It’s Gonna Be A Thing

Yesterday, we wrapped on the student film I was working on. I also last minute filled a small part in the movie I had initially auditioned for. I played a basketball stud, and hopefully they’ll use the shot where I make an awesome basket so I can put it in my reel. (See, Casting Directors? I really can play basketball! Just like it says on my resume!) I had a good time working on those projects, and met some cool people, so hopefully we’ll all keep in touch and the finished product will look good.

I’ve had a few more auditions, but Sienna and I both found that we’re in a bit of a dry spell. Hopefully one that is natural and will pass. But I had one at the New York Film Academy at 6:15, and I was not about to go in the midst of traffic and take an hour to get there. So I went insanely early and brought a book. A student director guy who was sitting next to me in the waiting room was so impressed by my earliness that he took a headshot and resume from me, and when I was leaving, bid me farewell by saying, “I look forward to working with you!” So it was not wasted time. And to think, I almost blew that audition off because it was for the role of a 12 year old! I trussed myself up as young as I could look, which is about 16, and went and did my thing, anyway. They started auditions at 5, and let me go first, which was nice. But while I was waiting, I was sitting next to a girl who had come to the audition with her mom. She turns to me and asks, “How old are you?”

“Over 18. How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

Yeah… that sounds about right.

But the audition went great. They loved me, and kept me longer to chat after they gave me my adjustment, and asked how old I was and seemed shocked at the answer. I’m pretty sure I’m not going to get the part, despite how impressed they were with my audition. I had the same experience with the New York Film Academy before. I nailed the audition - speculation based on the responses I received from the director, etc. - and didn’t even get a callback. But good exposure. As Dad says, I’m auditioning for my career, not the role.

Otherwise, still jobless. My room is at last unpacked. I have a mattress and a dresser - which I built all by myself. It took an insanely long time to build, because I didn’t have the right tools. For a long time, I was using a penny, which became destroyed, to screw things in, and then I upgraded to an L-shaped bracket thing, and with about six screws left, I finally got the right kind of screw driver. I also bought a desk from a nice girl on CraigsList which I had to completely disassemble and reassemble, because she had built it wrong (and for some reason couldn’t figure out why some parts didn’t fit…) but that time I had the right tools, so it was a breeze. I felt very accomplished.

I found some difficulty in decoration, but I managed to power through. Etiquette of decor changes when you’re an adult, and now I’m out of college, I have no title other than “adult”. I was a “student” before… If I was in grad school, I could still at least be a “student”. But now I’m just… living. And I find that I’m not allowed to put pictures of Leonardo DiCaprio and Ryan Reynolds on my wall anymore. What if I bring home Ryan Reynolds, only to find that he’s staring at himself on the walls of my room? That would just be embarrassing. When I shared this with Sienna, she said, “And yet, you have no qualms with having a pile of stuffed animals on your bed.”

Yeah… that sounds about right.

Since I’ve last posted, I’ve had several more number “1″s next to a little red exclamation mark, indicating more auditions. It averages to about one audition per dozen or so submissions, which isn’t that bad. I’m getting a lot of opportunities to practice really caring about the part right before I audition, and then resigning myself to not getting it as soon as I walk out the door. But so far, I’ve had nothing but pleasant audition experiences. I just received my first digital audition, in that I need to send in a video of myself reading the sides instead of going to a location, and I think it’s good because I don’t have to go in, but it might also suck, because I don’t actually get to meet the director, etc.

For instance, I had one audition this week scheduled for 9:30 AM for a movie I knew nothing about. I had received the sides, and memorized them - they were pretty short - but other than that, knew nothing about the project. I left very early, fearing weekday morning LA traffic, but arrived early, the only girl there. The director and producer ended up keeping me for an hour, reading with every guy who came in and read for the part, and I had a great rapport with them by the end of the morning. By the end of it, I was really hoping that they had seen me read so much that they wouldn’t be able to cast anyone else in the role without thinking about how much better I was. Obviously. I don’t think I’m actually right for the role, and I probably won’t get it, but those people will remember me, and maybe one day, my name will come up for a role I am right for.

Shooting for the student film I’m in is going well. We only shoot on the weekends, so it’s slow going, but we’re halfway there. It’s not really acting, this process. It’s more of “get it in one take, not longer than five feet of film per shot, silent, just eat a blueberry and act hungry”, so I’m curious to see how I’ll look in the final edited version. I have to really rely on the craft instead of actually acting.

