I need to work on taming my eyebrows though. :)

I cant wait to see the final product. :)

Here is a photograph that was created by Brenton Covington. The picture was taken by ??? (I’m having trouble finding his info, I’ll update when i can).

A bit of the 50's action

I’m excited. Its a small part, but as I said before, I wanted to be a part of the project. And that’s what I’m getting. :)

Feeling somewhat inspired by my recent road trip to L.A., here I am, pushing myself out of my comfort zone. I hope this advice helps someone else out there trying to learn the art of acting.

::: The following was written on 11/7/2008 @ 11:00pm :::

I’ve just returned from my Emotional Acting class at the Jimmy Flowers‘ Studio.  I had an interesting experience tonight that inspired me to write this post. It was both an interesting personal experience, but a realization also. This is dealing with my own personal comfort zone.

The class tonight focused on Screaming and Crying.

I tend to be more reserved and sheltered when it comes to displaying emotions and physicalities. Naturally the prospect of attacking these two extremes brought on quite a bit of anxiety. I think this is the reason tonight’s class seemed to impact me more than other classes in regard to my comfort zone.

There were six of us students. Not a big group, but large enough to make you feel like you were in a crowd when you’re performing on your own.

When it was my turn, I stood in position. I was nervous. Maybe even scared, which you’d think would help my performance (maybe it did), but I wasn’t scared of the supposed monster in the practice scene. I was scared to open myself emotionally to other people.

It is a safe environment. Everyone was patient and I had as much time as I needed to be comfortable. I found myself cycling through different phases. The class saw me, and thought I was preparing. I was actually battling my nervousness. Then battling the impulse to sit back down and refuse to do it.

To me, it seemed like I stood there forever. But in reality it was probably one or two minutes. And I thought to myself “every second that I allow to pass only makes this that much more awkward and hard to do”. And at some point, I just let my imagination do a little “prep” work, and then jumped into the scene.

The reason tonight felt like such a success, to me, is because I expanded my comfort zone. I forced myself to resist the overwhelming urge to sit back down. And by expanding my comfort zone, I also pushed my artificial ceiling further up; reducing its ability to restrict me by that much more.

Let’s talk about artificial caps (or as referenced above “artificial ceiling”). We all have an array of artificial caps. You could say they are self limiting beliefs we have of ourselves. And the more I talk the more you’ll think I’m just a motivational speaker. But that is really what this boils down too. We can only grow as far as we have given ourselves boundaries to grow.

One may argue that totally removing boundaries entirely is the nirvana of personal growth. The funny thing about boundaries is that we need them to survive. If we don’t have boundaries, we will flounder with no objective. But if those boundaries are not adjusted according to our growth, they become an inhibitor.

Expanding your horizon
You’ve probably heard your parents tell you to expand your horizon. In the context of acting and redefining your comfort zone, the application is very literal. Do things you wouldn’t dare do. It is somewhat counter-intuitive; but that is because our sub-consciousness or our psyche or whatever you want to call it has built-in survival mechanisms. In most cases these are survival mechanisms born of false beliefs. It is a literal battle to figure out what those are, and to restructure or totally wipe them out.

Here are some examples I believe apply directly to me. Use this list if you’d like, but making your own would be most effective. These are things that naturally give me fear and anxiety imagining myself doing them.

Skipping down the street: Weird one right? Because what is so strange about skipping down a street? Well for me I can’t explain why that makes me scared. But that’s the point. By going out and doing it I’m facing those fears and conquering them, if not this time, perhaps the next time I do it.

Singing out loudly while walking down the street: See above, only add more anxiety and fear.

Singing out loudly while skipping down the street: somehow this one does not make me as afraid as walking and singing. But still, I’d hate to do this.

Talking to a stranger: Laughable because a majority of society has no problem with this. But the idea of walking up to a person, and talking to them without having a point is scary. Yes, I can talk to a stranger to get information (where am I, where is such and such). But to talk to the person just for the sake of talking to the person. Where will that go? And what will they think you’re ulterior motive is? (such is the world we live in)

Flashing a school bus full…er okay, remember how I said boundaries were a good thing earlier?  That applies here. But you see what I’m doing. Taking things that I normally balk at out of fear or concern, or anxiety and exploring them. Just doing them.

