Actor Growth

So today was the first day of shooting for me on this independent feature film and boy was there so many surprises. To start off, one of the main actress was replaced jut today. Apparently the reason was scheduling conflicts. However, upon talking to others apparently she often did not show up for whatever reason. They actually shot some scenes with her already too which means they will need to re-shoot it.

I know things often change by the time you get to set, but there just seemed to be so much of that today where we were shooting stuff that wasn’t even scheduled on the breakdown. Even for my scene it didn’t get shot as I thought it would. It was pretty hot too as most of the shots were in an open field as you can see.

Even the sound guy had to cover himself from the sun as standing there in one spot for awhile can sure burn.

There were a lot of military vehicles which was kind of cool. Example of what I saw:

Today it reminded me again how small this world is in the film industry. There were five other cast members on set and three of them recognized me from the past. One of them I acted in a student film with, another person recognized me from the casting director workshop I took not too long ago and one person recognized me from an actor’s group gathering that happened a long time ago.

All in all, it went okay I thought. There were quite a few bees and wasps floating around which made some people super jumpy whenever one got near them. One guy was wearing yellow and that seemed to attract the bees to him more.

Other than that, by the time I got home I noticed that I received the full script for the other shoot that will be taking place in about a week and a half. It appears that they will be shooting this in an actual pub. Kind of wondering how they will pull this off as the story setting is supposed to be within a Japanese restaurant. Lots of things to keep me busy at least.

Just one day away from my first day of shooting on set for that independent feature film. I have been looking at the behind the scene pictures too and it looks very interesting so far. I won’t be needed for too long for tomorrow’s day of shooting it seems as the bulk of my work will come next month based on the call sheets that I saw. I was a bit worried about the continuity because of this since I know you normally have to keep things like your hair style the same. I have heard in some TV shows like 24 they actually cut the actor’s hair everyday to maintain continuity.

I have a lot of other things going on too personally, but this is a big step for me career wise so I definitely don’t want to mess it up. The production seems to be very considerate thus far too. For example, offering me transportation to get to set if I needed it. Guess that adds more pressure to do well huh? Maybe I’ll take some behind the scene photos and footages myself.

Alrighty, I got a question asking how I got an acting agent initially when I first started out and what worked and what didn’t. Just for the record, the agent factor seems to be one of the biggest hurdles for me thus far in my journey I believe. When I first attempted to get an agent I knew one of the biggest tool that I needed was of course the headshot. Not only is this the business card for you as the actor, but since first impressions matter so much it was important to me that I made sure I got a good headshot.

Afterwards, the first thing I did was sign up for a site called the Casting Workbook as from everything I learned in acting school you pretty much had to sign up for that site anyways since agents had to use it to submit you to projects. The thing is too, if you sign up for that site as an unrepresented artist agents can actually browse through your profile as a way for them to potentially discover new and unrepresented talent to sign. So, that’s what I did.

While signed up for that site, as well I manually tried to research about the various talent agencies here in Vancouver. Now the first rule that I was told is to make sure that the agency is licensed. So here in BC there is actually a site where you can find that located at http://www.labour.gov.bc.ca/esb/talent/list.htm

Now fortunately I was able to learn a bit about which agencies were the top ones from school and which ones were say boutique style agencies. After doing my research, I submitted to two of the bigger agencies in town through a traditional mail routine. Basically, the paper resume and headshot. As well, I attached a demo reel on a disc. However, I got no response at all. To me, I kind of expected that as those agencies were so big.

I then started to go to my other choices which were considered smaller agencies and the great thing was that they allowed electronic submissions. I submitted my headshot, resume and demo reel through e-mail. As well, in the e-mail I wrote down why I was specifically interested in seeking representation with that agency. Example, I personally fall in the younger look category and so I expressed clearly that based on my research I felt the agency could represent my category very well.

Sure enough, the two agencies that I submitted to were interested in seeing me. What ended up happening though was that I met with one agency and the other never got back to scheduling an actual meeting time. About the same time, having my profile on the site resulted in a different agency all together contacting and expressing interest in representing me. Sure enough, I met them.