This week, otherwise, has been a tumultuous roller coaster of ups and downs. I had a night of panic and bad sleep, worrying about houses and jobs and money (like you do), and I think a great deal of my anxiety had to do with the end of Harry Potter. Thursday was, as Sienna and I dubbed it, Harry Potter day. Right after I was done with work Thursday morning, the two of us trekked down to an audition Sienna had (that ended up being more trouble than it was worth) and going straight from there to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre where we had tickets to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (what a mouthful) at midnight in 3-D. We arrived at around 2, and there was only the beginning of a line (identified only by the Hogwarts uniforms) just outside the theatre. Sienna and I set up camp and did some people watching. Hollywood is quite the place to people watch…

I had been very upset because all of my Harry Potter attire was in storage, and I was blanking on what to do in terms of dressing up. As an actor who loves dressing up so much that she plans her Hallowe’ens years in advance, I had absolutely no intention of attending the ultimate Harry Potter event in Muggle clothes. So I had to think outside of the box a little, and it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I had spent all of Wednesday making myself a giant cardboard blow-up of the American book cover of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (book 4) and cut out Harry’s face in order to fit my own. I got pretty lucky with proportions, and it fit perfectly (and on the first try, too!). It was a huge hit. People left and right were taking my picture, including - I apologize for my boasting, here, but I simply must - a photographer from the Discovery Channel, who took my picture in 3-D, and a photographer from the LA Times who used a picture of me and Sienna for the front page the next morning. I tell you, this really made my day.

We made friends with all the people in line, and it reminded me heartily what makes Harry Potter as wonderful and powerful as it is. And that’s the community that it creates. Also, the Chinese Theatre is amazing.

I cried from about 11:30 PM to around 3 AM non stop, and used the tissues that a radio station gave me in exchange for an interview and a picture (sorry, more bragging), and came home that night to cuddle with my free Harry Potter t shirt and baseball hat (courtesy of … some people who also liked my costume. OK! That’s the last).

Friday, the day marking the final Harry Potter event, was also the day that Sienna, Kenzie and I signed a lease for our new house. We officially have an address and keys that go to that address. As literally as possible, Friday was the end of my childhood, and the first day of my life as a grown up.

Beyond that, there has just been a great deal of job hunting. I don’t want to go into too much detail for fear of jinxing anything, but keep your fingers crossed for me.

I haven’t proofread this. I’m shooting in the morning, and need to get to sleep - I haven’t caught up on my lost hours, sacrificed to the glory of Harry Potter. So I apologize for any blatnat tpyos.

Amazing how much better one sleeps when with sheets. Also, another surprise to my good night of sleep was waking up to indeed see a red exclamation mark next to my name on my casting profile! The number next to it was a whopping 1, which means that I got a total of 1 auditions.

Determined to make a grand introduction for myself into the world of acting-post-graduation, I wrote down all the given information (a one line description of the plot, which was repeated for the descriptions of the only two characters) and rehearsed my monologue in the necessary fashion to liken myself most to this character, Sammi, a shy but intelligent photographer harbouring a secret infatuation for a guy. This role has me written all over it.

Meanwhile, I had my first two days of work, adding up to a total three hours of labour, and Kenzie, one of my future roommates and I started looking at apartments, and sending some e mails to set up appointments. We didn’t do it exactly right, in that we forgot to make a note who was attached to which location, etc., but it’s only a week and a half into July. (Holy crap, it’s already a week and a half into July!!) Sienna also arrived from the Bay Area, so now there’s three of us working on it, and there will be much rejoicing. They were both able to visit a few apartments, and one of them was very promising.

My audition was wonderfully scheduled at 6:10 PM on a week day. Now, I’m no stranger to LA traffic. I did some google-mapping and saw that the time to leave in order to avoid traffic was 2 in the afternoon. “Well,” I think to myself cheerfully, “I have nothing else to do today, so I’ll drive down early, find a coffee shop, and hang out until my audition.”

Then, I realised a slew of unfortunate circumstances, and all in very rapid succession: I had no place to park at my audition, all my headshots and resumes were in storage, and I’m probably not going to get this role.