The question is do I practice what I preach?  I don’t know yet, because I’ve not done any of those things that I’ve listed above. But I am going to challenge myself personally to do all those things (except flash the school bus that is). It may take me a while to muster up the strength to do it. But I know the sooner I do it, the sooner I benefit from it.

I had a blast working with Slaven Kafadar and the cast/crew. I’m just now preparing the gallary for the pictures I was able to take on set. Unfortunately I forgot my camera more often than I remembered it. So the gallary is just a glimps into the life on set.

I had a great time. We only shot two of the scene’s I’m in. The others had to be pushed back as scene partners were not available. Regardless, we were able to shoot probably my favorite scene for my character QAii/Josef. I have no idea how it came out on video; but it felt so right. And my legs were literally shaking by the final take. Thats what i get for having these wimpy geek legs; trying to repeatedly do anything slightly sport-centric gets them all scared.

The cast is fun to hang out with. I know many of them from previous projects, and from classes at Jimmy Flowers‘ studio.

Then yesterday I heard back again from Joe, and they want me to play Officer. So I’ll be doing that today. At 11:00am specifically. It should be fun. I went to Good Will and bought an awesomely cool sport coat and tie.

Somehow before leaving I missed the part where it was in the “Library” and when I arrived I realized in a quandary. The Scottsdale Civic Center is kind of a large place with many different buildings. I parked, came to grips with the fact that I may end up wandering around on foot for an hour and miss my audition. With that, I set out.

I was lucky to run into an old man who pointed me toward the library. I was a little hesitant because I figured if the audition were really being held in the library that they would have put “library” on the audition notice somewhere. But having nothing better to go on, I went to the library.

As it turns out that is where it was, and apparently the audition notice did in fact say “library” on it. Right.

The audition itself went pretty well. I read for two characters, Jesse and Shane. I felt good about the Jesse read, but the Shane one didn’t feel right. Also, these were cold reads, as cold as you get. I walked in the room, sat in the chair, was handed the two scripts, stated my name for the camera, and we started. Not to say it was processed like that, we talked and whatnot, but as far as preparing for the audition, there was none of that.

We’ll see if anything materializes.

The GM of Tower Theatres met with Phillip Lybrand and let him know the video helped ease the tension with the waiting-in-line-for-hours-to-see-The-Dark-Knight crowd.

Yeay. :)

ps. Also, Batman’s Bad Day wins an award! Read more HERE.

We started this morning at 8:00 am. I was actually a little late, arriving at 8:03 am. However my distress was for not; I was the first one there (aside from Liana Hubbard, but its her house so I’m disqualifying her from the race). I was a bit relieved as I wanted a chance to develop my character for the script.

Unfortunately (due to my late inclusion to the party, see previous posts) my email address did not make it onto the list of people-who-get-the-latest-news-on-the-project and I was informed upon arrival that the initial script had been scrapped. Not that it mattered much, I did not have a copy of that script either.

People quickly began arriving, first Greg Sturtz … and beyond that I’m actually a little fuzzy on the order of who arrived when. That being said, we soon had Diane Wallace, Mel Knoy, Brian Osback, Paul Hoeprich, and Holly Dell.

Things became a blur as I got my copy of the script and began my work. There was allot going on around me as everyone shifted into “go go gadget” mode (note: that may not be the actual mode they were in). It didn’t seem too long before Paul was asking me if I was ready. I told him “of course” (while thinking “hardly”) and the filming began.

Fast forward to the future (about 4-5 hours) and we were pretty much done with the shots I was involved in. I stuck around for a bit longer and watched the [censored - not sure what they want me revealing] scene.

Then I went home.

We should be able to see the film soon on the Catbrain Film Factory site. It will of course be in the IFP/PHX 5th annual 48-hour film challenge screening. We’ll see how we do then. It would be nice if I were not working that night.

ps. I hope to have on-set photos soon. I just need to convince the two people with cameras on-set to allow me to post them here.