Here's an update on The City Of The Stars ScreenTest 2006. I now have 46 votes. I recieved a group informational e-mail from Terry Lowell who is the Casting Director for The City Of The Stars. In the e-mail it was explained that over 10,000 people have signed up to audition, and that the average number of votes per person is 57. (Good to know I'm not that far off from the average!) But a few people have over 700 votes! (Holy cow!) Voting will be open until March 31st, 2006. We are allowed to create websites to expand our fan base, and contact our local newspapers to ask if they'll write a news article about us competing and auditioning in Screen Test 2006. Wow!
And now on to Show Biz U, the business of Hollywood seminar that I attended last Saturday. It was a lot of fun! This was a small-group seminar (maybe 20 of us?) given by Bob Fraser. I really liked the small group format, it made the whole seminar much more intimate and friendly. About half the material he covered was also in his e-book You Must Act, but I think it's good to get the same information in different mediums (ie reading, listening, writing notes, etc) and the more you hear something repeated, the better your chances are of learning it and knowing it. There was also a lot of information that wasn't in his book.
I think my favorite part of the whole seminar was when Mr. Fraser told us, "By the time I discovered I wasn't a very good actor, it was too late. I was already successful." I think that just embodies the spirit of what he's trying to teach us, fits the spirit of his e-book perfectly. The spirit being: it doesn't really matter what you look like or how talented you are, if you have the courage to take action ("You must act") and to perservere, you will achieve success. His goal is to motivate us to take action towards our goals, and he gives us the down-to-earth, realistic tools we will need to achieve them.
One of the things we touched on in the seminar was a problem each of us was having in our career. My problem is fear. Ever since the seminar I've been thinking about that. At first I thought it was fear of failure. Then also fear of success. But I've realized that actually, it's neither. It's fear of taking action. I can sit here writing in my blog about acting, critiquing movies and plays I've seen. I can take acting classes. I can be in non-paid community theater productions. I can even sign up to do extra work as I've been planning to do once the holiday hiatus is over, thinking all the time that I am taking the steps forward needed to achieve my acting goals. But in reality, I'm not really doing anything except avoiding what really needs to be done. In the seminar, we talked about what is required to run our business (our acting career) and all the marketing that is necessary. And I've realized that until I have my headshots and postcards, and am actively sending them out to CDs (casting directors), I'm not really pursuing my goal at all. I've been loitering near the path I need to take, but I'm not actually walking the walk yet. I've been afraid to leave my comfort zone. And I almost think that fear extends into keeping myself in a place where I don't make enough money to be able to get my headshots.
BTW, I spent most of the money I got from my grandparents on pre-paying my recently started chiropractic care. (I was hurting and the x-rays of my spine showed that my back is tweaked. The vertebrae in my neck are curved over to the right like the Leaning Tower of Piza, my mid-back is jammed-that's where I was hurting-and my low back is hinged on one vertebrae instead of having a nice smooth curve.) The point being, I don't currently have the money for headshots anymore. But, since I am afraid that I won't make enough money doing extra work, I've decided to continue to work at my Uncle's business part time possibly through March. That way, I have a better chance of getting the money I spent on the chiropractic care back, and being able to spend it as I had originally planned, including headshots.
The thing I need to remember is something Michael Douglas said on Inside The Actor's Studio. (I think I've written about this before.) Someone in the audience asked him if he was ever afraid that he wasn't good enough to pull off a role he'd gotten. He replied, "All the time." But then he went on to say that he used to fight against the fear, fight to not be afraid. Finally he realized he needed to accept the fear as part of the process. I need to do the same. Just accept that I'm going to be afraid, and take action to move forward anyways. And the more I repeat that, the more that will become part of my subconcious thought process.
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