-By Janet Raiffa, Recruiting Manager & Writer of The 405 Club featured series “Janet Raiffa’s Recessionals.”

As a lifelong penny-pincher and film buff I’ve always relished any opportunity to go to the movies for free.  I’ve found a number of ways to get complimentary tickets, ranging from signing up for preview screenings hawked outside of movie theaters to calling or emailing for passes advertised in “New York Magazine,” “Entertainment Weekly,” “The Village Voice” and “The New York Times.”  The venerable newspaper provided me with the best extravaganza possible; last year I won tickets to a Hollywood style premiere for “Made of Honor,” and received a number of accompanying freebies: a tee-shirt, bottle of bubbles, popcorn, soda, movie poster, admission to an after party and the opportunity to sit in restricted bleachers and watch Patrick Demspey and his sumptuous hair work the red carpet.

In my quest for part-time work and entertainment while hunting for a new job, I’ve recently found an even better free cinema opportunity – the chance to get paid for going to the movies.  This may sound too good to be true, but the catch is a fairly innocuous one.   You don’t make a lot of money for this desirable task; the pay rate ranges from $5.00 to about $12.50 an hour or for each assignment.  I found the company offering this gig indirectly through Odd Job Nation, a website offering very motley and frequently suspect opportunities for the enterprising unemployed.  If you’ve followed my “Recessionals” you’ll know that I worked up the nerve to take on one odd job from this listing, and ended up spending three days being berated by an essentially homeless supervisor for a less than minimum wage.  A fair number of the jobs advertised here also require service in bikinis, lingerie or a well toned 18-to-25 year old birthday suit.  I modestly prefer to work in business casual attire.  Odd Job Nation does, however, feature a number of interesting sections on its main landing page, and the “Articles” banner brought me to a “Time Out” article detailing a number of creative and legitimate ways to make extra cash.  It was here that I discovered the path to becoming a Certified Field Associate.

Certified Field Associate is a national field organization providing auditing and mystery shopping services in 49 states (if you live in Nevada you’re out of luck, and may have to turn to gambling or legalized prostitution to generate extra cash).  The projects that Certified Field Associates (CFAs) can register for fall into three categories: merchandising, retail auditing, and theater checking.  Merchandising tasks include: display set up and maintenance, restocking and replenishing, out-of-stock reporting, and general inventory.  Retail auditing involves the observation of products, promotional materials and fixtures at department stores or drugstores.  The final category – theater checking – appears to be the most popular judging from the speed at which the NYC area projects are removed from the website or listed as taken.  Mostly on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, theater assignments include recording all the trailers shown on particular screens, counting patrons or seats available in a designated theaters, assessing and writing up audience reaction to certain trailers or movies and checking for or installing promotional materials.

Before signing up for a project I am asked to fill out an online questionnaire that seems like a mixture of a normal job application and the kind of questionnaires you’d need to complete to get movie extra work or a spot participating in a focus group.  I’m asked for my age, height, weight, and ethnicity, but also queried about more unusual information.  Am I willing to climb a ladder? Am I willing to stand on my feet for long periods of time? Do I have a person who can work with me as a partner?  Do I have children, and if so, what are their ages? Pets?  I fill the application out, shaving only a few pounds and years off for good measure, and am ready to begin.  I register initially for a “covert” assignment where I will not be given a letter of introduction to the theater manager, and will have to pay for the show and receive reimbursement as part of my compensation.  The task is to go to an Upper East Side theater for a simulcast of a live presentation of “The Glenn Beck Common Sense Tour,” and I will receive $20 for the completion of the two hour assignment plus the ticket price.   A day later a representative from Certified Field Associate calls me to go over the details of my top secret assignment, and I am able to download the paperwork I will need to complete.

Glenn Beck turns out to be a conservative talk radio host and television commentator who describes himself as a critic of both the Republican and Democratic parties, but his polemic will likely annoy any arts loving liberal New Yorker.  The event draws a meager crowd of about 30, but they laugh enthusiastically and applaud after many of his anti-government statements.  I’m horrified, but try to focus on recording information for my report.  How many people are in the audience?  Did the audience enjoy the show? Please describe the sound quality.  Is there a line for the concession stand?  If so, how long is the line?  During the show Glenn looks into the camera and greets the audience in theaters across the country, joking that he expects a critic from “The New York Times” to be in a Manhattan theater virtually alone.  At intermission the lights go up, and an audience member is fast upon me.  “Are you writing a review?” she asks accusingly, thinking that she has discovered the left-leaning journalist remarked upon.  I tell her honestly that I am not. “Oh,” she says with visible disappointment. “I saw you writing things down, and you weren’t laughing.”  I inform her that I was not laughing because the show is more scary than funny to me, and then proceed to get into a rather heated political debate which ends with her asking a question suggesting that I may have no stake in the future of the country, “Do you have any children?” This is clearly more than I have bargained for, and I return to my seat only to watch her begin commenting to other audience members about me and what I am doing in the theater.  My future as a spy looks questionable.

