Headshots, Reels, and Websites

Published on March 6, 2010 in 1. 0 Comments

I’m realizing how expensive this profession is…not really realizing, more like re-realizing. It’s expensive. There is a toolbox of things that we need to have, and things that are not necessary, but extremely useful. I’ve got headshots, I have a resume, I have a website (a work in progress). Now I’m told if I want to also break into television or film, I need a reel (and I want one). Headshots ($400.00 – $800.00), Film Reel ($300.00 – $800.00).

I used to be on the lookout for a great deal, and I got burned badly on my headshots the first time I got them done professionally. I heard this guy at the workshop say “If you pay $200.00 dollars for bad headshots, you just wasted $200.00.” It’s true and I wish I had known this sooner. Pay $600.00 to have your headshots done right, and know that you got great headshots. It has to be the same for a reel. But don’t overpay for what you can get done at the same quality for cheaper. There’s always a fine line to walk in this business. Every one of my experiences, good or bad, has taught me how to be better at doing the work.

I learned so much in this website workshop. I’m interested in learning more. The question that keeps popping into my head is, “Am I just in love with the knowledge of knowing how to promote myself (maybe to pass on to others as a teacher) and maybe not really in love with the idea of doing it?” This whole business is difficult, and there are so many factors that are a turn-off for me, and there are other factors that are a big turn-on. I’m figuring it all out little by little.

What do I do to do what I do? (AKA Where do I go from here?) (AKA What’s the next step?)

Published on March 2, 2010 in 1. 0 Comments

I’ve started thinking about a conversation I had a few weeks ago, with Brandon, a great friend of mine and someone I work closely with at Mary Washington. I’m thinking a lot about me lately. What I want to do, changes I want to make. I wonder if a lot of people have a problem where there is no boundary between work, play, personal life, social life, etc. Why does my work affect my time so much, that it runs into the time I should spend bettering myself at something I want to do. I used to write music like crazy, I used to play music like crazy, I used to just sing for me, and I let work spill over into that time, and don’t cut myself off. My work email is set up on my personal computer. It has to be. I will surely miss the most important thing ever if it isn’t and will ruin myself over it.

Anyway, it’s about doing something old. Singing, but actually getting back to working at singing better, more interesting music, building better technique. Writing, but actually finishing a song, or several songs to use in a finished musical theatre piece. Networking, but actually finding the right people to collaborate with and to help me do the above mentioned things. Putting together my own show, for me and my peers, not for students at Mary Washington. I’m still going to be working there, and it’s a great place to have the flexibility to make things like this happen for me. But, I sometimes feel like I am just as lazy as some of the students I talk about…or maybe I’m just so devoted to the job, that I don’t have the actual time to devote to these things. I feel like this holds me back.

In the musical, Tick…Tick…BOOM!, Jon says “I want to write music. I want to sit down right now at my piano and write a song that people will listen to and remember, and do the same thing every morning for the rest of my life.”

Now, maybe I do and maybe I don’t, but it’s the idea that I want to be doing what I love so that I never have to work a day in my life. And, to me, that means that I understand that it will still be hard, and it will have its ups and downs, but it will still be what I want to do for the rest of my life. I sing, I love singing, I sometimes feel like it is the only thing in this world that I do so well, that nothing else I have any talent in doing can touch it. It is my superpower. And there are a million people that have the same superpower. So what now?

I know it isn’t true that I only sing, and that’s the end of it. I’m a good event planner, I have skills in marketing, some graphic design, auditioning, maybe even teaching, but I am a damn good singer if I do say so myself. Maybe not a performer, but that’s where I know I need to work.

When first starting out after learning the “basics”, I remember being so irritated that classmates would say that a scene was so great because the actor cried, and some people would put so much weight on being able to force crying, and I thought, “Really?! It’s not a requirement to be able to cry to be an actor!” I came to realize quite unexpectedly, that it just happens, if you just live in the moment, build from personal experience, or create the experience for yourself. It’s like that with everything in acting to me. There is no forcing (crying anyway), and I don’t put a lot of weight on crying at all, but if it is, in some strange way, the mark of a good actor, I’m better than I think. I need to figure out how you make yourself that vulnerable with every emotion and play it realistically. I don’t know if acting is what I want to do necessarily, or writing…but singing I KNOW I want to do. So what options does that leave me with?

Take a back seat…for a little while anyway…

Published on March 2, 2010 in 1. 0 Comments

I have to say I grow up a little more every time I come here. I realize how important it is to utilize the day, I realize how much there is to do, I realize the value of walking.

