Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Dance audition and other stuff

Have another video pretty close to coming on the way. I made the video with the idea that I would teach myself some VFX, but it looks like I bit off more than I can chew so I had to ask someone else to finish it for me. More on that on a later date.

I helped a friend with the shooting and editing for the... prelude to a webseries or something that he has planned. I have that below. I also helped with the directing in a way in terms of helping the actors get a performance. It was kind of cool exercising those muscles again. I have that video posted below. Y'all can watch that if you'd like.

I recently went to a standup comedy show that my friend Johnny Pemberton was doing and it kind of inspired me to try stand up. I was also motivated because yet again I was told that I should definitely try it from two people at the show and have been told that numerous times before that as well. I've started compiling some ideas together and have looked at open mics so we'll see how that goes. If anything I think it'll be a good avenue to try and channel my voice and on hone my on stage/screen persona. More than likely I'll do a show solo, but maybe if I get confident enough (and don't quit) I'll actually give a date so people can go and check it out.


Anyways, on to the story of this dance audition. I got a breakdown for an audition recently that called for a 15-17 year old who's not a great dancer, but is part of a dance group anyways. For the audition they wanted me to prepare a one minute freestyle dance routine. Normally, I would have freaked out about having to play a 15 year old, but I was actually TERRIFIED about having to do a one minute dance routine of any kind. I guess a weird fact about me, I'm not really scared of stage fright. I've done stupid stuff on a handful of levels and don't really blink an eye at it. But, for whatever reason, dancing kind of sets off some kind of trigger in my mind that makes me more self conscious than anything else. So, doing any one minute dance of my own "free style" is one of the last things I would ever want to do for an audition. But, you can't really say no to an audition or an opportunity, plus I had the benefit that the character himself isn't necessarily supposed to be good anyways.

I went into the office and did my lines. Then came for me to do my freestyle dance. They asked if I had brought my music, which I did, and they said just do about a minute of whatever you think the character would do. Not sure what the character would do, but my plan was to play the song "Turn Down For What" and flail around like an idiot for as long as I could bear it. I gave them a heads up that I'm terrible at dancing and they told me it was fine. I then played the music and just did weird pelvic thrusts and arm flailing and probably looked more strange than anything. After probably only 20-30 seconds I kind of felt super self conscious again and stopped abruptly and turned off the music and told them that's all I could really handle. They just kind of chuckled and said thank you and I went on my way. I don't think I got that role.

I guess another story that was strange and interesting is I went into the wrong suite for an a casting office one day and walked in on a guy sitting naked on a couch. After half a second he calmly goes to cover himself then says to me "You are in the wrong office". At which point, I promptly left and closed the door behind me. Apparently I had gone to suite 3 rather than 6. Then I went to the right suite and did a pretty good job at the audition.

Anyways, here's that video I was referring to earlier.