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Reasons to Stay
I slightly panicked when I realized we were pretty much half way through July and I was way behind my word count for July’s Camp Nano (like the one in November where you write a book in a month, only you have a lot more freedom to choose your word count, page count, or to simply edit something you have already written). I have been spending a lot of my time this week trying to catch up on that, but I also had class with Suzanna on Tuesday 🙂 If you remember, our scene is from the Social Network, and we break up. The scene starts out with us talking,…
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Ron Leach Workshop
I have been trying to take part in this workshop with Ron Leach for years, but the dates have never worked out, or the workshop got cancelled. Which is why I was so excited to finally be able to learn from him last weekend! I had the schedule for the weekend, and I saw we would be watching Shurtleff on Friday night, so I was ready. Having read Audition, and taken multiple workshops with Tom Todoroff, I know all my guideposts, in numerical order, and was fully prepared to list them off. I even reread Audition, so it would be fresh. This is not what happened. It started off with…
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A 40 hour week :)
A while ago I was talking to my brother about my acting career, and he told me that since acting is my career, it isn’t enough to be working a few hours every day at it, I need to be putting in at least 40 hours a week. I needed to make it my full time job to get jobs. I recently started to tally my hours spent acting, and this week I got my 40 hours. For the first time since I started keeping track of them. The theory is that by counting the hours, I will treat it like more of a job and actually spend at least…
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My New Slate
I had quite the time yesterday deciding which of my 5 scenes from this month I wanted to do for my audition. I crossed off two because I didn’t have printed versions, then finally chose the one that had about equally distributed dialogue, and we hadn’t done in front of the Tuesday class yet. Whiplash. The first take felt great, although when I watched it this morning, I saw that I said ‘you always had your feet on the ground’ rather than ‘your eyes were always pointed on the ground’ which imply completely different things. Luckily, I didn’t notice last night, so I was able to stay in the…
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Twice the Whiplash
Two classes in the same week is a good week 🙂 Last night, I joined the Wednesday class to do my second scene of the month with Patrick. It was an interesting class, because it was so small, with only 6 students, and four of us doing the same scene from Whiplash. Patrick and I went first, while the other group doing our scene were sent out back to rehearse. We did it a first time, and it was fun and easy, a nice date with me trying to talk a lot to cover the silence. The second time, Suzanna had us make it more awkward, explaining that both of us…
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Testing my RP
If you remember, a while ago I asked Suzanna if she could maybe find me a scene where I could work on my British accent (RP). This week, my scene partner couldn’t make it to our usual class time, so she found me a new scene, from Bridesmaids, where I got to be British 🙂 It was a short and easy, hilarious scene, but I could feel my heart pounding and the nerves building up the whole time I was filming and being on book for the other scenes. For some reason, even Suzanna’s confidence that I was well-prepared and had the accent down pat made me even more nervous.…
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My First MoCap Experience
On Saturday, I went to Studio Le Chateau for Phase 1 of the Introduction to Motion Capture Course offered by Syllabes. Motion Capture is defined in google as ‘the process or technique of recording patterns of movement digitally, especially the recording of an actor’s movements for the purpose of animating a digital character in a movie or computer game.’ It is basically what they use to let Tom Hanks play a million characters in Polar Express, to turn Benedict Cumberbatch into Smaug, Andy Serkis into…anything really. It’s what they use to make movies like Avatar, which is absolutely incredible. It is also used a lot in video games, which is…
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Reading and Classes
I usually like to equate being busy with making progress, so lately I have been feeling like I am on the right track and things are going to work out this summer. Which is always a wonderful feeling to have. On Tuesday, I got called in to be a reader before class, which we have established that I love to do. What was different this time was that I saw someone audition for the part that I auditioned for, only it was after I had already done mine, with no chance of going back and changing anything. Every time she got a note or praise, I was kind of going…
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I <3 Reading
There are some exciting developments in the works, but for now, I am just going to talk about last week’s class, and how I spent last Wednesday. I got two scenes, both between ex-lovers, but very different outcomes and emotions. The first is from LOVE, a Judd Apatow series on Netflix. It starts with my ex-boyfriend showing up at the house we used to share while he is high and with another woman. It is really fun and hard to play, because she is very manipulative, in the sense that she doesn’t want him back, but she doesn’t want him to be over her either. It’s trying to figure out…
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Acting with Benz
This weekend, I took an audition workshop with 19-2 actor Benz Antoine. I often start to feel like I am doing nothing for my career, so I go out and do a workshop or take a class, which is a way to change things up a bit, and this workshop came recommended by a friend. I was emailed a scene on Friday night and asked to prepare it for the following day. In my head, this meant we would work on it and learn things Saturday, then be asked to bring it in as an audition on Sunday, so I worked a lot on familiarizing myself with all the important…