Today, I started off alone, walking across town and down 5th Ave. and then looked at my phone and realized that I had a ton of email to answer (something I should have done before I left the hotel this morning), so I started heading back across town to head back to deal with work, and had the realization that, if I didn’t have an iPhone, I would have not known I had so much email to answer.

So, I made a decision to ignore that knowledge and do something. I ended up in Rockefeller Center by the Ice Skating Rink, and I watched that for a minute, pondering whether or not I wanted to go down and get some skates on and play around for a while, and then I turned around to go somewhere else, and there is an overwhelming slew of marketing materials for Top of the Rock, which pulled me in closer, until I surrendered to it. I’ve never gone to the top of the building, so I figured I should do it at some point, and while I’m here, I might as well. $21.00 later, I’m in an elevator, looking straight up at the transparent ceiling, racing toward the observation deck. Now, the view is pretty breathtaking and it is panoramic in that you can eventually see every angle available if you move around and up to high decks, but the city is never so beautiful to me as it is when I’m walking on the street level. I’m still scratching my head over paying what I paid for this. They make a mint every day just for a ride in an elevator and a view of New York City. It’s amazing really.

After this, I did have to head back across town and take care of business, but it was great knowing that I didn’t let the technology I have control me for however brief a moment it was.

I feel so…

Published on February 25, 2010 in 1. 0 Comments

incredibly behind. I feel like we leave for New York in one day, and I have accomplished nothing to make it go smoothly. I’m anxious that I’m leaving the theatre renovation for the entire first week when we are supposed to have the theatre in our possession and anxious that I’m not packed. I know this trip will be great, but I won’t feel better until were on the bus to New York and possibly not until we are settled in our seats for the first show on Friday evening. A lot has to happen in the next 24 hours.

Please let it not be true that a foot of snow is about to be dumped on New York City.

Wile E. Coyote

Published on February 20, 2010 in 1. 6 Comments

Life gets a little tough and some people choose to wait it out and figure out where it takes them, and some people just quit. “I’m so busy!” has become one of the most popular phrases I’ve heard of late. I have heard so many people complain about how busy they are and how much work they have to do. Simply complaining about how much work you have to do is wasting the time that you could be utilizing to get the work done. Simply sitting down and doing the next task on your list and the next and the next is not that hard, but you just don’t want to do it, so you put it off until later, and then again and again until its looming right above you and THEN you feel stressed out and feel like you have so much work to do and you are SO busy…

I love this video of a lecture given by Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Melon professor, on Time Management. If you have an hour to spare, it will save you time and stress and frustration.

Secondly, no one can take criticism anymore…that’s not fair…some people can take criticism…stronger people, people who want to be better. Most people get criticism, take it badly, and usually say to the people with more experience than them, “Screw you! You have no idea what you’re talking about!” in so many or so few words. Teachers, professors, mentors, are there to help us to learn and become better, and we aren’t going to become better without criticism. A lot of people are constantly told that they are great and what they are doing is great (zoom in on your sixth grade chorus/band concert, school play, college musical, college orchestra concert, etc.) and that has trained them to believe that they are great and they don’t need to change anything. I can’t wrap my head around it.

I was told in 10th Grade by my math teacher that I didn’t apply myself and that I didn’t deserve the car my parents bought me and that he didn’t understand how I could get away with just skimping by in my classes. Changed my life! I immediately was angry and hurt by what he said, but it forced me to prove him wrong, and I got better at math, and grew to really appreciate him for what he said to me.

At the college level, I feel like a student should be more open to criticism, but its not the case. The student receives criticism, immediately gets angry, and then goes and cries to their friends about how the criticism really hurt their feelings, and their friends sit around and stroke their hair (and ego) and tell them that they were right, the criticism is wrong, and then they go on to the next thing, and the cycle starts over again. (And by the way, they still think they were right and that the criticism was wrong). And these people are proud of themselves. I’m more of a person who says, “Well, you were wrong, it can be done a better way and you don’t deserve praise for doing the wrong thing!”

I used to get SO angry at Wile E. Coyote when he would try one of his little tricks to catch the Roadrunner, and it would just barely work, and he gave up on that plan! It made me SO MAD! Why wouldn’t you tweak the plan, and try again? WHY WOULD YOU JUST ABANDON SHIP BECAUSE IT’S A CHALLENGE?

Our connected world…

Published on February 19, 2010 in 1. 1 Comment

I found this posted on another website earlier and it goes along a little bit with my earlier post.

