Actor Growth

Today we were challenged with another cold audition session. The interesting thing about this one is that for the role of the guys there was literally only like 4 lines of dialogue and the person before had like 2. However, there were large amounts of pages before this which doesn’t have the character speaking but it did give you an idea of what the story was about.

With that I did the scene. As it turns out, I over analyzed the scene and read a bit too much on it. As usual when you get sides for an audition you are only given the pages that relate to the scene that the casting director wants you to perform. Besides what is on these pages everything such as the back-story and character relations are up to you to figure out. Because of that, people can come up with completely different interpretations on the mood and energy level of a scene.

As a crazy example, let’s pretend your character had one line saying “I am going to fall down that hole” and the other character says “Don’t do it!”. That is literally the entire dialogue on the sides that you were given. Now think about how vague that is. You basically need to figure out what the scene is about by trying to say research the show/film online or read as much as possible into the other pages that were given to you even if they are crossed out.

Think about it. If you interpreted that scene as a guy about to end his life then the delivery will probably be more dramatic/mellow. If you made a choice to say these guys are like playing a video game on this huge projector outside then it will be more fun and anxious. Those are the types of choices that you are forced to make otherwise nothing will really come across when you perform the scene. That’s why it is important to try and find as much about the scene as possible.

Now by over analyzed what I mean is like in that situation I would say things like “These two are best friends where they know it is the end of the world and so one guy doesn’t want to live anymore. One guy is a sports athlete and the other is a ex military guy”. Basically, that results in a “How in the world did you get that out of reading those sides?”

The lesson is that sometimes things can be a lot simpler than necessary. It is kind of contradictory too at times as you need to make strong choices in situations like these and therefore it is more about getting right I’d say.

This week we actually did the exact same scenes as last week due to a technical difficulty where we were unable to watch our scenes and the fact that the camera wasn’t functional anymore. In many ways, I guess you can consider this like a callback audition. So, I basically did it with the notes I was given last time.

For the first take the mood definitely was more focused on the lady while trying to get a baby out of her. I was actually surprised at how realistic the frantic it looked on film as I was literally just improvising the whole thing on a bare floor. Although, the factor this time around was that because I didn’t look at the paramedic enough it appeared like I was simply shouting all the time and basically getting them to cooperate through fear.

It took me a few tries to get this right as I basically had to find the balance between being crazy-mad and frantic while still trying to convince the people around me that the character was sane, so to speak, where he was in control and could be trusted to perform this on the fly operation. In the end I was able to do that.

That is a hard thing to do many times. I know for myself I often have a habit of either going too big or too mellow. It’s finding that balance to make it perfect. There was an interesting comment too as the coach was saying in reality if he saw me yelling and all where I wasn’t paying attention to the paramedics that he would believe me. For the sake of film though, it just works a lot better for me to pop my head up. So many little unnatural details you have to keep in mind too. balance

So this week all of the guys were given a pretty crazy scene where the character was literally mad and yelling pretty much through the whole piece. Basically, he was a guy that was going to do a C section on a lady to get a baby out and has a lot of complicated issues personally.

Beforehand I made a choice where I was going to play this guy with a very angry and annoyed direction where during the scene near the end I would stand up as he was being confrontational with a couple of medics. Now keep in mind in the scene there was a dying lady who he cared about right in-front of him and my choice was to start off by kneeling on the ground as the character was contemplating how to get the baby out.

From I read, he needed a knife and the medic was spending way too long going through this kit which aggravates the character. Therefore, my decision was to stand up that time. Now I brought that up as usually in the audition you have to warn the camera person on your movement intents so that they can prepare for it.

Right when I said that the coach told me not to do that. He was basically saying how in real life if you were trying to get a baby out of a women like that there is no way you would leave her side. Regardless of how angry you are you will want to stay there and it would be more powerful for the scene.

That was kind of a throw off for me as I know in a normal audition a casting director wouldn’t give you that benefit of providing direction. So, that was kind of odd. But, I went with the direction and did everything kneeling down and never got up. It was kind of funny as last week’s advice was counter productive for this week’s scene.

Essentially, last week the takeaway note was to face the camera more and not staring at the object. So, for this scene a subconsciously decided to look up at the reader as I knew if I looked down to much you would only see the top of my head. But, funny enough that is what I should have done for this scene where I would be more focused on staring at the dying lady.

The coach did mention though that he should have informed us ahead of time about the camera. At the same time he said that in an audition you can request the camera guy to say lower the camera if that was the direction you chose to do your piece. That was an interesting note I thought. Was a crazy scene though.

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.

Today we did an audition side for the upcoming film 30 Days of Night: Dark Days. As usual, we got the script the day before and today we acted it. Before we presented the scene the coach asked if we practiced the scene with a partner beforehand. Most people including myself said no. Therefore, he mentioned that we should quickly go over the scene with a partner as it helps a lot.

It was interesting as the first scene partner I did it with thought my take on the scene was good. I then did it with another person and she was saying how it was good but thought that I didn’t need to try and play up certain parts of the scene too much. That actually helped a lot for my preparation.

So, I did the scene after all that. I felt that I did a good job. Now we do perform this in an audition style setting where once we do the scene we are sent back out. The coach’s remark before I left was “That was tight”. Afterwards, we all went in and got our deliberation and feedback.

I was a bit blown away by the feedbacks. Essentially, the coach said that this is the best work he had ever seen from me and that I nailed it. He said beat for beat I hit the mark and parts such as where I was referencing about the character’s memory of his young daughter getting kidnapped was so believable that it was scary.

It was neat too as he commented at first how look wise there is no way I looked like a dad with a young daughter, since I look so young myself, as it just isn’t believable and there is nothing I could really do about that. However, he said he believed every moment of it when I was reflecting about losing a loved one and all.

He then continued on saying to the class how everyone can see where, if we were the casting directors, when someone really nails it you really take notice as it stands out. He then said he was going to show this to a person. I won’t mention who as I was a bit stunned when he said that.

What this day taught me was how having a scene partner really can help a lot. I know some actors do things such as recording their voices of the other characters to try and play out the scene for practice, but it just isn’t the same as reading it with another actor. I guess the drawback is you don’t always have a person that you can call right away to help you with an audition.

At the end, my coach continued to tell me how he was excited that I was going to meet the stylist tomorrow. I swear I am like a human guinea pig at this point. lol.

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.