Thanksgiving Ups & Downs

Oh what a week it has been. I did not book that bigger commercial, but I did do the smaller one. During the close-ups and other parts where the focus was all on me, the notes were all about coordinating with the camera and not about my facial expressions, so that was encouraging.

I got auditions for two different roles in a western feature, but they gave me a week to submit, and this was the week in which we had to move all of my grandma's things out of her house. I kept assuming that the job would last a couple hours, but the disorganization and sheer amount of items turned the jobs into full-day affairs over and over. And it also required counseling with each party involved, so it was very draining. That being said, the pay was decent. But as I tried working on my lines last night with a few hours to go before the audition deadline, I found myself frustrated not only with the lack of time, but also with the instructions to have a reader. A reader is another person reading lines with you, something that I do not necessarily have. I live with family and my schedule for working on these things tends to be different from theirs. So this week, I traded my chance at a part in a feature film for helping family. That being said, I needed the time to work on the characters because they were both a bit of a stretch for me. So maybe I would not have been cast. But maybe I would have! For that reason, I felt guilty about giving up on it. I am trying to say "yes" to whatever opportunities arise in the world of showbusiness, so I feel the loss. But then again, family did need me.

So despite those setbacks, I am more financial sound than I was a week ago. And because I did not book that commercial, I am able to commit my time and mind more fully to this short horror film that shoots tomorrow. The director and I have talked about it multiple times, and it will involve a decent amount of improv. I must admit that I enjoy these roles that involve zero line memorization, since they basically involve showing up, playing, and then getting paid. For someone who has only been back in the game for  a little over a month, it has been an easy transition back.

Oh, and I was apparently doing my previous auditions wrong. There is a standard recording style for auditions and I was absolutely not doing it. So now I know about that and slating. And my brother's friend has a band and had apparently asked about my standup comedy shows, and when he heard that I had just been writing without any specifics planned, he offered to have me open his show with a five minute set. So now I have to actually pick a good five minutes of what I have written.

Free Modeling & Upcoming Bigger Gig?

Oh what a week. I went to some college friends' art, music, and poetry showcase on Friday, then on Saturday after a lunch with my mom and brother during which they spoke incessantly about me doing medicine (as I was two weeks into focusing on showbusiness instead), I had some free studio photography done to help me with obtaining some updated headshots. I did not like my hair that day, and I also did not care for the stark white background used, but hopefully I will have some decent headshots from it so I do not have to keep sending an explanation of my photo with every audition submission. Was that a run-on sentence? Oh boy. Then on Sunday, I had a shoot that was much more artsy. First was makeup, which involved glops of hair product and prosthetic glue to make me into some sort of woodsy plant type of being, and then it was time in a studio to bring it together. Hopefully it worked. I told my mom that I wished I had a modeling resume from my child acting days, and she said in so many words that I was not nearly as attractive back then. That may be true, but now I have no record of my previous work!

It took a lot of effort, but I did manage to remove most of the vestiges of my role as a plant person, apart from a little bit of hair product that survived both trips into the shower. Normally I would not mind a delay in a return to normalcy, but I had an audition to record for a much better paying role than those for which I had been submitting. I did indeed record the audition, and fairly quickly received a response of "Really great audition! Im passing your audition to production, Ill be in touch very soon. Please hold the dates and let me know if you have any questions." And this of course sounds very much like I booked the gig. If so, I will be shooting in just over two weeks. And we will be shooting all night from 10 pm to 7 am because we will be filming in the grocery store outside of their operating hours, paying $150 for a fitting, $500 for the shoot, and potentially $1,000 if they end up actually running it. The downside? If any other grocery stores come along begging me to be in their ads, I cannot say "yes" for two years. Tragedy.

Writing Amid Coffee Shop Monsoons

It is monsooning outside of this local little coffee shop (known as a star buck). We just got hit with a time change over the weekend, so who knows if the planned workout will happen today. I can jog in rain, but this is enough of a deluge that it would be a bus of struggles. Fortunately, the alternative is to keep writing, which is what I wanted to do anyway. The downside to this is that I have a modeling gig in six days. It is unpaid but will still involve hair, makeup, and a stylist to fix up a creative wardrobe. And if they want my shirt off for it, I would prefer to keep things as tone as I can.

I have made a little more progress on the pilot that I am writing. That being said, I am keeping it low pressure by writing it in the format of a book or essay, and for dialogue or comedy sketch portions, I am allowing myself to just put a prompt for that in parentheticals.

When my somewhat famous friend tried going live for the first time on TikTok recently, she talked a little bit to the comments, but then just let one of the requests join her live, and it was a total stranger. This meant that she could just ask him questions, that she did not have to think of any funny bits. Live videos push your content to the top, so now that is a goal of mine, to get enough followers to be able to go live. With that in mind, I made some new ones over the weekend, as did some of my podcast crew. Some of these auditions specifically want someone who is already doing well on social media, and we have come up with some stuff that I could see going viral.

I am also still working on the standup routine. It is like poetry, going line by line and trying to make cuts, and highlighting parts that need to be rephrased into a better punchline.

… and the rain has stopped. Maybe I will look decent for the photo shoot after all.

Dubbing & Writing

I got another audition, this one for voiceover work for a cruise ship documentary series. Unlike other roles which have been fairly small time, this one would pay $10k. I am not getting my hopes up, especially considering that my home studio setup is not impressing anyone. But if I did make that kind of money, I could up my game and improve my home setup considerably. That being said, this is about practicing and making art. For now, I choose happier poverty over unhappy real job.

I have been far more consistent with my writing habits than I expected myself to be. I try for two hours per day, and often exceed that. A lot of the writing is really editing, but today I had some new material to write for my standup introduction. I had worried about my routine's opener and closer, but I may have found a decent approach to start. And the planned closer is a short standalone thing that matches my ideal style of humor for standup.

I learned from a recording session for a movie dubbing yesterday that I need to be more prepared with voices. I was hired because I demonstrated several distinct voices, but in the moment, when they said, "any voice will work here really" and I tried to churn out a new voice, it was a real struggle. It worked out, and I voiced a lot of people, but I clearly need to practice and mentally (and literally in a document) label the voices so I can always find them again at a moment's notice. That is my homework, but I do feel as though if I can do it, that is the biggest missing piece, basically what would serve as my portfolio. I demonstrated them in a sample demo, but since I improvised for that recording, the voices are not specifically catalogued in my brain like they need to be.