Working on a Movie Set, Researching Acting Technique and Getting Actor’s Heashots

    My boyfriend started working on set this week as a boom operator. He has informed me there are tons of lingo used on a set that one would never even think about. Terms for walking through with sharp objects, special words for clothes pins, etc. He has been gone for 12 hours plus a day. I was surprised to see him come home with a big smile on his face working that long after his first day. It apparently is a type of horror movie which is a genre he is very passionate about. He did not know this when he took the job. It was a great surprise upon reading the script.
I got head shots taken. I had a very talented friend with a good camera as my photographer. I also coordinated with a makeup artist friend. She is doing my make-up and teaching me techniques to do my own. We have decided to form a bit of a beginners “Time for Print” club. We are all new and nervous at our various skills but we all want to work to improve them. A photographer, a makeup artist, a hair stylist, and me a model/actress. Since we are all new, there will be no fear when we eventually work in more qualified and professional endeavors. By working together it helps us gain confidence and experience. We looked at a most of them, and they turned out wonderfully. We are both knowledgeable in photoshop, and will get them in great shape in no time. Then I will hit up the agencies in town to try to get more extra and stand in work, and take some more classes.
I prepared by reading a chapter from “Acting is Everything.” by Judy Kerr. There is a wealth of information I am just starting to dig into. I never realized there was so much to getting a head shot taken. I never realized there could be so much emotion conveyed by a single still frame picture, but it is true. I practiced earlier this week by snapping photos of myself with my photobooth function on my computer, and thought of various topics and feelings when I was snapping photos, and there is a big difference between them. I have begun to concentrate on my own eyes, and the eyes of characters in the television and films that I watch. I have been into the third season of the show, “Lost” and watched “The Dark Knight” this week. I find that the actress Maggie Gyllenhaal communicates much of her character and her emotion in her eyes. They are a beautiful feature of hers, therefore call attention, but she does not only communicate beauty with them. Lost’s Matthew Fox seems to communicate a bit of intense insanity behind the eyes of the heroic leader that he plays. I wonder if these are strategies they control as they do movement and words, or if they naturally seem to happen for them.
Acting is the first thing I ever knew I loved. When I first entered adulthood I almost did give it up for “rational” thinking and planning. I feel so blessed alive and hopeful for the first time in a long time, that I am able to follow the path I am supposed to be on. I am so thankful to all these books I have been reading and the seminars that I go to full of people who have experienced the same fears and doubts, but also have that voice inside their head, and feeling inside their heart, that tells them this is what they are supposed to do with themselves regardless of what others might think, or the risk that they take.
As I was writing this, I got an email from a woman who is a casting director. She is a friend of a friend’s mom. I have an ACTUAL AUDITION for an extra role on Wednesday. OH MY GOSH!!! Okay.. much research to do in three days… Thank goodness I went to those seminars, I actually have some clue of what happens in one of those…Well everyone has to start somewhere… Here I go.