Now what I learned from these meetings was that one of the key reasons they were interested in potentially representing me is because they saw my training and how in-depth it was. In a way, I guess that comes across as I am someone who is serious about the business. Because what I learned after is that one thing that an agent is afraid of is representing new talent only to see them give up so easily. It’s basically a waste of their time spending all that energy into promoting someone who is not serious.

Long story short, I signed up with the agency that gave me the best pitch. Example, saying how I was the only Chinese actor on their roster and that I would be the go to guy they would push. It was a pretty bad decision for me though as I stayed with them for about a year and nothing really transpired in terms of even getting auditions for film and tv roles. I was basically keeping myself busy with independent film work and it seemed like most of the calls I got were from commercial casting directors that requested for me from searching on the casting site. So, a change was needed.

I was going to do the submissions again but dreaded having to send paper resumes and all to so many agencies on top of the fact that I got no responses before through the paper method. I then read about this local business that had a business relationship with agents and that they could submit my portfolio to all of them digitally for a fee as well as taping a demo reel if I needed it. It was created by some known people in the industry, so I figured they would be steering me the right way.

After getting a consultation, the person mentioned that taping a demo with them would be good as they felt they could do something stronger than my current reel. So, I paid for the full package and taped some scenes with them to be used as a reel. Now my gut feeling was telling me this was not right as the scenes the person had me do were pretty stereotypical. Since I’m Asian, she said there were a lot of roles involving techies or gangsters and this way I can show the agents that I can be marketed this way to get the work that is out there.

Since this was online based, I got to semi see that my portfolio was being viewed through a counter. Result? At one point it said that it had been viewed like 15 times and yet no agent contacted me. While the normal reaction would be “Dang, I must not be good enough” it just didn’t make sense since before I got a pretty decent response.

So what I did was while this was running I sent my package by manually e-mailing my old material to two agencies. Result? I was contacted by one out of the two. That showed me that the demo reel had a huge effect. You see, my old demo reel was a bit more colorful and lively I thought. Example, it had dramatic work and comedy whereas the ones I taped with that company were so typical. Hence, it didn’t make me stand out.

Therefore, I dropped that service immediately. The bad thing is doing that service probably harmed me a lot too where all those agencies that never saw me before has just seen me for the first time with that dull representation of what I can do and what I am all about. And yes, it probably will affect me if I decide to submit to them in the future assuming they remember me.

Eventually, how I go my current agent was ironically through doing background work. Essentially, most people that do background do it very casually such as for headshots they just use a regular photo. For myself, I took it a bit more seriously and my headshot definitely made me standout since I was using the ones meant for professional acting work. As well, despite background work being considered as a bottom of the barrel type of work I still treated it like any other job. This resulted in me getting called for a lot of work where even my old background agent was saying that I was getting a lot of special requests.

That then resulted in me being referred on a certain production to see a particular agency that represented background and principal actors since I was looking for new principal representation. Because of this referral, the agency was keen in wanting to sign me up and sure enough I did. I was always told that you should stay away from agencies that represent both background and principal actors if you are more focused on acting, but that is a different topic.

So what did this teach me about getting an agent so far? It’s actually not that difficult. It’s finding the right one that you can work with the best that is the challenge. I know the eagerness that one must have in wanting to sign with any agency as a person starting out, but even from my experience it is better to really make sure that you are going with the right person. In a nutshell, for me finding an agent came down to these factors:

1) Good Headshot
2) Resume backed up with good training in the absence of professional film acting credit
3) Specifically addressing a particular agent on why you think you two would be an ideal fit together.
4) A demo reel that helps to show who you are and how you stand out.
5) Referral from an industry professional

What didn’t work for me:

1) Generic package submissions where the agency had no idea why I was seeking representation from them specifically.
2) Mass submission services.
3) A demo reel that revolved around catering to a stereotype and what you think people want to see as oppose to showing your talent and range.

Of course everyone probably has different experiences, but that’s how it has been for me thus far. I’m pretty sure the process is pretty similar in other parts of the world too except you will need to adapt it to where you live.

