Morse Red Line platform facing West.

old guy in Burger King

Streaky lights.

Advice for Actors

I’m going to start off by saying that I know an actor’s job isn’t easy. While most people just think an actor sits in a trailer all day and then goes to play Pretend for five minutes, I understand how difficult it can be to bare yourself to the camera lens. I also understand the frustration of most people casting only for student or low-budget productions where they can’t afford to pay actors, let alone themselves (or they’re some opportunistic prick who thinks talent aren’t worth paying.)

I also understand the hassle it is to get a headshot, put together a resume and/or a demo reel, and send it out to countless cattle calls. It all costs money (a headshot can be a couple hundred bucks, then you got printing costs, never mind the postage fees you’ll accrue.) and a lot of time and effort.

That being said, last weekend, I placed a cattle call on Craigslist. Within the first half hour, I received two dozen headshots. A few days later, and I have received more than seventy responses, some of which were for more than one actor (in all but one of these cases, the multiple submissions were children.)

Let me tell you something, the flood of responses into my inadequate Yahoo account was overwhelming. It took me four hours to get through half of them. When I started reading my replies, I vowed to be fair and give everyone’s response the time it deserved. If an actor is willing to blow a lot of cash and time on getting their materials together, the least I can do is give the materials a fair shake.

However, as the hours wore on, the fatigue came in. With so many responses taking so much time, I didn’t have the energy to keep downloading all the attachments, read all the resumes, click all of the demo links and download videos. I started crossing people off for small reasons just so I could move on.

That being said, I wish to offer this advice to actors making submissions to casting calls.

1. Craigslist can’t send anything over 150kb. You’re not going to be able to send that hi-res headshot of yours to the reply address. Prepare for this. Instead of asking me to send you a “real email address” so you can then send your headshot, create a public page that contains your headshot, resume, and demo reel if you have one. I don’t have the time to respond to the many emails asking for the “real email address.”

2. If you don’t have a public webpage, get one. So much is done online, it really pays to have an online one-stop shop with all of your information. On one page you can have your headshot, resume, and demo videos. You don’t even need to hire a web designer! You can get yourself a free blog site at blogger.com or wordpress.com and then make your first post your headshot, your second post your resume, and then embed any videos from YouTube.com or Revver.com into subsequent posts. Also, you can go to actorsaccess.com and create a public profile with resume, pictures, and videos for free.

3. Don’t send links to MySpace (or any of that ilk) profiles. If I don’t have a membership, that means I have to sign up. That means a ten minute ordeal just to look at a couple of pictures and hopefully a video. If I’m going to have to sign up, I’m going to pass over your submission.

4. Send only your own information. Don’t include a friend’s headshot. First, it adds competition to yourself. Second, it makes me worry that you guys may be a package deal. If you have a friend who’s interested in a part, make them send a submission like everyone else.

5. Send the submission first; ask questions later. I’ve received a few responses that were just questions about shoot dates, pay range, etc. No headshots or resumes. I don’t have the time to answer all of these questions. Best thing to do is send your submission, and then if you get a call for an audition, ask then. You can always turn down a role, it’s not a crime.

I Am Legend's original ending!

FirstShowing.net has posted the original ending of the Will Smith flick, I Am Legend, that will be included when the DVD is released in a few weeks. Here's the link: http://www.firstshowing.net/2008/03/05/must-watch-i-am-legends-original-ending-this-is-amazing/

Those of you who know me know that I Am Legend has always been my dream project. The themes in the book are ones I usually hit on when attempting dramatic works, so it's always really grabbed me. When I saw the flick, I was disappointed. The movie is good, but the way Hollywood cocked it up (the project was in development hell for many years) just betrayed the book and paradigm-shifting concept.

The original ending is amazing. While still not close to the book's plot, the original ending at least stays thematically correct. It's worth watching.

I feel cheated that this was not the ending I saw in the theater.

The Signal & Be Kind Rewind

It's kind of funny how the universe works sometimes. I've often said that if you pay attention, the world is trying to tell you something. Maybe it's some sort of cosmic thing, maybe it's just our very human capability to find patterns in chaos. I don't know and I don't really care. (Leave that to the philosophers.) What matters is that I get the point therein and do something with it.

Over the last two weeks, I saw The Signal and Be Kind Rewind. Both deal with the influence of media and human connectedness. In one, the media is an overwhelming presence that drives people to kill, and the other shows people making media for themselves and growing as a community.

The Signal is a triptych of short films about a mysterious signal emanating from every TV, radio, and phone that causes people to kill each other. Ironically, everyone thinks everyone else is crazy and the reasons they use to justify murder make a bizarre sort of sense to themselves. The eponymous signal is inescapable. TVs and radios just come on with the broadcast playing.

Be Kind Rewind is about two guys remaking older movies with a VHS camcorder after a magnetized Jack Black inadvertently erases the store's stock of VHS movies. The self-made remakes become a hit and the people in the neighborhood get in on the action. Of course, the studios come in to piss all over the parade.

The reason I bring this up is because I feel like I've been taken too much with the mass media. I've been watching too much TV. I've been reading Digg way too much. I would be totally vulnerable to some sort of killer transmission.

I haven't been working on my back-burner projects. I haven't been making my own media. I keep worrying about finding the next gig so I can pay my bills. I keep living in this weird, fear-based state instead of embracing the whole "do what you love and the money will follow" edict. This kind of progression will only continue to lead me away from the work I wanted to do when I got into this whole industry in the first place.

I'm shifting gears. I'm not sure of how I'm going to get to my destination just yet, but the journey should be pretty cool.

Film Editing & Memory

Here's a little article I found on Digg: Cuts in Movies and Their Impact on Memory. In the article, the authors discuss a study that shows a viewer's memory of the actions in a scene isn't as good if the scene utilizes cuts as opposed to a still or moving camera.

Apparently, the reason for this is that our eyes take a moment to adjust to the composition of the new shot. Not surprising as Walter Murch wrote of this in his book, In the Blink of an Eye.

While I found the article interesting, what I found more interesting were the comments in following the article. The majority of people posting on their seem to think that longer takes equals better film or better directing. Maybe it's because faster paced editing is so associated as the requisite technique in brainless action films (see any Michael Bay atrocity for evidence of this).

Editing, regardless of pace, exists as a technique to tell the story. The way shots are put together creates new meanings that may not be evident in the long take. The speed of the cuts may elicit an emotional response (such as a disorienting confusion) or the refusal to cut away from a shot may be to force us to witness something (such as a character's reaction.) We should also remember that editing isn't just cutting, but also not cutting.

Anyway, it seems to me that editing may be the most misunderstood part of the motion picture arts to the general public. I may pen some articles on basic editing theory in the future.

I would definitely suggest watching The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing.