Into the Void

Ok. Got it. I am writing all of this into a void, because no one reads this page. It's hard to get tone right in type - I'm ok with that, since I only ever had...hmmm...I think about 5 or 6 people who stopped by on occasion, and I didn't post anything for nearly a year, so fair enough.

So it's like I'm writing in a diary that someone could stumble upon. Should this make me more cautious or less cautious?

I wanted to post that I'm back to learning things at this internship. I was in on Friday watching auditions and thinking about how to prepare for commercial auditions and how to decipher what the agent is telling you. I watched a lot of people struggle with the directions and with the spot in general, and a lot of people had prepared but were not able to take direction to change their preparation. They weren't able to think of anything off the cuff to improv further in the scene, and most of them seemed completely thrown by being asked for anything beyond the script.

I can appreciate that feeling of being on the spot, so it made me think about how I could prepare myself for such an eventuality. In the nervousness of the moment, a lot of your thinking shuts down. I guess you have to do your thinking early, and THAT'S the kind of preparation you have to do.

Also interesting, the phrase "go further with it" from an agent's lips never refers to going bigger, it refers to extending the text. The trend in tv spots is small and real, unerplayed, deadpan, etc. The bigger you get, the less real you seem for today's spots. I haven't seen an exception yet, but I bet I will. It's just a trend, not an absolute.

I still think personally I am not very good at this, but yesterday I was able to get back to trying to figure out how it works. Maybe I can get better...I'm definitely going to take a class soon. I'm still pretty disappointed in myself, and it's hard to shake the idea that I'm never going to book real work because I don't have the talent for it. But for the moment, I'm going to keep going, and see if I can improve.

I wish I had something more to show for the 9 years I've been at this. Oh, well.