-AFTA. A performer can make $880, and a weekly performer can make $3,053.
“I love doing background work, but I got more picky,” Trudrung said. “You are more of an observer (when you are doing background work).”
Now, she’s ready to be a performer. “I have the capability and the confidence to do this.”
Trudrung’s friend and colleague Marsha van Rijssen also discovered her love for film acting through “The Hunger Games,” and also worked on the movie’s sequels.
“It’s a huge commitment to drive to Atlanta,” said van Rijssen. But it’s worth it, she said, because “I am a true fan of the series — that is what brought me in the first place.”
She stays with family when she works in Atlanta. “It takes a lot of support,” she said.
For “Mockingjay,” van Rijssen worked as a citizen of District 5 in the dystopian post-apocalyptic nation of Panem. She was part of a group that sang an emotional song.
“The scene is so powerful,” she said. “It was really beautiful.”
And — as a literal bonus — she got a “singing bump” on her paycheck for working as a background actor.
Since her work on “The Hunger Games,” van Rijssen has a new appreciation for filmmaking.
“It changes how you see a movie, for better or worse,” she said. “Seeing what these people do seven days a week, 16 hours a day, I understand now why you have to pay $10 for a movie.”
Van Rijssen focuses more on commercial work part time. “I haven’t been able to go full-force pursuing acting classes and instructions,” she said. She’s worked on a local commercial for jewelry boutique Jewels that Dance, as well as national campaigns for Lowes and Ivory soap.
CITIZEN-TIMES
Zach Galifianakis Asheville film gets a new name
Jon Menick, of Screen Artists Co-op, says about 15-20 percent of the actors he works with will work as performers full time.
“Others have other part-time jobs or full-time jobs,” he said. One actor, for instance, runs his own catering company, so he can set his own hours to accommodate days on set and in the kitchen.
Lindsay Ayliffe left his career in advertising to pursue voice acting, and eventually roles in television in film.
A Florida native, his dreams of living in Asheville predate his passion for acting.
“I have always wanted to live in the mountains,” he said. “My heart is really up in the mountains.”
He drove down to Atlanta recently to work on “Dumb and Dumber To.” He appears as Professor Garabedian in the film, which has made more than $84 million worldwide.
“There’s this big audience of nerds and I am giving a lecture on particles, black holes, dark matter,” he said. “Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels are heckling me.”
Ayliffe also worked on television shows like “Nashville,” “Banshee” and “Charlotte,” which have both filmed in Charlotte, and “Reckless,” which films in Charleston.
He’s also worked as a professional voice actor since 1995.
“As a voice actor, I would get asked all the time why I didn’t move to New York or Los Angeles,” he said. “And I would tell them ‘why would I go there and compete with them there?'”
He can practice his lines in his beautiful backyard in the Beaverdam Valley, he said, and professionally record his audition and upload it into an online resource that casting agents and producers access for jobs.
And, Ayliffe noted, “I like to drive.”
‘Thank God for Atlanta’
Atlanta is about a three-and-a-half hour drive from Asheville, and is a professional second home for many Asheville actors.
According to Georgia Gov. Nathan Deal, 158 feature film and television productions were filmed in fiscal year 2014, with most concentrated in Atlanta.
“Thank God for Atlanta,” Menick said.
One reason for the development: Georgia has one of the most innovative film incentive packages for productions that spend at least $500,000. It starts with a 20 percent tax credit, but more tax credits can be added if the final product includes a promotional logo for the state, for instance.
North Carolina’s tax credit program will expire at the end of 2014.
The replacement $10 million grant program will be in effect for the first six months of 2015. It requires a $5 million minimum investment for feature films and $250,000 for television series and commercials. It also has a $5 million per-project cap for all productions.
The program was part of the state budget, and the on-its-way-out film tax credit program gives a 25 percent refund to productions that spend more than $250,000, with a payout cap of $20 million for most productions and no monetary limit on TV series.
In the new grant program, the N.C. Film Office is now part of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, a new private nonprofit corporation that’s handling state government’s business recruiting, marketing and tourism function.
Filming in and around Asheville
Amanda Baranski, director of the Western North Carolina Film Commission, says the agency has assisted seven projects since 2011 that have taken advantage of the expiring tax incentive package.
The most well-known is the blockbuster “The Hunger Games,” released in 2012, but also includes “The World Made Straight,” an adaptation of a book by WNC-based author Ron Rash, as well as the horror movie “Honeymoon,” released this fall. Both titles were shot last year.
Director David Burris, a North Carolina native who now lives in Los Angeles, “explored a couple different places” for “The World Made Straight,” which will be released Jan. 9.
“Our best bet creatively, logistically was do it actually where (the book) was set,” Burris said. The production worked in Madison, Buncombe and Henderson counties, including Marshall, Weaverville, Leicester, Arden and Black Mountain.
Burris hired a variety of local crew and talent for the three-month-long filming, calling them “just outstanding.”
“Our key hairdresser was from Madison County, and we would ask her what would be believable” for the 1970s characters, like if a farm boy then would wear a watch, he said. They also hired a dialect coach from Appalachian State University.
“I can’t wait to shoot in Asheville again,” he said.
In 2012, the commission assisted with the completion of 14 projects; in 2014, it has helped with 26 projects, Baranski said.
This summer, Zach Galifianakis, Kristen Wiig and Owen Wilson shot “Masterminds” in and around Asheville. The comedy from Relativity is set to be released domestically Aug. 14.
“It’s going to be a whole new ballgame,” Baranski said of the grant program. “We will see how the film industry responds to the program.”
Murphy said he’s not scared of the changes. “We might not have (as many films) at our back door,” he said. “It may slow us down a bit, but there is plenty of work around us.”
Some productions have moved from North Carolina to states with better tax credits or film incentives, such as the Cinemax series “Banshee.” It formerly filmed in Charlotte, and both Trudrung and Ayliffe worked as extras or featured extras in the series.
In August, the production announced it was moving to Louisiana in 2015, and cited the reduced film incentives. Murphy said casting agencies, however, will often be loyal to actors they’ve worked with in the past — even if they now live states away from an ongoing project.
“The idea of loyalty is what I really teach my students about,” he said. “I teach them to create relationships with casting directors.”
For Menick of the Screen Artists Co-op, “North Carolina is not dead — (film tax credits) is not a dead issue,” he emphasized. “Anybody in this region has to work in the region.”
He doesn’t think the tax credit changes will hamper the momentum of actors in his training program or talent agency, either.
“When I moved here, the general tone for the agents in this region was that this was a black hole,” said Menick, who founded the school in August 2012. ” … We have uncovered a treasure trove.”
Richard Handy launched New York Studio for Stage and Screen in 2012. The conservatory isn’t just training Asheville locals — it’s attracting people from around the country.
“We have people who are moving here for the program,” Handy said. “We have people from five states who commute every week (for classes).”
Others have flown from California to be a part of weekend workshops, for example.
In the next few weeks, Handy will launch a new performance website for Asheville and the region, which will include a dedicated space for information about casting calls throughout the Southeast.
“There are so many different places that actors have to look for opportunities,” he said.