I want…

Published on February 13, 2010 in 1. 0 Comments

to be better about blogging. I think there is a part of me that is growing to love writing or thinking more strictly about things that are important to me. Like I finally have something important enough to say in a blog. I wish that I knew more people like me that have a few interests and can be good at and passionate about them rather than pretending to be passionate about a hundred things and do them well.

I don’t know that it is possible. I think that being able to do a hundred things really well is not possible for many or any people. The world is changing…everyone is too busy to do anything that they are involved in, that they are committed to at the absolute best quality. I’ve learned that there are choices to make and that you can love a hundred things, but 97 of them are just hobbies. I believe I can sing really well. I do my job well. I honestly can’t remember what it is like to see a job halfway through and then just finish the work because I want it to get done. And I’m talking about the things that I really commit to. For instance, this blog will be half ass…I don’t have a lot of time to work on it. The last time I posted was almost two years ago.

I’m consistently getting more and more disappointed with the world. People are in things for the result and not the process. They want to get things done so that they can cross it off their list and get back to the couch. The quality doesn’t matter as long as it is done fast and is out of the way. That makes up around 80% of the people I know. Of course that’s a rough percentage, but it is in the ballpark and it is really sad.

Email is showing signs of becoming obsolete because facebook and twitter are the new ways to communicate. And if that is true, there are so many other distractions on facebook, that it takes 10 minutes to get out of the labyrinth of news feeds and event invitations and flash games before you move on to the next thing. I’m guilty of it too, but still consider email to be my primary form of communication and expect it of others. Especially the students that I am surrounded by every day. I expect responses to simply say that they understand what I have communicated!

Why do I feel like I am the end of the train that included people that read what they are agreeing to rather than just clicking “OK” without understanding it. Am I in the caboose of that train where people actually proofread a message before sending it, because I am afraid of looking foolish for misspellings and poor grammar? AND HANDWRITING! I have come across more handwriting that is suited for serial killers in the past few years than I have ever seen in my life. Has handwriting also become obsolete?

I want to think that the people I am surrounded by care enough to work with me for the result rather than me doing hard work to make sure that something is great, and having the other people involved half ass it. It makes it look like I have dropped the ball and relfects poorly on my performance. I seem to find more success in smaller groups. I love our Theatre 435 class this year. They are all engaged in the conversation, there isn’t complaining and it is giving us all a chance to get to know each other. I know that my time in college was a moment in time and no other moment will be the same again, but this class is something I look forward to because they are the only thing that has slightly resembled that for me in a long time.

Studio Theatre Class

Published on February 5, 2008 in Professional. 1 Comment

Last night was our first musical theatre class at Studio Theatre. I believe that David and I were surprised to see that we weren’t in the company of professional musical theatre performers. It’s a little disappointing to be the only performers who have chosen to want to do musical theatre professionally, but maybe the class will force us to work differently.

We started off with introductions from everyone in the class where we all told each other three realistic goals that we have for ourselves in the course and one stretch goal for ourselves that may seems a little more out of reach. My goals were (1) To expand my book beyond what it already is. (2) To be more comfortable and more carefree in my work in musical theatre. And (3) To expand my range by at least another note higher than what I am usually comfortable singing.

My stretch goal was a little harder to put into words short of saying I want to be able to walk out of the class and get cast in a new Broadway work. I said, instead, that my stretch goal was to smooth out my voice and my movement skills and possibly to have a different voice quality to work with. Looking back on it, I realize that I really can achieve that goal more readily, I believe, with some private voice coaching rather than relying on this course to change that.

Anyway, after that we got up and everyone sang their songs for the class and for George. Everyone went through rough spots and it was clear to see that no one was just being humble when they said they hadn’t sung in a while or that they weren’t sure how they would sound when they sang. I believe that its true that some people can benefit from some basics, and that worries me a little as far as my experience in the class. David and I will have to miss at least two classes for UMW reasons, but I think we will be able to work it out with George to make sure that we get our money’s worth.

I’m also the class captain, because I didn’t realize what I was volunteering for. I’m really bad about that.

I almost allowed myself to cry at the end of my song too, which I have never done, but the mood actually struck me to, and I fought it, so I didn’t. I would have been embarrassed to cry, but I found myself frustrated with myself for not allowing it to happen.

Things…

Published on January 31, 2008 in Class. 0 Comments

certainly can change from week to week. Last week, I felt like sitting in the class was going to give me an ulcer with all of the arguing and talking back and forth. This week, it was so much more enjoyable to sit there.

