Actor Growth

So yesterday I did the shoot and it went well. It was pretty casual and I had fun talking to the photographer and makeup artist as the day went by. I just received the proofs today too and it looks like it will take some thinking on which ones to go with.

One thing is for sure, I definitely will have enough variety now I’d say.

Okay, talk about twists in life. As you all know I just recently decided to go with a new agency and thus far it seems like it is working out way better which goes to show that the agent can play a huge factor in getting you in the door. It can’t be coincidental that all of a sudden when I switched I started to get more opportunities.

So to my surprise I recently just learned that the agent is no longer with the agency. I only found out as when I logged into the casting workbook it all of a sudden indicated a different person from the agency who was representing me. So this caused me to want to get some clarification and when I contacted them sure enough they said that the original agent was no longer with them.

This has never happened to me before and it is definitely something new. Although, the good thing is that the agency is working hard still it seems and so everything should mostly be the same from my end. It is just really weird as I have never met my new agent or had time to chat with him yet just to make sure we are on the same page. But he did offer a sit down with me as I just needed to arrange a time to do so.

I went to the audition today and my first reaction was how I was wondering if I was even in the right room. Reason for this was because the room was full of Caucasian people who were in their 40’s and usually when I am called it is usually with a room full of Asians or people within my age range.

The scary thing was as you know I never got the sides for this. Even at the audition there was none available. Fortunately as time went on I did see another Asian pop in. It was cool as I actually met this person once while auditing an actors workshop and so we recognized each other. Sure enough, he was reading for the same role.

I immediately asked him if he received sides for this as I never got one. He mentioned he did and immediately gave me the sides that he wrote on paper to review. He then talked with me a bit about the scene so that I would hopefully have a grasp as to what was going on. That was so awesome I thought to see an actor willing to help another in this kind of situation as stereotypically you would think everyone would want to sabotage you for their own gain.

Thanks to his help I went in the audition room and everything was pretty straight forward. I was surprised at how little people they brought in for this particular character as it looked like there were only three of us. As usual, there is nothing you can do now so you just have to wait for the next audition and such as you let the production decide on who they want to go with.

I got an extremely unexpected message today while on set as I got a call from my principal agent saying that I had an audition request. While that is great, there are absolutely no sides or information available about it other than the title and character it is for. Even the agent was telling me that he was trying to get a hold of the casting director for more details with no luck. To make matters worse, the audition is tomorrow!

I never experienced this situation before. What to do? My first reaction was to text message my favorite acting coach to see if he had any idea what this project was about so that I can at least b semi prepared. It would be horrible to present on the spot something say very dramatic when it is supposed to be a comedy for example. So far no luck. So I guess I am on my own.

Hope this turns out okay. I am almost thinking of going to the audition room extremely in hopes to actually get to see the sides to better prepare myself.

Alright, it looks like I finally decided on who to go with to get the supplemental acting headshots from. I currently have it scheduled for next week so this gives me plenty of time to prepare. It’s going to be funny for me this time around as before I had nothing really to compare to.

Since these are supplemental ones I am probably going to constantly compare the quality of it to my current ones. The first time around when I got my headshots too I had no agent feedback as I was still looking. So that will be another new thing as this time I will be showing the proofs with my agent and from there we can decide which one works best.

Now I am thinking that I may have to go shopping for some different clothes and accessories. I prefer shopping for things like electronics………

I was talking to some people the other day who always wanted to try acting but were simply too scared with the notion that they can’t stand the thought of not knowing when their next job will be. At the same time, I guess everyone has heard the starving artist stories where the majority of performers make less than a minimum wage job for the whole year.

While I don’t have enough examples of diverse acting role payments, today I got a phonecall from my BG agent as I apparently had a ton of cheques from past work that I have yet to pick up. While looking at them today I thought this just reminded me on what you have to prepare for when you are trying to pursue acting as a career. I just scanned these three cheques to demonstrate my example:

Imagine everyday you have no idea what your next gig may be. At the same time, you can’t necessarily predict how much you will earn in a month. Just take a look at those examples and how different the pay was for each production.

In my opinion, the smart way to do this is to have something you can rely on that is flexible. I’m actually surprised at how many real estate agents try to pursue acting for example as you would think every performer would be working at say a restaurant as a server.

But hey, enjoy what you do as always. If you are going to be in a self employed type of environment then you have to enjoy it I’d say. Unpredictable income just comes with the territory regardless of what field you are in until you are semi established.

Some may say that you have to starve yourself on purpose so that it pushes you to reach your goals faster. But, that’s the great thing about situations like this as there are just so many ways to do it that you need to find what way works for you the best.