Alrighty...

Alrighty, sorry it's taken me so long to get over here and write about everything...Last week turned out to be extremely busy. But I've got time to write now, while I'm at my aunt's house using the high-speed connection to upload my 331 headshot photo files to Shutterfly for my agent, and all of you to look at. =)

So, back to the beginning of last week. I ended up getting a 4 day temp assignment working at the college bookstore for rush week, 7 am - 2:30 pm, which meant getting up at 5:30 am every morning.

The student film (which I'm sure is what you all really want to know about) was a good experience. It turned out to be a two night shoot. The first night was spent mostly filming the other lead actor's footage, with me providing behind the camera focus for him. At the end of the night, we filmed some of my character's important footage, too. The second night we filmed most of my character's footage.

I actually surprised myself, because I wasn't really nervous at all, which I thought I might be. And when I first got to set, I started to be nervous, started to think, "Oh my gosh, here it is, my first opportunity in a leading role..." but then we started working, and all of my thoughts and energy went into that, doing what I needed to do as a professional actor to do my job. Yay me!

The second night, the director told me she had shown the previous day's dailies to her class, and had gotten great feedback from the class and her teacher. I haven't actually seen any of the footage myself, so I can't really critique myself at this point. The director offered to let me see, but I opted not to, because I didn't want to chance "paralyzing" myself by seeing the reality of what I filmed in complete contrast to what I believed I looked like in my mind.

Since I had very little time to prepare for this role, and no specific script or story board to work with (just an over-view of the plot), I decided to base my character mostly on myself, I figured that was the best way to give an honest performance for the camera.

My headshot session went well, over all. We got a lot of different looks. I like a lot of them. But I feel completely overwhelmed at having to choose which ones will make good headshots, especially the serious business looks. I'm in a low self-esteem phase at the moment, feeling fat, not pretty enough, I feel that a lot of my pictures are low energy and boring, probably because I was mentally and emotionally tired from the week, but the photographer also instructed me to be relaxed, and she'd kind of droop her head and shoulders. But she also commented through-out the session that I had great energy. So I don't know. I think my photos are probably much better than I realize they are because I'm being too hard on myself, and because I haven't learned yet what to look for in a good headshot. I showed one of my friends the proof sheets, and she was saying that each photo is different--I'm like, "How can you tell, they're so small!" and honestly they all look exactly the same to me.

And that's something that's been worrying me for a while now, that I'm not completely intellectually aware of myself, I worry how that impacts me as an actor. When the photographer complimented me on my great energy, it was a very subtle change inside myself that I may not have been aware of otherwise. I certainly didn't "feel" it. But perhaps as actors, as human beings, we're not supposed to be aware of every little emotion we go through every day? perhaps as an actor, I just need to trust those reactions are there, wether I'm aware of them or not.

Regarding my Realizations post and joining SAG: I have every intention of doing so when the opportunity presents itself, as I wrote before I'd be stupid not to. I am choosing to believe that the Universe would not present me with such a huge opportunity just to screw me over. And as one of my blog friends commented, if I pass on the opportunity this time, it may be a very long time before the opportunity comes around again. Plus, I realized something else: The way that I understand Taft-Hartley to work, once you've been T.H.'d, you have 30 days to do as much SAG work as you can get your hands on without joining the union. After the 30 day grace period, you are required to join before you can take another SAG job. So, just because I book one SAG commercial doesn't mean I have to join right away, doesn't mean I'll get booked on another SAG commercial right away. So, when I get T.H.'d I will be SAG eligible, but I can continue working Non-Union projects until I actually book that next SAG commercial after the 30 day grace period. And that's when I can join the union, and hopefully, I'll have built up my resume a little bit more by then.