Signing up for another assignment proves surprisingly difficult.  New assignments for movie gigs are posted on Tuesday or Wednesday, and the first time I go for a second project I sign up for one at a time. I wait anxiously for either a phone call or the system to confirm my assignment, but each assignment eventually comes up as “unavailable.”  The following Wednesday I sign up for every project involving checking trailers for Friday openings at theaters from Battery Park to West 84^th Street simultaneously.  The only theater visits I steer clear of are those involving taking pictures of lobby installations with a digital camera, and midnight visits on Thursday night where the expense of cab fare could be more than double what I earn for the visit.  Every assignment comes up as unavailable again.  I have clearly misjudged the number of New Yorkers who are desperate for a free movie and $10! On Thursday evening I try again, and end up hitting the lottery; I am assigned three different “overt” assignments for Friday and Saturday.  I am thrilled to see “assignment received” appear only a few minutes after clicking on the acceptance button for these projects.  Wouldn’t it be nice if all job applications could be so easy, and a “rejected” or “hired” response could appear within minutes of sending a resume?

My first assignment of the three requires me to visit the Angelika in the Village for the earliest Friday screenings of “The Brothers Bloom.”  I will receive $10 for the first screening at 11:00am and $2.50 for the next screening and my data collection points are simple enough.  I must record the overall number of screens, the number showing my designated feature, and all the times my feature is screened.  I then must record every trailer shown and whether the audience reaction is positive, negative, or nondescript (“no reaction”).  The audience is miniscule at the 11:00am screening and comprised largely of teenagers and a chaperone who seem to have some connection to Adrian Brody, the star.  Reaction to the trailers is fairly minimal and I stretch to interpret every laugh, sigh, or loud crunching of popcorn.  Following the trailers I must exit the theater to call in my report.  I return for thirty minutes to watch the film, and then switch theaters to prepare for the 12:00pm screening.  At this showtime I am only one of three people in the theater, and I am forced to classify the response to each trailer as “no reaction.”  I then exit again to call in my report as directed, and return to watch the movie all the way through completion.  The business of calling in my feedback immediately after the trailers minimizes my enjoyment of the film, but I learn a valuable lesson for future assignments; it is next to impossible to write clearly in a pitch dark theater where you cannot see your own hand, much less the lines on the paper where you are supposed to fill in remarks.  My cellphone, which I am forced to leave on should I need to be reached during my assignment, provides a little light but is clearly no competition for a good flashlight.

On Friday night I ransack my apartment looking for a flashlight and cannot find one.   What has happened to the emergency preparedness kit I received during the first week of my last job?  Surely being laid off is the worst case emergency I could have encountered on the job, but the kit - with the flashlight and supply of energy bars - is nowhere to be found.  I decide to spend the $4.00 for the “value” flashlight at Duane Reade, and subtract it mentally from the small compensation I will be earning.  Given the hiring market and the underwhelming response to my scattered resumes I may be forced to become a professional trailer checker and having a flashlight could be an important job qualification.

My first Saturday assignment proves the most difficult of all in that it requires me to watch pieces of an Eddie Murphy movie three times over; my task is to record the reaction to a trailer for “Shorts” for all shows between 3:00pm and 5:00pm of “Imagine That” at the Regal E-Walk near Times Square.  I read the paperwork I’ve downloaded as intently as if I am figuring out logic problems on the LSAT, but recording the information correctly is still a challenge.  I must assess the reaction to all trailers, determine the gender and age breakdown of audience members, record the % of the theater that is filled, rate which trailer is the most popular and why and describe in detail the separate reactions of children and adults to the “Shorts” trailer.  I must also list which scenes and characters receive particularly notable reactions.  On the positive side, I am also asked to record my own interest in seeing the movies being previewed, and I know that my own responses will be at least genuine and accurate. During the 3:00pm screening I don’t know which trailer is for “Shorts” until the title is announced at the end, and miss the reaction to particular scenes.  I also feel like a moron trying to count the audience members surreptitiously, and get befuddled when several people enter late or enter and leave again for refreshments.  An hour later I head over to another theater for the start of the 4:15pm show, and feel more confident.  I am poised to write down significant scenes in the trailer because I know which one it is.  Thirty minutes later I depart for the 5:00pm screening. Other than feeling dizzy from repetitively going up and down aisles in the dark, I feel like I have mastered the task and will be able to successfully complete my report from having seen the trailers three times and compositing the audience reaction.

Finally, on Saturday evening, I have an actually pleasurable theatergoing experience courtesy of CFA.  My assignment is to cover a 7:00pm sneak preview of “The Proposal” with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds at the AMC Lincoln Square on West 68^th Street.  When I arrive it is already sold out, but I show the manager my very official letter of introduction and explain my task and I’m in.  For this screening I must assess the reaction to all trailers, but in particular the response to “The Time Traveler’s Wife.”  Since the theater is full I get vastly more sound effects from the audience than from the 20 or 30 people who showed up at each screening of “Imagine That,” and am also able to record my own appreciative murmuring  to close-ups of Eric Bana.  Beyond that, I suddenly feel comfortable enough to ask random audience members to help me assess the gender and age breakdown of the entire crowd.  Once I have recorded the responses I have no other screens to check in on, and I have until 11:59pm to file my online report so I don’t have to call in information immediately or rush home to my computer.  I  sit back to enjoy the cheerful romantic comedy, bothered only by the fact that in real life hunky Ryan Reynolds will not go for an older woman like Sandra Bullock or me, but will marry 20something Scarlett Johansson.

You can register for assignments like these at certifiedfieldassociate.com.  There is a good deal of competition for the movie gigs, but in addition to being able to search project listings you will receive email notifications when new assignments in your area are available.