As soon as I finished the shoot for “Single Parent Date Night”, I got the feeling that I had been missing out on acting for far too long. I’ve had auditions from time to time (I wish I had more but I understand that sometimes that’s out of my control) and I was in my improv class last year. And of course I have my meetings with my WIF mentoring group which is one of the most inspiring things for me.
But since my shoot, what I’ve been doing doesn’t feel like enough. I know I’m limited in some situations like I cannot force myself to get more auditions or don’t have the financial ability to do a short film like that one all the time, but that’s no excuse for me anymore. I need to keep going and I feel like I have no other choice.
I’m looking again into acting classes. I’m still torn if I should do the next level of improv classes, but I’m leaning more toward not doing it now. I’ve got a few more months to sign up for the next level before I have to start back at the beginning, so I can still change my mind if I want. But there are so many other types of acting classes outside of improv so I’m exploring those.
There are some acting classes that I’d love to take, but they are just too far beyond my price range. I can’t afford classes that cost more than my rent, and there are some like that out there that I know would be worth it if I had the money. And while the cheap ones are a good deal for me financially, I have to make sure that they are the right choice for my career as well.
I’ve got things narrowed down to a couple of classes that meet both the financial and career requirements that I have. I’m going to take a bit more time to look into all the options and I’m going to try to figure out what order I want to take them in. I will have to save money for each class I take, so it may take me a few years to get to all the classes that look interesting to me right now (and by then I’m sure there will be even more classes I want to take).
I’m also looking at doing more work on my own. They won’t be as professional as “Single Parent Date Night” all the time, but there are some beautiful projects I’ve seen that were shot on an iPhone. So I figured why couldn’t I do the same thing? I would need to keep the script and locations simple, but it is possible to work on my own stuff instead of always just waiting for someone to create one for me.
I took the first step to self-producing by becoming a SAG-AFTRA Signatory Producer. It was a very simple process online for me that allows me to produce union projects (which I have to do since I am union). Since I’m still not really a writer, I need to find friends who do write that I can collaborate with, but this is a start.
And I’ve already started working on another project. This one would actually not have me in it, but it’s an idea that I’ve been wanting to do for a little bit. I’m working with a writer friend and the script is done now. We are working on finding what actors want to be in it and once that is done we can submit all the paperwork to the union to get everything approved and ready to shoot.
Hopefully through the collaborations I’ve been a part of lately, I can find more people to work with and who can help me create my own work or will create work for me to be in. And yes, I still want to get more auditions so that I can book something that is on network tv so that I can feel like my career has taken a big step. For but now, I need to focus on what I can do where I am right now and hopefully that will be enough until whatever big thing I will book comes my way.
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Halfway Through Class (or Not Thinking About The Next Step)
Finding New Ways To Be Creative (or Almost As Good As Acting)
