Tag Archives: acting

Netflix Luncheon (or Rebels and Rule Breakers)

Posted on May 18, 2016 | Comments Off on Netflix Luncheon (or Rebels and Rule Breakers)

Through both SAG-AFTRA and WIF I got email invites for an event that Netflix was hosting this past weekend that featured the women of Netflix shows. The event was a luncheon at the Beverly Wilshire hotel and since the luncheon technically didn’t start until noon, I figured I should accept the invite because my work shift would be ending at 11am that day (I don’t miss work to attend events so I do miss out on a bunch).

There was free valet for attendees at the hotel, but it was so packed that it almost took me 30 minutes to get into the valet area and get out of my car! Fortunately, the pre-reception was still going on when I arrived so I checked in at the front, got my table number, and headed inside the room where the event was.

Netflix Event Beverly Wilshire

I had never been inside the Beverly Wilshire before, so I was so impressed by the space and the set up in the room. There was a bar for drinks, but I ended up spending my time before the luncheon started looking for friends of mine. Fortunately, since there were invites from a couple of different organizations I ended up knowing quite a few people there. Most of them were people I knew from the SAG-AFTRA convention because they were there representing the union at the luncheon.

At noon we were instructed to go to our tables and sit down so the presentation and lunch could start. At each of our seats, we had a card that on one side had the people who would be speaking and on the other side the menu of the lunch.

Netflix Speakers Neflix Menu

I knew who would be there speaking ahead of time because it was on the invite for the event, but I was still so excited to hear everyone speak. The panel was done in 2 segments and each woman there shared a bit of her story and a bit about how she feels about being a rebel. Being a rebel in the entertainment industry can mean so many things, and each of them had such a wonderful viewpoint. I loved hearing about how women are afraid not to be polite so they don’t try for things or ask things that might be a bit bold. While women shouldn’t worry about always being polite, there’s no need to not be gracious. Being polite and gracious are different things, and I never thought about that.

I’ve always been scared to not be polite, so this was really hitting home for me. I know I’ve been paid less than my co-workers because I didn’t want to see rude or pushy to ask for a raise. I’ve been treated badly at day jobs because I didn’t want to make a fuss and tell HR that I’m being harassed. I’ve tolerated guys saying pretty bad things to be because I didn’t want them to think I wasn’t being nice because I’ve heard far too many stories of women being shot or attacked by men after they reject them (because to some men, rejection is rude and women shouldn’t do it).

I had already been making strides to being more bold in the past. More recently, I’ve been very outspoken about friends that I’ve wanted to work on projects with. The short film I’ll be starring in soon is because on a phone call with my friend Christopher I said that I was mad that he and I hadn’t worked on a project yet. He said he didn’t have anything that fit me, but next thing I knew our short film was written and now we are in pre-production. I’m going to be in another short film this year because when a friend mentioned that they were working on getting it to pre-production I asked what part there is for me. That isn’t the nicest way to ask, but it was effective and I’ll be playing a small part in that film now.

This entire luncheon was so empowering and really got me thinking about how I need to work on finding the balance between being polite (which is what I’ve been told I have to be) and being pushy (which is what I need to be to help further my career). I don’t have the answer on what that balance should be, but honestly I hadn’t been working hard enough in the past on this to make it work for me. I’m so inspired by what all these women said at this luncheon. I know that if I make a couple of small changes in how I interact with others (and how I network) that it can be a huge impact in the auditions I’m getting and the parts that are being offered to me.

The panel part of the luncheon was only about an hour or so long and after it was done we all were told to head back up to where the pre-reception was for desserts and drinks. I was able to find more of my friends at that point and I think all of us were equally inspired by what we heard (both men and women were at the event and I only heard very positive things from everyone).