The audition was at USC. I’ve auditioned there before, and it’s metered and timed parking, so I couldn’t come that early and just hang out. Aha! I think to myself. If I find a coffee shop with free parking, I’ll park there and walk to the audition. No such luck. The shop I found is attached to USC, so the parking is limited to 45 minutes with validation, and $3 for 20 minutes after that. I of course had to pay $3, because I ended up staying accidentally for around 47 minutes instead of my free, allotted 45, and then just drove to the audition where I sat in my car in a metered parking spot so I wouldn’t have to pay until the last minute. The auditions for this project started at 4:30, so that’s when I decided to go up, paying an additional $2 for the meter. What was wonderful, was that they let me go first, since I was the only person there.

Aside from the preparation I had done, the only headshot I had with me was one I had printed at the Oxy library - as I had none. Feeling thoroughly unprofessional, I stuck two pieces of stock paper between my printed out headshot and my resume in order to give it a little more substance, and stapled it in an attempt to make the stock paper as unnoticeable as possible. Every twenty seconds while I was waiting to go into the audition, I reminded myself not to apologize for my crappy headshot, and practiced in the mirror handing it in and acting as though there was nothing shameful about it. I managed to keep my wits about me as I handed it in, and just as I’d hoped, no extra attention was brought to it.

The audition was fine, but I was pretty sure I would not get the role. That night, while watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as a part of our Harry Potter Movie Marathon leading up to the release of the final film, I got a call saying I had indeed not gotten the role I’d auditioned for. BUT! Would I be interested in taking the lead in another film that the caller was writer/director of? Of course!

This girl had been helping her friend with auditions, and while I wasn’t right for the role of Sammi, I was perfect for her film. We started shooting on Saturday, SMS (which means we’re not recording sound), and on actual film. We’ll be shooting again next weekend, and the weekend after that.

Things are happening!

After four years, and one expensive piece of paper known as a “degree”, I have officially moved to Los Angeles. Right now, what that entails, is sleeping on what was - until very recently - a bare mattress, no air conditioning with a window facing a dumpster that must remain open if I am not to die like a wasp invading a honey bee hive (more info on that can be found here), and an apparently endless amount of movies to watch on Netflix instant play. In my opinion, the latter is the most lethal.

But one hurdle has been leapt! I have borrowed sheets and will spend the night tonight sleeping on top of them.

My time, thus far, has not been honorably spent, however. Aside from the aforementioned Netflix addiction (justifiable due to my career choice of movies… I’m just doing research!), I have been listening to Tina Fey’s Bossypants on audiobook (read by her), and trying to find a job.

I’m not quite desperate, yet, when it comes to the job hunt, but I’m afraid that the desperation will set in quickly and mercilessly when the time comes. I won’t even see it coming. So in an effort to do my future-self as little damage as possible, I’ve been submitting a few online applications to some movie theatres (”theater” or “theatre”? It suddenly becomes much more difficult to decide when it’s for a job application…) as well as jotting down the addresses of those that don’t have the option to do so online. When I’ll actually get myself into gear to go to the actual venue… Again. The desperation will be merciless when it comes. I also spent this evening pressing the “submit” button on an acting casting website for a variety of roles, in the hopes that I’ll see that little red exclamation mark in the morning that means at least one person liked my headshot enough to reject me in person after a twenty minute drive to the audition location and three more ulcers from trying to find a legal parking spot.

But it’s not as bad as it seems. When the night falls, and there’s a nice breeze coming in through the window, carrying with it the smell of rotting food, I can allow myself to simply go to bed as I have no engagements to uphold. And because of a mild case of jetlag, I’ll wake up early enough tomorrow morning that I’ll still have the lingering hope of being productive. The only problem I’ve found with productive mornings so far is that every time I sit down to get something done, I have to go pee. This is an unfortunate side effect from the copious amounts of tepid water I’ve been drinking to make up for all the lost fluids from the sweat.

The advantage of the heat and self-induced boredom, however, are that I stop trying to be so formal in my job applications. For example, I updated my NowCasting profile this evening with the following:

‘Highlights in Film - The best nine months of my life were those in high school when a group of friends and I laboured over the film “I Miss You, Dignity”. It was a complete success (among our closest relatives), and the greatest learning experience I’ve ever had.
Highlights on Stage - My first time on stage was as the baby bear in Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Since then, I decided that the role demanded too much of me, and have moved on to Shakespeare, musicals, and primarily less dense pieces such as Horton Foote and Edward Albee.

Biography - I have a French mother and an American father, grew up in Colorado and am a vegetarian. I have been acting since conception, and hope to continue to do so long after cremation.’

Hey, if they don’t have a sense of humour, do I really want to work with them?

Yes. Yes, I do.