115. Inside the Commercial's Residual

Tiwana Floyd shares the experience of booking her first national commercial. Going form a bad audition, to the receiving residuals and finally the unexpected halt when the residual send because the commercial stops airing.

:: About Tiwana ::

Tiwana Floyd is a Los Angeles-based actor, improviser, writer, and content creator. Acting Lessons Learned is her love letter to her Actor Frens, to assist them in navigating the working actor system while reminding them they are not alone in their show business experiences.

Tiwana's personal stories about the lessons she's learned along the way in her 20-year acting journey can be cringy, comedic, uplifting, and sometimes sad. Still, all to enlighten the listener on the peaks and valleys of being an actor. 

This podcast is for actors of any age at any career level. It's also for non-actors curious to learn what an actor on the rise endures to grow a career.

Learn more about Tiwana Floyd at https://www.tiwanafloyd.com 

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Transcript

Today, I will talk about booking my first national commercial for Goodnites. A pull-up pamper for toddlers. I'll share the lessons learned from three poignant aspects of that booking. 

• The audition, which didn't go well to 
• Receiving residuals for the first time, for two years straight 
• The gut punch when the commercial stopped airing, and the money stopped flowing. 

Let's Go!

(music)

Hello Actor Fren. Welcome to Acting Lessons Learned. Thank you for spending your listening time with me. If you're new here, I'm Tiwana Floyd, the creator, and host of Acting Lessons Learned. I share intimate details of things I've learned in my acting journey that helped me move the needle forward, backward, or laterally toward becoming a working actor in Los Angeles. I'm doing a series of my commercial career experiences since that is where most of my income resides.

Booking television commercials, specifically national commercials, is a highly coveted job by many actors and sometimes non-actors who understand the payday connected to being in one. 

Everyone speaks so happily about receiving residuals. "Oh, you've got to book a national commercial because then you'll receive residuals, and you'll be financially stable." Which, to a degree, is true. But no one talks about when the commercial stops airing and the money you grew so accustomed to receiving every week stops. It's like a death occurred, and the seven stages of grief set in. And there was nothing to prepare me for that, and because I took it for granted, the money would always come. I didn't properly prepare for that harsh reality of a complete stop and was back in debt shortly after that. 

Before I descend into this topic, If you haven't already, go back and listen to episode 102, "Agent Termination, Time to go," where I share some backstory of this Goodnites commercial booking I'll be speaking on today, which also led to me terminating the agent who submitted me for this commercial and also how this commercial provided me a Taft Hartley, that made me SAG-AFTRA eligible. 

But here's a brief synopsis. I began my commercial career in NYC as a non-union actor and moved to LA in 2005, where I believed I would book a national commercial and become SAG eligible through a Taft-hartley from a commercial. That was my vision. That was my thought, and I believed it would happen, and it did. Because we become what we think about.

And then, listen to episode number 113, "Commercial Career Starter Kit," where I talk about how I began my trajectory to becoming a commercial actor. I made a decision in the early 2000s to become a commercial actor. 

I bolstered that decision by constructing multiple intentional actions to make it a reality, especially when I moved from NYC to Los Angeles. 

I'm going to jump back to the year 2007 when I was a non-union actor, right before I booked a GoodNites spot.

The opportunity to audition for this job came on the heels of me taking a leap of faith, quitting, or instead downgrading from a full-time to a weekend-only job. I was still determining how I was going to make ends meet. 

I didn't move to LA to work a full-time job, especially a stressful one that robbed me of my daily energy. Because I had complete faith in God being my only source and a catalog of Tony Robbins' "Hour of Power" CDs on my iPod classic that I listened to every morning. I reached a point of doubtlessness that it was time for me to stop being broke working for a corporation and put all my faith and energy into my ability to build a commercial career in LA. I decided to bet the house on myself. If I was going to be broke, I'd be better off being broke, tryna to build an acting career, instead of giving 40-50 hours away to a company that wasn't paying me enough while they were becoming increasingly affluent. 

Around this time, I was introduced to The Secret, a metaphysical documentary about the law of manifestation, and I began learning about the laws of the universe and ancient wisdom. While many people deemed the film to be a farce, for me, it was the directive that steered me to believe I could make my dream happen by 

• Focusing on what I wanted
• Taking the daily right action toward that goal
• Believing it was already happening 
• While leaving space for the universe to make provisions. 