One comment I do have about tonight’s class, and I just believe that it was missed in translation, but while we were watching This American Life, the moment in the episode arrived at the moment that I (having watched the episode several months ago) laughed my ass off about. I was surprised that when that moment happened, no one laughed, and I felt as if I would look like a moron if I laughed at it. (Spoiler Ahead for anyone who hasn’t watched the episode)

What happens in the story is a woman has written a screenplay for a film and wants to get it produced and she gets a real director to come in to direct it, and they actually hold auditions and cast the show out of the retirement home that she is living in. At one point, a fire alarm is heard, and Ira Glass goes on to explain that this woman has left something in the oven and almost burned the building down. We learn later that a few weeks previous, she left water running and flooded her apartment and the apartment below hers and THEN we go on to learn that a few weeks previous to that she auditioned for the movie. What I think the class missed is that this woman was NOT given the role. This is my only explanation for the lack of laughter. I, personally, found it to be the funniest part of the episode. To hear that its possible that this woman was so bitter for not getting cast in the film that she tried to do something as insane as intentionally flooding her apartment and someone else’s apartment and trying to burn her building down is just so amusing to me.

END OF SPOILER

It’s one of the risks I believe we run by telling stories like this. Is it really possible that 19 other people in the room can be watching the same thing and completely miss something like that? Obviously it is. It can be similar with actors in that the slightest blips in our language can make the audience miss the most important things we say. Gregg was talking to our young actor yesterday in rehearsal and told her about making sure to hit her ending consonants. Sometime we forget the basics and to be reminded in all ways is beneficial to us. I was reminded hearing it from Gregg speaking to his actors last night and I was reminded of it this evening when a class of about 20 missed my favorite joke because it may or may not have been worded as well as it could have been. I can’t tell you what exactly was missing, but it was missing.

I also noticed these undeniable differences in the first TAL episode of the semester and this one. The main and obvious difference is the introduction of the visual aspect. It’s something I mentioned to a friend of mine at dinner the other night that This American Life is a radio show first. Some of us are coming full circle to enjoy the radio show again like my father did (who tells me he didn’t see a television until he was 12 years old). There’s no denying that most of us, me included, would rather watch a television program and see what we’re listening to. I love TAL and I love to listen to it and I love to watch it now that the tv show is around. Just imagine if tonight’s television episode had been the original TAL style show? It was clear to me that the laughter that came out of tonight’s episode was spawned from the visuals that went along with the story. Whereas, I think its possible we lost some of the class when we listened to the first episode the first day. If the joke I loved so much was lost in a more sensual format, it would have been absolutely buried in the other format.

If anyone wants to watch the rest of that episode, I am going to try to get it on a DVD and have it available for you to watch if that interests you.

Blog Title

Published on January 29, 2008 in Class. 0 Comments

I’m trying to work this class as if I didn’t take the class two years ago. What I mean is that I have the skill sets that are used in this course, but I am trying to not to bring into it that I was in the class and try not to claim that I can predict every step of what is happening. I know that the stakes have changed. There are 19 students, Gregg and myself taking the journey this time. But for this post, I do want to rehash my experience in Ideas in Performance.

Once upon a Spring 2006, we drove in a University van from Fredericksburg, VA to Arlington, VA on Tuesday, February 28 at 9:30 in the evening after our Theatre 435 class. We stayed in a nice Courtyard Hotel in Crystal City in hopes of making the morning commute to the airport a more enjoyable and less hectic ride. We were on our way to Orlando, FL for the Southeastern Theatre Conference. Jillian Locklear had managed to get passed on to the SETC auditions and the class was going there mainly for her and we decided that, since we were there, we would make the most of it and attend the conference’s workshops and some of us even attended the Job Contact service there. Other times, we enjoyed the weather, a group of us went to Epcot Center, and some of us enjoyed the huge pool at our hotel, which was a surprise that we could stay at such a place, and no one really knew that we were staying there until we arrived, which was a lot of times how the trip worked. We didn’t know much about anything until it happened. We even got to catch a show while we were in Orlando, and saw Cirque de Soleil’s La Nouba.

Sunday, March 5, we left Orlando. We knew that the fun was behind us and the real work was still to come. Arriving at Newark International Airport at 11:06am on Sunday, we took a bus into the city where we then had to walk several blocks to get to our hotel. Not really knowing where we were going to be staying, we just followed Gregg through the streets and surprisingly through Times Square, carrying a lot of luggage with us the entire time, all the while, specific people whining about the walk and how heavy their bags were. Not to mention we were also lugging around the technology tools we had brought with us in sturdy cases. I dropped my pillow on the street in the middle of Times Square right near the TKTS booth. And we still had no idea where we were going or how far it would be to our final destination.

