I’m On the List!

If the rest of the weeks of the year can be as productive as the last few, I will be a very happy girl 🙂

For starters, last Tuesday and Wednesday I got to be a part of a short horror film aimed at the Body Horror contest in April. Living on the South Shore, I have this fear of getting caught in traffic and being late, so I leave my house before traffic starts, and get to hang out in my car from 7 am, until my call time of 9. Luckily, I expect this downtime, and manage to be productive while waiting, by doing voicework, writing, reading, and learning the monologue for my audition on Friday.

Once I got to the pub where we were filming, I met the crew and the actors. We all went around introducing ourselves, with only one person that I had actually met before. It turns out that the one person I knew from class with Suzanna and Fastforward to Shortalucion was the Producer. The first day was supposed to be a rehearsal, with filming on Wednesday, but once everyone was there, we did some theater games, then got into filming. 

Within the first minute of the scene, something happens to me that requires screaming. I had been warned I would have a speaking part, and was worried it was because I had taken stunt classes. I had been mentally preparing myself, trying to remember everything I had learnt, while completely forgetting that horror movies and excruciating pain lead to agonizing screams. I was kind of terrified that I would have a horrible scream, or that my voice would crack or die or something, up until we did a sound check, and everyone stopped to stare. Apparently, I am a natural-born screamer, which bodes well if I wanted to take after Jamie Lee Curtis and be a scream queen. While it is not my intention, my awesome scream still got me on the Producer’s list. Marc told me that if ever he needs an actor to scream in one of his movies, he will call me 🙂

The rest of my scene would be filmed the next day, but I was still needed on set. I find it really difficult to react to things that only happen in my imagination, like when a director tells you to pretend you see someone walking towards you or something. I believe I am getting better, but the first time, my imagination was not at all in sync with where the camera thought the imaginary person was going. This is why I was really happy when instead of making a girl pretend that my scream was cutting her off, they actually had me scream. Well, maybe I wasn’t exactly thrilled by the end of the day with all of the screaming, but I still had an aswesome time, and would definitely have appreciated her screaming had our roles been reversed.

The next day, we filmed the rest of my scenes, as well as a final one with everyone. This whole thing had started with me signing up as a Volunteer extra, and ended up with me having a blast, meeting a bunch of awesome people, and being involved in a Short that was going to film festivals. When I got home, I checked out when the Body Horror Contest was and so on. It happens to be on my birthday, which will hopefully give us some luck for the voting, but I also discovered that M is for Mien is one of the other movies entered. Which means I have small parts in two of the 10 movies entered 🙂 Not to mention that movies from the Body Horror Contest will also be shown at the Mascara and Popcorn film festival. As far as my newfound desire to mostly be a part of projects that will be in film festivals, I think I am doing pretty good! And since, I was a waitress asking for peoples’ orders and such, I believe this counts as Waiting Tables (even if it’s in a movie) so I can cross that off of my 25 things to do before I am 25 🙂

On Friday, I had two auditions, an hour apart, in the same room. I have mentioned my tendency to get places early, so when I went to find the room so I would be ready when my audition time rolled around, I was let in. The role required an accent, which I spent a lot of time trying to figure out, deciding that the most realistic one I could pull off would be British. As you can see from the fact that I can’t define it any better than that, it is not a formally acquired accent, and I generally don’t use it in public. I did, however, spend my day watching The White Queen episodes to have it fresh in my mind. I had planned to walk in with the accent from the get go, but I completely forgot once I stepped into the room. We talked about my experience as well as aspirations, before I did the monologue. I had worked so hard on making the circumstances real, on remembering the events that I was mentioning, but as far as I can recall, once I was in there, a lot of focus went into the accent instead of living the life. I am hoping this is me being self-critical, because when I try to remember what I did, I can’t, but she did tell me that I had a good British accent, so at least there’s that. I got out of the audition before it was supposed to start, but I left really hoping to get the part, not just because I really love the part and think it will be really challenging and fun to play, but also because the girl was just so nice and I really want to get to work with her!

After a little over an hour spent reading and writing and planning (since I had nothing to learn for this audition) I went back into the room. I am thinking I must be getting better at talking about myself than I was the summer I graduated, when I had nothing to say and the question totally blindsided me, but I still feel like I am reciting more than sharing, especially when I have two auditions in the same day and find myself nearly repeating the same story verbatim. Something to work on. For this audition, he introduced himself, asked about me, then had me do some facial expressions and say some lines. There isn’t a lot of dialogue in his project, but the dialogue he has, he knows exactly how he wants it to be said, how he wants it to be shot…it was truly interesting to act with someone who had such a clear vision of what they wanted, but I am also not sure if I truly got what he was asking, or if he gave up on me. I should find that out in the next couple of days, but for now, I see these two auditions as utter successes, because auditions are victories in themselves, and because I just auditioned with a British accent. Next step is to actually see a voice coach so I am not just winging it.

In other news, I got tickets to 8 Ways My Mother Was Conceived, which should be great and I am really excited for, as well as the Veronica Mars movie. I also nabbed two more auditions 🙂 Ready to live the life and join the hustle!

 “As a girl, you’re supposed to love Sleeping Beauty. I mean, who wants to love Sleeping Beauty when you can be Aladdin?”

-Ellen Page