Actor Growth

Happy Canada day all. Today I made a big change and have officially switched to a new agent to handle my principle representation. This took awhile and I thought a lot about it. I felt that this was a better choice for myself in order to progress better in the acting field.

People usually say that getting an agent is one of the hardest things to do as an actor. Just from this journey thus far I would say the main issue is finding one that you will click with. The funny thing is that I may have to redo my portfolio a bit such as getting some additional headshots as we both agreed that I needed one more type of look.

I was thinking of just going back to the same photographer that did mines originally as the quality was really good. However, I thought that changing it up a bit could be a good decision as every photographer has a different style. Time to research about that I guess.

All in all, this agent appears to have the same level of enthusiasm as I do to work together and so hopefully that will equal to a great future. Never a dull moment as everything changes so fast in this business.

Okay, things have been busy for me and I guess that is a very good thing. One of my biggest highlight just the other day while working on set is that I met an actor that was also working on the same set I was. He seemed like he was being very nice to me and eventually started asking me about my background which I openly talked about.

He gave me a lot of advice in terms of his experiences in the industry and as well he has done directing before. The interesting thing was I of course asked him what projects he has been in as he definitely sounded like he has been to big places as an actor. Surprisingly he started to tell me he was on shows like 24 with reoccurring roles.

Okay, of course I immediately had a big reaction to that because as you all know I watch that show all the time. He was then telling me that he played a character named Eddie in season 2 of 24. Everything checks out. I was talking to the actor Douglas O’Keefe http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0641505/?c=1

I was kind of excited to try and learn as much from him as possible and he was nice enough to share it with me. It gets even more interesting. While talking I learned that he was trying to publish some film online but didn’t really know too much about it. During our conversations I blurted out on how I do things like web publishing to earn an income as obviously I am not at a point where my acting income can sustain my lifestyle lone.

This made him ecstatic as he was looking for a person just like me. After talking about it for a bit he asked for my number and he really wanted to meet up sometime to discuss about potentially creating projects together.

Wow, what a great opportunity I thought. I have no idea where this would lead to, but whatever direction it goes I’m sure it will be a great learning experience for my acting journey.

Okay, I am officially on the lookout for a person to create a web series of sorts with. The first question that comes to my mind is “Where to start looking?” I’m trying to think of all of my local contacts here too as obviously I would need to work with someone local.

I actually have a concept in mind that I would personally enjoy a lot as I think it would be entertaining yet educational. At the same time, I think it suits an online audience perfectly as most people will “get it” right away. Technically I think it would work out best to find another actor who is comfortable in doing a little bit of post production.

I think this would work out cool too as it is like on the side we can create our own work for fun as you never know what can happen and at the same time we can keep an eye out for auditions and such. I know I can probably just use like a free classified ad and get hundreds of response, but that isn’t exactly the best odds to find someone who would be equally serious/committed to it I think.

Hey universe, I’m calling you out. Send me someone!

Today I got an interesting message from the coach. As you all know, he is actively helping me to achieve my goal. Turns out, the person he was talking to couldn’t help me directly but instead is going to give him a list of potential contacts to share with me.

I was just thinking how there are so many twists and turns with this situation where at this point it looks like I am not going to accomplish the milestone goal and therefore will need to stop attending the workshop and begin the different route.

For my current remaining days of class, assuming my goal isn’t achieved, I have just sent off an e-mail to him too where I expressed how I think it is wiser to spend my workshop time going over all this business stuff instead. Basically, I would rather spend the time going over film industry stuff with like a mentor to better help me in achieving my goal rather than focusing on skill building at this point. Waiting for the response and reaction to that.

How many blog reader fans do I have? No idea really, but enough to be a nominee I guess for this mini online blog award. This looks like it is for fun and digital bragging rights. I think I am the only actor blog to ever be in this contest. Actor blogs in Canada must be scarce or something.

So in that sense I thought it would be neat if I could come in as a finalist. To my understanding the top five blogs, based on the highest number of votes, will progress to a second round consisting of a top five and the voting ends next week. So, if you are interested in voting for me the link is at the Canadian Blog Awards 2009 and simply go to the “Professional Life” category.

Apparently you can just vote for one blog if you want as oppose to having to rank everyone. So if I have any readers that want to vote for me and see where this goes it will be a lot of fun. Even if I don’t make it in, thanks for the nomination everyone. One thing that I definitely like about being a performer is being able to connect with fans where hopefully what I am doing is inspiring or entertaining you to make your day a little better.

So today I was acting in that film where the challenge was that the makeup artists had to make us actors look completely different for two different roles. Today we shot one character and tomorrow will be the second one.

It was definitely interesting and this is the first time I had to wear a fake moustache for a role. Lol. Something interesting happened during this shoot too. The script in general is very vague as it was designed to be more of a challenge for the makeup artists. Therefore, in most cases the director and actors can improvise on the available script to try and make something unique. Apparently, the same script has been used many times with a different team.

For my scene, in the end I started to cry and the director was so into it as well as the whole room. The makeup artist was telling me too that he couldn’t believe that I stayed so focus when the whole room was going ballistic. Everyone was smiling and clapping at the end and it made many people excited to work with me again tomorrow.

There were actually some industry veterans in the room too helping out. So, in many ways I guess it was good, professionally speaking, for my career where I made an impact to further help make a name for myself. Who would have thought volunteering for this project would do something like that huh?