108667052986583101

Working through the words

Last night, I wrote about how tough it’s been working through a couple scenes from Devil’s Advocate. While that’s still true, I feel like I made a lot of progress tonight and I’m feeling much more comfortable with the scene. Heretofore, I hadn’t marked up the copy at all; I had just read through the scene a few times and tried to get a feel for what’s going on. Tonight, I sat down and meticulously marked up the script and that seemed to really open it up for me. One problem I was having had to do with the scene’s length–it’s 11 pages. I kept getting lost in the scene and not being able to find my way through all the words to what was actually happening with the characters and with the movie.

Marking it up allowed me to break it down into sections so I could wrap my mind around what was actually going on. I’ve gotten a much better feel for how my character changes throughout the scene. His objective is always the same, but he realizes that he can’t accomplish it the way he thought; he has to change tactics and methods a few times. So, I’m starting to understand the scene, but now I have to figure out how to take my new understanding and translate it to physical action. That’s where I generally have the most trouble. I have a difficult time taking my understanding of the character and translating that character’s words and actions into my own speech and movement. The trick is portraying the character honestly because the camera will surely catch anything that isn’t honest–a fake move, a staged look, or anything else where I might be “acting”.

Slow and steady…

108658247914775395

Tough scenes

So far, I’ve really been enjoying my learning experience as I work towards being an actor. Usually, I feel challenged and fulfilled as I work through a scene and I get a definite sense of fulfillment after we’ve shot something and critiqued it. This week, I’m working on a couple scenes from The Devil’s Advocate and, so far, I’m very frustrated. The scenes are just difficult and I’m having a tough time connecting to the characters. I still have a few days (which is really a long time) to work on the scenes before we lay them down on Thursday, and I’m sure I’ll make great progress, but right now it’s difficult to tell if I’ll really be able to play the scenes well.

That said, this is why I’m so excited about acting. This is very challenging and it’s been a long time since I had to work on something that I had so much trouble getting through. I love the challenge, I love the analysis, I love trying to learn something I’ve never learned before. This stress, frustration and anxiety is why I want to do something other than engineering for a career. With engineering, this sort of learning curve simply doesn’t exist. I may be challenged, but the assignments I would get as an engineer wouldn’t challenge me personally as acting does.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to grinding out these scenes and seeing what I can do. Right now, my confidence is low and I’m not sure I can play the scenes convincingly… and this is exactly where I need to be. I feel backed into a corner and that means I have nothing to lose. I feel as though I’ll fail and that feeling is only motivating me to give everything I have to try and succeed. I’ll know if I have succeeded at about 7:30 on Thursday evening.

108632351988668005

Weeks fly by

It’s really unbelievable how quickly time passes for me here. When I was in school, I generally felt time move in days and I counted down the semesters in weeks. Here, time passes in one-week increments and I’m counting passed time in months. I think most of this is because of my monotonous schedule: when I was in school, every day was different and ‘routine’ wasn’t part of my vocabulary; now, every week is similar and routine is the dominating characteristic of my life.

I guess this is ok for now, but it’ll drive me nuts if I’m this wrapped up in routine forever. I don’t know if I’ll be a successful actor, but if I am I’m looking forward to having unique days again. I’m sure there’s some monotony involved with shooting a film, but I’m betting there’s also a lot of variety and hopefully that’ll help time feel like it’s passing slower.

108615356470531840

Big ol’ Texas storm

I had dinner at my friends’ place tonight, but had to leave a little early ’cause there was a big fat thunderstorm headed my way. The drive home was on a main highway that’s pretty flat with few trees and buildings around, so I could see a lot more of the sky than I usually can in the city or on other highways around here. There are a lot of thunderstorms in Florida, and most of them have a lot of lightning, so that’s nothin’ new to me. But for some reason, the lightning that came with tonight’s storm was pretty impressive to me. I’m not sure if it was because I could see more of the sky than I usually could in Florida, or if the storm was just different than what I grew up around, but this lightning was really something. Lightning was streaking across the sky at a rate of about one bolt a second. Some bolts were horizontal, some vertical, some a single strand, some several strands flashing together. But the really odd thing was that there was virtually no thunder. I mean, some of this lightning was really bright and vivid, and (probably because I’m used to Florida thunderstorms) I would expect to hear a big boom after a particularly bright flash of lightning. But there usually was no boom. It was pretty eerie, but really beautiful at the same time.

I hope I get to see some more of this cool Texas lightning before I move on.