If it hadn’t been for the bags and being delusional from having not had much sleep the night before to the awful experience we had at the airport, where one of our group had tried to bring a Leatherman on board causing Gregg to almost miss the flight, to the plane ride itself to the bus ride to the city, we would have all stopped and stared in shock that Gregg was leading us into a Marriott in Times Square. Surely we’re not staying here, and its a joke. We’ve got to be staying a Super 8 somewhere downtown. Gregg’s probably just unloading his bags in a room before he tells us where we are staying. It wasn’t until we received keys to two rooms that we knew this was going to be home for the next six days.

It wasn’t as great as you may think. We were actually barely in the rooms most of the time we were there. Seems a bit of a waste, but we also didn’t have Wifi, and a lot of us were traveling all over the city with our computers trying to find a nice place with free wireless internet, which wasn’t nearly as accessible two years ago as it is now in New York. A lot of us, to avoid leaving our rooms at 1:00am would write blog posts in Word documents and copy and paste them into our blogs later. We also kept running wiki posts to copy and paste into our itinerary. Also, when one of the nameless classmates would snore so loud it could wake the dead, I began to notice that double beds aren’t meant for three people at one time. It sure was warm though.

So we had a lot of meetings and watched a lot of theatre and met a lot of actors and performers and lawyers and casting agents and Meryl Streep and Julia Stiles and John Gallagher, Jr. and took tours and went to some museums and got lost…A LOT and ate pizza and saw some more theatre and ate more pizza and whined and listened to people whine and some even made Gregg mad…furious and we tried to document ever single second of it and sometimes our equipment didn’t work the way we wanted it to and we ended up with nothing recorded from several interviews and we took some classes and sat in on some classes and sang karaoke and the list goes on and on. But then we found ourselves back in Fredericksburg Sunday night before classes started up again the next day after more flights and the University van trip and we were back to what we were the day we left. Except that we had made connections and we had learned something and we had enriched our lives by seeing more theatre than any of us had ever seen (except maybe Gregg) in one eight day span.

So, I do sit back and attend class this semester and I listen to the planning for the trip and I wonder how its possible that there are now 19 people about to do what we did two years ago and I wonder how its going to happen without leaving someone stranded on the Jersey Turnpike when the DC2NY bus takes a 15-minute break. It was hard enough making sure that 8 people were together when we traveled. I can only imagine when its 21. I can also only imagine how the finances will get to us. Its possible that this class could end up with less money than we got depending on the University, but I don’t know and can’t pretend to know, and neither can Gregg. It’s in their hands now. But regardless, it will work out, and I believe that if the hotel is the thing you’re the most worried about, don’t be. Because you’re really not there as much as you think, and yeah, it is nice to have a comfortable place to go when you get back to the room after a long day doing your work, but it doesn’t need to be a 5-Star penthouse room in Manhattan. I understand that maybe some people have got money to spend and are going to be able to live that kind of lifestyle right out of college, and good for you, but the reality is that I want to move in to the Washington, DC area in a few months and I am wondering how in the world I will be able to afford it. I’m not going to be living in a luxury condo overlooking the DC landscape. I’m probably going to be lucky if my “beautiful view” is of the old man’s butt crack across the alley way.

Don’t be mistaken and think that we chose everything that we got when we took the trip. We did exactly what you are doing in class now and we put the hours in and we had set ourselves up in the “mediocre” hotels and we explored the real option of taking a bus. We didn’t get into the Marriott Marquis because we were pretentious enough to think that we deserved to stay in a hotel of that caliber. We didn’t fly (coach) because we wanted to. We flew because it doesn’t make much sense to drive 15 hours to Florida and then drive 20 hours to NYC. Because that’s more than a wasted day. We didn’t go to Florida to get a semblance of Spring Break or to party, we did it because it was necessary for a fellow classmate who had received the privilege to audition there and we did real work in Orlando, went to workshops and saw a show and made contacts in Orlando as well as in New York while we were there. And, you know what? We rode the Subway most of the time we were in New York City. I took a cab maybe 4 times while I was there and the rest of the time I walked.

Moral of the story? Don’t jump to conclusions and maybe its best to not talk about things if you don’t know the full story.