Actor Growth

This might have been a very crucial day in my acting career thus far. During the workshop we did some cold reads which was kind of interesting. At first we were partnered up in pairs being one guy and one girl. With this, we all received the same 5 page script that we practiced together and would then audition for it.

The catch? During the actual audition time we were not allowed to use the partner we have been practicing with. Therefore, all of the scene blocking or interpretation of the scene that we did may be thrown out the window as the person reading for us would be completely different. The pint that this showed is that for an audition you can practice all you want with your friends and all. However, in the actual room you don’ know if the reader is say going to be good or bad to prevent you from doing it the way you intended. Therefore, you have to learn to adapt to it. Overall it went okay.

That wasn’t the main highlight of the day though. Beforehand, I asked the acting coach if he had time to discuss about my career goals and questions after class and indeed he said that was not a problem. Basically what happened was that I discussed about my current growth in the industry and wanting to learn what he felt I could do to improve my mark and presence.

Cause as you all know, when I attended that casting director workshop I received some very good praises and as well I have that feature film to act in soon. However, even with this I still feel something is holding me back as I have no problems auditioning and landing roles for independents. Getting seen for the bigger work is an extreme challenge though. We went through a lot of details such as reviewing my resume, discussing about my agent representation and so fourth.

While I will need to address a lot of things, here is the super interesting part. The coach with much excitement said he knows exactly what I need to do that will make a huge difference. He says that I need to be more LA like. Persona wise I guess you can say he wants me to look “cooler” and “tougher”. He expressed how obviously in real life I am more conservative and I can be that way still personally. But since this industry is based so much on image and first impressions he feels this will help to raise more awareness. Therefore, he started to phone a friend of his who is a stylist saying how he wanted her to hook up with me to give me a makeover and all.

Even when I showed my headshot, I have one that is like a super smiley shot and another that is more cool looking I guess you can say. Basically, he wants me to be more like that cool guy in terms of look where when I walk into a room that is the perception that people are going to have of me.

He then asked me a question on why I studied martial arts initially. I mentioned how because I have always been a smaller person people always picked on me. So, I decided to learn it to prevent that. Funny enough, I never even told these “bullies” that I began studying martial arts yet everyone suddenly stopped trying to pick a fight with me. The coach then says this is exactly what the makeover is going to do as you don’t even need to do anything afterwards as it will project a completely different attitude and confidence with people.

Even I said this was a little scary. But we’ll see how it goes. And hey, I guess it will be an entertaining read for all of you to see if this has a profound impact or not. There was also some other stuff that he suggested I do which will be interesting too.