Actor Growth

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.

I guess like any other job, when you are the new guy in the scene you usually want to make the best impression that you can and not wanting to make a big deal about things. Just the other day I was talking to a person who felt that many times there were productions that didn’t credit him appropriately as they simply don’t want to pay the rates of having to upgrade a person to a certain category.

The tricky thing he mentioned was that he is not exactly a big name or anything and so for the most part he just sucks it up as he doesn’t want to be excluded from future projects simply because of the notion that he say asked for an upgrade one time. In contrast to any other job it would be like people hired and paid to be say a cashier yet for some reason they then find themselves having to do merchandising, accounting work, scheduling, etc.

I suppose for myself it is fortunate that I enjoy most aspect of the film industry. So just having the opportunity to be a part of various productions is usually a good reward in itself. Have there been times where I felt that I was taken advantage of like with the example above? Absolutely.

But my hope has always been that I will just continue to do the opportunities that are presented to me to help myself grow as eventually I will either meet the right people or land the right opportunities to enable me to take the steps to move forward. I don’t see too much point in spending so much time and energy trying to get say a production to upgrade you from a small principal actor to a supporting actor if they are reluctant.

Like in that case, if you are still kind of fresh I would think just the fact that you were in the production will give you a lot of new tools and experience to do even greater things.

So something interesting happened recently where I saw that a person whom I have worked with in the past where I volunteered as an actor was again shooting another film. As usual he posted a breakdown of the type of actors he was looking for as well as wanting the headshots and resume.

I figured I would just pop him a message to say that I would be willing to help him if he needed while specifically saying I assumed that he knows me enough not to need my package. Sure enough he told me that he would contact me if another person couldn’t do it as he had already cast the part.

Interestingly enough the original person couldn’t be used and so I got the phone call to play a part in his film. This almost reminds of like a casting director who would simply cast people based straight up on past experiences. I guess it is less likely to happen in the more professional realm of work but I guess when you are at a certain level things like this are bound to happen.

Sorry for not updating earlier all. I have just been swamped with various stuff lately. The filming went okay as it lasted a whole day. It was more of a test run I’d say to see if people would click with each other. Overall everyone did. I didn’t actually get to see the footage yet myself.

I did get injured a little bit unnecessarily since everything was improvised and made up on the spot in many cases which involved some physical stuff. It was also interesting to learn about the process that O’Keefe went through when he had to go to the US to play some roles. Those greencards and such sound like a real pain even if a studio does all the work for you.

So far it seems like I am the only real technically savvy person within the bunch. I suppose a good thing about all of this is that at least I found another good person who is willing to teach me some of the ins and out of the business from a performer point of view.

Also, incase my updates are sporadic you guys can subscribe to my feeds where you will be updated when I post new stuff.

One thing that lingered on my mind before participating in the Olympic events was whether or not dedicating myself to it would have made me missed a lot in the acting field.

So I was just looking at the casting breakdowns and it did indeed looked very slow. Basically, for the most part probably only the more established people got work. So, in that sense I am kind of glad about committing to being a part of the events.

I did seek out and did auditions on my own during the midst of this and so I was definitely still keeping my eyes open for opportunities. I am trying to re-contact the people that were interested in making a web series too as I am still definitely interested in getting something going.

We were all tied up during the Olympics and so hopefully now we can get something going.

So yesterday I was watching the season premiere of 24 as it is one of my favorite shows. Afterwards, I decided to read about other people’s comments and what they thought about the show. One comment stuck out in my head so much. Basically, the person was complaining that there wasn’t enough “Eye Candy” in the show thus far. Basically, not enough people prepped up in a hot and good looking kind of way.

Why did this make me think so much? Because of the whole plan to make a web series as technically I would need to put a producer hat on too. For myself as the actor of course I would say that it should be all about the story telling and execution. Basically, good scripts with a good cast while presenting it in a compelling manner. But at the same time I have to remember that our job is to entertain, for a lack of a better word, and that people need to care about it.

In many ways I think the viewers look at the characters that we portray as a kind of fantasy and so they want to see these people with above average looks and skills. I guess it is just like watching a sport as you want to see people that are say faster or stronger than you perform extraordinary things.

In those cases too, granted there are many times where people want to see the “ordinary” guy. Same thing with movies. But at the same time I would say the majority would want to see the above average in one form or another. So that got me thinking about how things like the costume and makeup would work for an extremely budgeted web series.

Okay, so with that in mind maybe it’s good to have a healthy mix of male and females in the cast as I’m sure that way the group will be able to cover a lot of ground when it comes to knowing what people find “attractive” and such.

For my personal web series idea I think it caters to an Internet savvy crowd. They say you write what you know and with this idea I think it will be a blast with the things I have seen over the years.

At the same time, I’m wondering if targeting an Internet crowd would mean the standards are different when it comes to looks and all. I definitely wouldn’t want to compromise the creative to the point where I wouldn’t believe in the product anymore. Basically, in a “selling out kind of way.

I guess this whole “eye candy” thing is something I will have to keep in mind though.