Actor Growth

Looks like for whatever reason the scheduling on this show is getting jumpy. I never seen the call times get changed so many times too. The shoot even went past 12 hours which is supposed to be extremely rare for this production. It’s almost like they are in a crunch time mentality. Apparently the schedule changes were a result of having to follow some kind of SAG union guideline when it came to a particular talent that was being brought up from the states or something like that.

I believe that the episodes that are being shot this month are the season finale. To my knowledge at the end of this month it is supposed to be a wrap for the first season of shooting. Was definitely an interesting day yesterday as there were so many people with weapons. They were all fake of course. It looks like the next few weeks a few of us are needed for continuity reasons and so we have to keep our schedules flexible in anticipation that we will need to shoot for a couple of days in a row on this show.

I wonder if that will conflict with the feature film I was acting in. Guess everything is up in the air in terms of scheduling as even with that production they seem to be rescheduling everything and I’m not sure when I will be needed for that. Next week was originally the date that I would do the bulk of my dialogue for that film. Just going with the flow at this point in time.

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.

So today I got the full script for the feature film that will be shooting soon. It looks like the bulk of my work and lines comes near the end of the film. After reading everything this is indeed an ambitious project with a lot of CG effects.

I guess my acting coach was right about this one in terms of the type of roles that I can play. I mentioned before that these are the types of roles I don’t think I would ever get cast for since usually movies are very specific in terms of the type of physique they are looking for in a stereotypical way and this is definitely not what I would consider a type cast for me. And sure enough, I will be playing one in this movie.

That made me think too if getting cast for this role had to do largely because the production people were impressed with my audition and therefore it’s one of those “We should put the guy in something” type of scenario. Good either way I suppose.

Looking at the schedule, I still have a good 3 weeks or so until the shoot. So, lots of time to study everything.

You may remember a few weeks back I went for an audition that I thought went very well. Today, I got an e-mail from the producer asking me to phone him back. I assumed that was good news as in most cases people wouldn’t bother to contact you if they weren’t interested in any way.

While talking to him on the phone, he told me that they auditioned a lot of people and they decided that I could pull off a different character quite nicely other than the one I read for. Therefore, either way I got a role in this independent feature film.

I’m actually excited about this as resource and commitment wise these guys seem like they are dead serious in creating a film that has a high production value quality. At the same time, it is so true in this scenario where doing great and trying to stand out individually can result in the production saying something along the lines of “Okay, we like this guy…….what can we put him in” even though you may not be the ideal person for the particular role you read for.

Today was the audition an it went very well I thought overall. I did my thing and as usual they ask you to do the scene with completely different interpretations to see your range. My choice for the first run through was to do it in a compassionate and self realizing way where they commented that is actually how it was intended. Then for the heck of it they asked me to be very angry.

So I used some techniques that I have learned in class such as using the chair as an object other than something you just sit on. For the scene I used it as a tree pole of sort in mind and when I was angry I ended up kicking it down which definitely got reactions. I also did bring in my backpack as a prop since the script mentioned that the character was rummaging through it.

For the embracing part that I was wondering about, it indeed was just the reader, who happened to be the producer, and was sitting far away. Therefore, in the end that action was simply ignored. It went well though and in the end they asked if I had any questions.

I simply asked about their goals for the project and they were describing how this is definitely a serious attempt to create a stunning film that would compete with more high budget films. They are going to be using equipment such as those RED cameras as an example.

The amount of cast seems really high too where they mentioned that they were looking for about 50 people or so. So, it’s a wait and see game now as I know these are those time where when you think you did so well you don’t even get a callback or vice versa when you think you did so bad you do get a callback.

In other news, I got a call from my agent saying that Stargate Universe wanted me back for two days, so I guess taking this audition over that for today didn’t affect too much.