Side note: I've adopted a theory into my approach to pretty much everything in life. It's called Pareto Principle. The Pareto principle states that for many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Also known as the 80/20 rule, the law of the vital few, or the principle of factor sparsity. I spend 20% of my energy doing my due diligence to make things happen, and I leave the other 80% to the universe provide. I know some people like to use the word woo-woo. I do not use that word. I am an unabashed believer in universal law. It works for me. I understand it doesn't work for others, and that is okay. I'm sharing my belief system to help you better understand my thought process. 

In 2007, I was offered a time slot at a casting office for a straight-to-callbacks audition for the Goodnites commercial. It was an end-of-day audition, the sun was setting, I had worked nine hours at my spirit-crushing, energy-zapping, low-paying job, and I was one of the last to go in as a mom with one of the two remaining nine-year-old boys. 

It was not a great audition for me. The kid I went in with was not cooperative. I could sense he wasn't wholeheartedly interested in being a child actor. He didn't listen to the director or me and was borderline cantankerous. Perhaps he was tired or hungry or simply didn't want to be there. But I continued trying to be a loving mom even though he was being a child jerk. 

I get annoyed by those parents who just throw their kids into acting, knowing full well their kids don't actually want to be actors. What's worse is the parents usually have yet to learn what it takes for their kid to be a cooperative partner in an audition or may not have put them into acting classes to get training. 

Then after the audition, the parent will look to me, the adult actor, to validate their kid's ability. I don't believe in sugarcoating the truth, especially when my time has been wasted. So, I'd either leave abruptly if I could sense the parent was going to ask me if their kid was great in the room, or I'd candidly tell them their child didn't seem interested in participating today. But, when I work with kids who genuinely enjoy the process of auditioning and acting and we have fun in the room, I will commend the kid to the parent if the parent asks.

Some people may find it harsh for me to say these things or to call a child a jerk, but sometimes kids are jerks, and sometimes the kids don't want to be actors. And it sucks for anyone who has to audition with a disinterested child because we're the ones who usually get dismissed from consideration. And someone is listening to this saying, Yup. So I'm not the only one who feels this way. 

As an adult putting everything on the line to have a career in commercials, television and film, I was internally aggravated during this particular audition. In theatre games, actors are taught not to judge what's happening in the scene but to experience the scene from the character's perspective and do what we can to overcome the situation. So, during this audition, I wouldn't show my frustration while the camera was running. I held it in until I left the building. Of course, without giving the 9-year-old boy's mother feedback because sometimes I'm just too mad, and also, it's not my job to do so.

An actor never truly knows what it is that books us the job. But I have to believe remaining loving as a mother in the audition worked in my favor. And when I received the call that I had booked the job, I was surprised because I was confident that the little child jerk had ruined my opportunity. But I was mostly excited because I did it. I finally booked the national commercial I'd desired for five years. All the work, the 20% of the work, all the close but no cigars. I had finally booked it. And I was frightened by the unknown and what it would be like. Which is a common occurrence of most people in general. I was also scared of who they had cast me with. Would it be the child jerk I auditioned with? If so, I would have a long, laborious shoot day having to wrangle that kid for eight long hours. Which happened to me in future bookings. 

Fortunately, I was paired with a different kid named Lucky. He was the last kid to go in after I left the audition. Lucky's mom had recently moved to LA from Florida to support Lucky's dream of becoming an actor. And he was such a joy to work with. If you want to see the commercial, go to Tiwana floyd Creative on Instagram, and scroll down to the video cover labeled Goodnites. You'll see how cute and how great of an actor Lucky was as a child.

Off the top of my head, I can't recall the turn-around time from shoot to air. I would need to pull up my commercial files from 2007, but it was short. When that commercial began to air, I would receive ample residual checks every week. Ranging from $600 to $5000. Each week varied. My agent offered the option for me to have the checks mailed to me or pick them up. Their office was ten minutes away, so I opted to pick up the residual checks, and they were ready every Friday. Doing so gave me weekly facetime with my agent, and we'd have quick moments to chit-chat. 

It was thrilling to get a call from my then-agent to come to pick up a check every Friday. It was the big pay-off I dreamed of that so many people spoke about.