Okay, as I mentioned last time getting into IMDB is pretty simple where it seems like people on the outside think it is such a big deal. So, as I implied I figured that I would create a profile for the heck of it just to show how straight forward it is. Now remember how I said that I initially did not bother to create a profile because I didn’t really think that I have done anything yet that would really push my acting career forward? While that is still the case so far, that made me try to think of a credit that I could list that is legitimate but at the same time won’t really do much.

So, as my credit I thought back to one time that I was on TV. Now I noticed that a lot of actors have credits listed for times when they were on say talk shows as guests. Now normally to get listed on IMDB there has to be a show or production that is already listed on the site. If not, you have to get it registered first. For myself, back in 2007 I was on a local TV station here called Breakfast Television as a guest for a tech topic. The segment was for about 5 minutes or so.

So, what I did was I looked up the production and sure enough it was there. The only tricky thing was that there is actually a Toronto and Vancouver division and so the hosts that are listed are a bit inaccurate. But, in general I just added myself and in a few days I got my own page as you can see here:
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3595948/

I could literally do the same for a lot of independent films that I have been in by registering them and similarly adding my name to it. But what does it really do? Similar for a credit like this, I think the only time people would really care is if you are already well established and therefore this is more like a fan thing where people can keep track of everything you have been on. I even notice that a lot of people list background appearances.

There was one thing interesting for me in doing this. It appears that there is another Alan Yu listed and so my profile is listed as the “II” Alan Yu. Now IMDB has these things called a “STARmeter” which I guess is some algorithm based on who’s name has been searched the most. I was looking at the stats for fun and it was kind of surprising to see how high the number jumped for the profile I just created as you can see here:

According to this, on September 6, 2009 I was ranked 2,182,452 and on September 13, 2009 I jumped to 135,557. That just got me thinking, was there actually that much people trying to search for me? Was interesting I thought. In the next few months I’ll probably update it as that independent feature film credit will most likely get listed as I consider that a big step in my growth thus far.

But all in all, this is just to show how getting listed doesn’t exactly make you some kind of authority where you should be chasing to get an IMDB credit I’d say.

There was a little bit of change today as the regular acting coach was working on a project and so one of the other coaches came in as a substitute. It was interesting as right off the bat you can see how they each had their own style which was great as that way you can get feedbacks from a different pair of eyes and perspective.

The scene I was given was about some techy CSI guy that had to gain access to some kind of database without permission. Now for this scene I decided to use some quick props such as a cheque and did my thing. Valuable lesson today as I overlooked a major detail of using that as a prop. Apparently, when I was looking at the cheque I placed it too high in-front of me where due to the camera angle the cheque was covering a large part of my face.

Another thing was eye positioning. Essentially, I was supposed to be looking at a computer monitor. However, again due to the camera angle it looked like I was looking down at the floor all the time. So today this sure was a lot of useful things to be aware of as there was a lot of technical things that I did wrong. Normally on a set people like the director will take care of things like this, but in an audition you have to be so self aware on how you are presenting yourself on that camera.

Another interesting tid bit was that one guy had to do a scene that was about two people getting sexually suggestive to each other where the goal was to get each other in bed. The catch? The actor and the reader were both men. Result, the actor had a very hard time with this as he constantly broke character as a result. The thing is too, even the coach said it is often like this where a guy will read as the girl and so you have to get used to it. Very useful session overall I thought.

While browsing the casting workbook today I noticed a workshop that costs about $350 for a two day event that revolves around getting coached by two acting coaches. Afterwards, you would present your scenes in-front of four different casting directors. If your new and starting out you may think that this is such a great opportunity to get yourself out there, but I can’t help to think how if you had a bad day or are not ready for this level of scrutiny that you can end up looking really bad to some major decision makers in the industry.

It was interesting too as today while working on set I overheard this lady complaining how so many casting directors in town won’t call you in for an audition unless you have taken one of their workshops before. For the record, I don’t think that is really the case from what I have seen. If anything, it just increases your chances of getting called if you did a good job as they will remember you the next time they see you being submitted for a project.

I would personally be cautious about this for any person who is just starting out.