To all of you who read my blog, MERRY CHRISTMAS & A HAPPY NEW YEAR!! I hope you all had as wonderful a Christmas as I did, and I wish all of you the best in the New Year!
City of the Stars Screen Test 2006: I've got 50 votes now. I'm working on ideas for how to get more. The first part of my plan is to finish reading a book I recently purchased called Influence: Science and Practice, which was recommended by Bob Fraser at his Show Biz U seminar. This book details the 6 principles of marketing & selling (as actors we are marketing & selling an image of ourselves), but the author also makes a point of using these influential skills ethically. (This book will also be a big help in growing my massage business, too.) So once I've finished reading this, hopefully my efforts to gain more votes will be far more effective. I'm thinking about canvassing the neighborhood I live in, or at least creating a flyer and leaving them on people's door, although I hate doing that. (I've done it before on a friend's behalf.) A colleague of mine suggested I get business cards to hand out, and just talk to everyone I can about it. I'm also seriously considering approaching my local newspapers to inquire if they'd be interested in writing an article. In the meantime, if you have not voted for me yet, please go to the Voting Page and enter my audition #1218 to cast your vote. And a big "Thank You!" to all 50 of my fans who have voted so far!!
For Christmas, I got some books I've been wanting: Dreamwork For Actors, which I first heard Melanie Griffith talk about on Inside The Actor's Studio. She told us the basics of the book, which is to write a letter to your inner self right before you go to bed, asking whatever question you have about the character you're playing, the question can be as simple or complicated as it needs to be. Sometimes you'll have a dream that provides the answer, or sometimes the answer will be planted in your subconcious and just shows up while you're working the next day. It all sounds very interesting to me, so I've very excited to have the book.
I also got Acting For The Camera, which looks like its a really good introduction to acting for a camera. A good chunk of the book is about acting skills, and the other chunk is about the technicalities of working with a camera, how a scene is shot, etc. Obviously, this book cannot take the place of practical experience, of actually working on the set with a camera or even an acting for the camera class, but at least I'll have a better idea of what is expected and appropriate when working directly with the camera. (Not as an extra.)
The third book I got is Accents: A Manual For Actors (with 2 CDs). This book is really cool in that it has a mini-history of each part of the world, and teaches accents for everything from different American dialects, to British, to Middle Eastern, African, and Asian accents. (Although I doubt I'll ever need to use a Japanese, Chinese, or Korean accent, lol!)
I also purchased another book for myself: Feel The Fear And Do It Anyways. So much of my life is controlled by fear, even though I have higher self-esteem now than I ever have in my life, even though I'm much braver now than I used to be, even though I have gotten better at doing it anyways in some areas of my life, I still allow fear to hold me back a lot. An acquaintance recommended this book, and it seems to have effective techniques for dealing with fear. I haven't actually started reading this yet, but it's next on my list after Influence. Then I can start wading through all the acting books I've gotten. In addition to those I got for Christmas, I got 3 e-books from Bob Fraser at Show Biz U that I need to read as well: You Must Act! which I've read about half of last summer, and two new ones that I picked up at Show Biz U: Headshot Secrets Revealed, which I've skimmed and it has a ton of valuable information about how to get a spectacular and effective headshot, and Profiles In Stardom which is a book telling the life stories of the stars before they became stars, the purpose of the book being a road map or guide to success by observing those who have achieved success. So, I have a lot of reading to do.
I'm also planning to enroll in an acting class in the SCR Adult Acting Program, but I haven't decided if I should take the Fundamentals II Scene Study class, because I've let my homework skills slide with the last several classes I've taken, or if I should jump into the Fundamentals III Characterization class because I need to move past the intermediate level. Or if I should take the Acting for the Camera class first. Decisions, decisions. And I don't have much time left to decide, classes start next week. Arg.
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