Sometimes you have to be in the experience to understand how things work. I didn't know there were different categories of commercial runs. 

• Class A means it runs on all major networks during a peak time of watch nationally and is the biggest payout of the other types.
• Regional runs in smaller local regions
• Cable self-explanatory
• Industrials meant in-house or conventions to doctor offices.
• Wild-spot I don't have the time on this podcast to explain what this is, and quite frankly, I'd have to use all ten fingers and ten toes along with your ten fingers and toes to calculate it. 

And there are more categories to date, but this is from 2007. 

I wanted help understanding the discrepancy in the earning amounts and decided to call the payroll company to better understand. 

First, there is a protocol for getting the right representative to assist me. I'm glad I began the call by explaining I was a new actor trying to understand my check stubs. 

Because I was in an isolated experience, it hadn't occurred to me that this payroll company dealt with 1000s of commercials and all the actors that were paid by this payroll company. 

The receptionist asked me for codes that were listed on the check stub. These codes helped her discern which department to transfer me to. When I was put through to the appropriate representative, I learned my commercial was a money maker. It was "Class A, Regional, Cable, Industrial and Wild Spot. The payroll company's rep congratulated me on my first national commercials and said I'd be making top-dollar because the Goodnites spot was in all of these categories.

She explained the 21-week MPU (Maximum Period of Use), the equivalent of quarters in a year. The commercial runs for a 21-week MPU. At the start of that 21 weeks, I would receive the highest earnings in Class A because each run had a higher dollar amount attached to it, but with each run, the earning dollar amount declines but allows for the spot to run more frequently and longer. At the end of the 21 weeks, a new 21-week MPU starts, and the cycle regenerates. 

I learned that cable was a lump sum at the end of its run term, and like I said Wild-Spot, which I'm convinced is called that cuz it's wild and hard to determine. But that also would be paid in a lump sum. 

What should have been mentioned, and even if I had the wherewithal to ask, was when the commercial would stop airing, but the rep would not be able to answer because the company, aka the brand or client, is the only one who knows that answer. 

The contract for a commercial is two years, but the actor, the agent the payroll company won't know when it will stop. It may run a few months, the entire term, or never run at all. Also, the actor can be edited out of the final edit altogether. What is known as the out-grade or down-grade, and when that happens, there are no residual payouts. It's happened to me three times back to back. It was a devastating blow because I thought I lacked the skills to make the cut. I later learned that it happened more often than not. Especially when there are more than 2 principal actors. 

A pull-up pamper for toddlers probably made the lives of many mothers throughout America easier. I was fortunate to experience an entire two-year run of this Goodnites commercial. Certain products require a broad reach and a long run. Because either the product is so commonly used or sometimes more cost-efficient for a commercial to run for years and get re-negotiated for another 2 years than to spend another several million dollars to shoot another one. 

 And when my contract was up with Goodnites, I was released. And those checks for various dollars that I'd been receiving for two years stopped abruptly. No warning. Just done. 

I felt like I was addicted to the routine of getting a call from the agent that "Tiwana, you have a check here. Do you want to pick it up?" Now, it was over. 

That Full-time job I left before booking the commercial didn't pay me a living wage. I had to supplement my income with a part-time job and sometimes credit cards. And I didn't save a whole lot of those earnings, mainly because I was paying off the credit card debt I accrued from working that job I left. Becoming solvent was a top priority with those residuals, next to my living expenses. If I had it to do over. I would've found a better paying, better work-balance job in conjunction with receiving commercial residuals. Having two significant incomes would have set me up for what would happen next. The writer's strike of 2008 that shut the industry down. Union people were out of work. I got a part-time job at Apple the Grove. And then the economy crashed, and then the SAG stalemate. Most people working in Hollywood took financial upper-cuts that we had a hard time recovering from. It took me two years to get back on my feet. It took me 3 to book my next national commercial. One of the reasons. I didn't join SAG right away. And when I did, I wasn't mentally prepared to contend with season union actors.

In my next episode, I'll share what I experienced once I joined SAG ( I say SAG because the unions hadn't merged yet). I'll also share how I psychologically prepared myself to be a top-contending SAG actor. And the most significant commitment that changed my commercial success for the better. 

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If you want to be a commercial actor, just know it is not far-fetched. It is attainable. It takes time. But you can do it too.

Until next time, Bye