The Drought is Over

Thank God. I just went through nearly a month-long audition dry spell in December. Oh, and it's raining in LA in a serious way, WTF?! Thankfully my career is mirroring the weather patterns and I'm getting more calls for auditions. I had auditioned for two student films this week, one was out at Chapman University in Orange, CA. I think I've had 3 auditions at Chapman now and each time I use about 1/3 tank of gas in transit; i.e. I've invested $40 in potential Chapman gigs.

My other audition was at the New York Film School on Barham Blvd, the director seemed to really enjoy my read and told me he would be bringing me back for callbacks. This was interesting because the director had me stay in the room and read other roles because he didn't have any casting assistants. This let me peek behind the closed door and get a sense of how other actors handle their auditions. Some lessons learned:

• Don't pretend that you're off book if you really aren't. You'll just look stupid as you search for your lines and silently berate yourself.
  
  • Better yet: be completely off book (I'm guilty of not doing this as much as I should)
    
• Make sure that you match your action to the essence of the character – don't play a research scientist like a street thug.
  
• Stay open – don't turn away from the camera or director, even if the script calls for it.
  
• For the love of God, don't start conversations. We all know that you're nervous and by making a big show of how cool you are you only succeed in appearing less so.
  

Also, I've started the "Writing Chops" class at The Groundlings. This is probably the first time in my life that I've sat down for serious creative writing – it's hopelessly intimidating and yet really fun. I might start up another blog where I'll post my writing so as not to bore my current readers.

Side Note: I've noticed this really odd phenomena where the LA sky seems astoundingly bright even though it's 2am and dark out. I'm guessing that it's all of the city lights reflecting off of the clouds.