Entries from November 2008 ↓

Dear Acting Diary,

Last week I was excited to have my first modeling job. My girlfriend had sent me an email casting notice for a print job. I submitted myself and a few days later I was on a plane headed towards New Mexico, the Land of Enchantment (and at least 62 cable TV channels). The audition for the job was unlike most auditions that I go on. I just had three snapshots taken of me: one profile, one with a slight smile, and another one just looking at the camera straight on. The room that I had my picture taken seemed dark, the casting people–while nice–didn’t seem too interested in me, and the weather was gloomy so I thought that this audition was another in a long line of ones that I just walk away from and forget.

A few days later the casting folks called me and told me that I was on the "short list" and reconfirmed my schedule. Then I got a call a couple hours later that I was cast and I’d be flying out to New Mexico in a few days. I wasn’t called on the set until Saturday morning so I had Friday afternoon and night all to myself which I spent catching up on sleep, walking along the pedestrian free stretch of highway the Hotel was located, watching the undersecretary of the Treasury testify on C-SPAN, enjoying the complimentary herbal teas in the hotel lobby, using my bed as a table for my meatball sub supper, and perusing the the hotel convenience shop for chapstick and toothpaste.

Saturday morning I was all set for my 7:45am call. I met the other actors/models, crew, and production staff for the day, got fitted for my geek-chic wardrobe, and hung around the set. I was the first model shot for the day. The set was in this huge server room with lots of fans and cool air blowing in to protect the servers. I wasn’t used to print modelling so the photographer had to remind to hold poses, "this is not video." The creative director told me to act "confident" as if I "owned the server room." This direction basically translated into my smirking, folding my arms, and opening my eyes slightly wider than I usually do.

The folding the arms was easy, looking confident with my eyes wasn’t too difficult, but holding a smirk for more than a few seconds is hard. After an all too short while, my cheek started to spasm a little bit. I felt like I couldn’t control my body with my spasming smirk. I guess the secret is to relax the smirk every once in a while and make a new smirk. I asked another one of the actor/models about this and he said he had trouble holding his smirk too, his lips started wiggling.

The other difficulty besides dealing with my low smirk self-esteem was that the server room was so loud from the fans that were blowing that I could barely hear the directions I was given. The photographer was cool though and despite some hand signals that I didn’t understand, things moved along. One of the producers told me that I was doing a good job and seemed like a totally different person on camera. Not too shabby for my first day as a professional model.

Other things I had to do in the shoot: walk back and forth with one of the other actor/models while havin a conversation and pretend to push buttons. Afterall that it was 5:00pm and time to go back to the hotel and enjoy some complimentary herbal tea and that Larry the Cable Guy Health Inspector movie on TV The production company was nice enough to extend my return flight for a couple days and I surprised my Mom and Dad with a visit. I got in some time with the folks and some nice views of beautiful New Mexico.

Things I learned from my first modeling job:

• Holding a pose feels easier if I think of myself as "acting the pose" instead of holding a pose. You know what I mean, models.
• If you have to "pretend to type" actually type something, don’t just hit keys. Write a letter to a friend.
• If you can’t hear your directions tell people, don’t pretend to hear.
• Re-confirm your rate, payment, travel reimbursements, etc. before and during the pre-shoot paperwork. There’s always actors who aren’t quite sure what they’re earning on a project and this awkward situation can be quickly cleared up with just asking the right person. If you have an agent, just ask them. It’s not rude to ask how much you’re earning. If you’re rate is different than what you thought it would be, go back and find the source of your misunderstanding, if the source is something in print like a breakdown notice bring it to the producer’s attention. If you’re getting paid more than you thought you were, just act cool.
• Jobs out of town are fun. But sometimes you need to buddy up with the other folks for stuff to do during your free days and nights.

"Barack, I circled this park for THIRTY MINUTES," Senator Joseph Biden shows up Election Night, just as it wraps up.

