Actor Growth

At this point I still enjoy doing student and independent films a lot as it helps me to build my portfolio and not to mention skills as an actor. One thing I do notice is how since most of these roles are on a volunteer notice that the people producing the film usually try their best to cater and make sure you are taken care of.

While I am personally not like those people that say “where is my trailer?” I think that is usually a nice gesture from the producers. Makes you want to do more films with them too. When I think about it, I usually get treated pretty well on independent films and treat it no different though than professional work.

I mean, the same should go around when it comes to treatment where if they are trying to treat you as if you are on a professional set then you should try your best as well to accommodate them too whether it be schedule flexible or effort wise.

I went to an audition recently and interestingly enough the producer of the film project mentioned that he knew me. Honestly, I didn’t recognize him at all and afterwards he mentioned that he attended the film production program at the same school and year where I attended the film acting program.

Sure enough, it rang a bell afterwards. He then phoned me to tell me that I didn’t get the part unfortunately but that he was interested in casting me for another project of his. Ironically, unfortunately I was working on that MAMM film and was unable to do so.

That goes to show you that it can be a very small world in the film business and it is great to make sure that you do as much as you can to generate contacts.

I was talking to another person recently on how he mentioned that it must be super tough to be able to memorize so many lines.  To a certain extent I guess that is true, but really it becomes pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

I think it is more like a brain training type of routine where you can just teach yourself to memorize things faster.  I know a lot of people say they just try to use visual references which help them to remember which line to say next.

I personally have always just been doing it the old fashion way where I just read it over and over again.  I usually read say two sentences and try to remember that before going on with the next.  Afterwards, I then go on to the next sentence and then try to say that along with the previous lines.

Has worked great for me personally as I believe one mistake is that when it comes to memorizing say a long monologue it must be too hard to just try to memorize the whole block at once.

One thing about being an actor is that while you may not have any gigs for quite some time, schedule flexibility is still an important factor as you never know when you would be called for an audition.

The least amount of notice I have received is a call at around 10pm for a 10am audition the next day. In some ways it sounds unreasonable where it’s almost like you are expected to do nothing to earn an income in the downtime in order to keep yourself open for auditions.

At the same time, I guess that should just make you think a little more on whether or not you are ready to dive into this line of work. For example, there is even a theatre school around here that forbids its students from having a job while enrolled into its full-time theatre program.

Like with that, you really need to have your life straightened out to make sure that you can commit to what is necessary.

Alright, so I am just getting back in the groove and starting to look for different parts to audition for. I guess after this recent experience it shows that definitely have the passion and commitment to stick with it as I enjoy doing film a lot.

It looks like the only real type of film work I haven’t done yet is a dedicated romantic genre type of film. Who knows, maybe that will be next.

Holy moly. Well, this is it as today we officially submitted our entry. The film turned out fairly decent I thought considering all of the challenges that we went through. For the editing I actually stayed up well over 30 hours straight trying to do the best I could as the rest of my teammates were in school.

I think the music was really nice though. Time for me to get some nice deserved rest.