CHICAGO, IL (JB)– On November 4, 2008 right after Vice Presidential Candidate Joe Biden got the word that he and Senator Barack Obama had won the election, he jumped in his car to head over to Grant Park. "I was planning on listening to the speech and I really wanted to be there but I didn’t know what time we were doing this and well… there was a lot of traffic."

At 11:10pm, Senator Biden furiously circled Grant Park looking for a parking space for his 1996 Honda Civic but no avail. "Cars were parked, double parked, and I had just gotten a couple dents on this thing–I didn’t want to chance it."

Much to Biden’s chagrin, he heard to the crowd of 240,000 people cheer and the speech begin. "A) I knew from the sound of the crowd that there was no way I was going to find a space and B) I was missing the speech." The Delaware Senator scrambled the dial of his Civic’s radio looking for an NPR station, "I know NPR is generally at the bottom of the dial." Biden finally found a station airing the speech, "I couldn’t tell if it was NPR, some Latin Beat Top 40 thing, or maybe a college station… but I heard Barack giving a speech. Much of the message I had heard before, in the mornings when Barack and I would stretch–I got most of it."

The Senator, realizing it would look "awful" if he didn’t appear next to his running mate before the end of the speech, took down a couple mailboxes and parked the Honda Civic on someone’s lawn. "You should have seen the tire tracks! I’m just glad the guy was probably in the park listening to the speech. I then booked it to the stage and just made it as Barack finished up."

Many TV viewers noted Senator Biden having one hand in his pocket as he approached the stage. "I thought my keys might have fallen out as I was running. But they were there. Man, I booked it."

Biden added about his drive across Chicago, "I didn’t realize how much of The Dark Knight was shot here. It’s phenomenal."

Carrie Sipple and I won first place in the Uncle Dracula Monster Movie Mashup 48 Hour film race with "Final Discourse." It starred Carrie Sipple , Stacy Mayer ,  and me with the voice talents of Ryan Stratton , Brent Hankins , and Wayne Henry . We shot, wrote and edited the movie in 48 hours. We were given the genres of horror and documentary to mash together. We also had to use the name "Matt" and yogurt.

Carrie and I came up with the concept Friday night, made an outline of what we wanted the rough plot to be. I also sent an email to some friends to see if they could call my phone number and leave a message like what you would hear on a paranormal radio show such as "Coast to Coast AM" to be used as audio clips. We also shot some brief footage and did some editing. We wanted to make a short about a couple of conspiracy theory podcasters who get in too deep investigating "The Lizardo," inspired by the semi-popular reptilian/reptiloid conspiracy where people believe the world is run by a cabal of lizard men.

Hey, maybe it’s true:

• Interview with a Reptiloid
• TinWiki Page

On Saturday we gathered the main props and costumes then shot it with Stacy. We improvised a lot and changed the plot of the film a couple times. We still had wanted to shoot some stuff but the end of the day caught up with us. We decided to save our energy for the mad dash of Sunday. There were some points that we didn’t know were clear such as the logic of my character seeing pictures of himself with The Lizardo then becoming one, but we thought we could make it work in editing.

On Sunday we edited everything together. We didn’t have time to shoot the extra items that we wanted, so we used "title cards" to make up for any needed exposition. We finished it, burned it to a DVD, and dropped it off by 7:30pm. We excluded lots of footage particularly footage of Stacy dressed as a Lizardo and going to the ATM, footage of my chasing Carrie (we thought it would be scarier if it was just footage of Carrie being chased from my perspective), and an intro sequence to the "Final Discourse Podcast."

I gathered some of the unused footage and made this video afterwards:

It was lots of fun and we were excited to win first prize at the screening on the following Wednesday. I think the key to making a succcessful 48 hour film like this is to divide up the labor and be flexible, because you’re not going to be able to do everything you want. Also I would make sure to devote the majority of one of the days to editing. In the end we had a lot of footage we didn’t use, but I think this helped make the movie better because it gave us more to choose from.