We know that diversity is more than just women, but getting more women filmmakers and having women’s stories told in film and tv is important. Just this week, a pilot for a new tv show was rejected because it skewed too female. That’s is horrible. I’ve never heard of a pilot being rejected because it was too male. There’s also all the hatred that I don’t understand toward the all-female “Ghostbusters” movie. Some people don’t think that women need to look up to other women or are complaining that men have nobody to relate to in that movie (there are male characters and if they have to watch an all-male cast they can watch the original movie). And some people think that while women will watch shows about men, men won’t watch them about women. This has been proven wrong by movies like “Bridesmaids” that have been big successes.

These are all attitudes that need to change in order for more women to be writing projects, directing projects, and playing characters that are no just the girlfriend or the pretty one to look at. I feel like this change has started, but there are so many voices speaking negatively regarding gender diversity in film and tv (who want to keep it male centric) and I hope that those people will see that putting more women in front or behind the camera will not diminish men but will in fact create more projects that everyone can be in.

 

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Default ThumbnailAlmost Ready To Make A Movie! (or Can You Spare A Buck?) Default ThumbnailBeing Proactive (or Bringing Acting To Me) Default ThumbnailA Casual Brunch (or More Hangout And Less Catchup) Default ThumbnailAnother “Gilmore Girls” Adventure (or Netflix FYSee) Default ThumbnailAnother Netflix Night (or A Comedy Panel) Default ThumbnailGetting Ready For A Fun Rewatch (or More Netflix Parties)

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Cast and Crew Read Through (or We Get To Make A Movie!)

Posted on May 13, 2016 | 2 comments

First of all, thank you to everyone who reads this blog who donated to the Kickstarter for “Single Parent Date Night”! I’m overwhelmed by how many of you wanted to help us and how you’ve all supported us in this campaign (and how you all tolerated the million posts we all made about it). I’m so happy that we made it to our goal and we get to make this film happen!

But if you are reading this on Friday (the day I post it), we still have some time left in the campaign and can use every dollar we get. The $2200 we asked for (which will be less than that after the Kickstarter fees are taken out) is the bare minimum we need to make the movie. We’d love to have any extra money so we can use it for any emergency costs that come up and to submit this film to film festivals when it’s completed. So if you can donate any amount (seriously, $1 is so helpful!), please do so before the campaign ends! And if you are reading this after the campaign ended but still want to help, contact me and I can see what else we can arrange.

Beyond the Kickstarter, we’ve been working on getting this movie ready to be made! Our director and producer (both of whom rock!) have been working on getting the film crewed up. It was tough to do that before we knew we’d reach our Kickstarter goal, but things are starting to come together. We are looking at an early June shoot date and I can’t wait to be filming this!

I had a meeting this week with the director, producer, and my co-star/writer of the film. This was the first time we had all been together since shooting our Kickstarter video and I’m glad we were able to all be together again. We had to discuss some Kickstarter stuff, but that was just a little part of the meeting. The real reason for the meeting was to do the first official cast and crew read through of the movie!

Read Through

Christopher (the writer and my co-star) and I have met to do a read through before, but that was also a slightly different version of the script. We also had done that read through before we got our director and producer involved so it had been a while ago. So it was great to get together to read the script out loud and for our director and producer to hear it spoke for the first time.

Fortunately, everything went really smoothly. The script doesn’t need to have many changes made to it so we are pretty set with how it is right now. And by saying the script out loud, Christopher and I were able to work on the rhythm of the script and to work on where the comedy is in it versus the serious moments. And our director asked Christopher and I some really great questions about our characters and I really had to think about some of the answers. I’m definitely realizing now that I haven’t done enough script work on the script and I’m going to focus on that for the next week or so.

I think that we read through the script maybe 4 or 5 times (it’s easy to do with a short film and while sitting at a table instead of going from location to location) and I think that we are really off to a good start to this production. I know that things will keep going smoother as we rehearse more and once we start performing at the locations instead of at a table (some of the comedy will come from the locations), but I just feel really good about this already. Christopher and I really work well together (which is lucky since this is the first project we’ve ever worked on together and we didn’t audition to see how we worked as a pair), and I think that even if the part hadn’t been written for me that this is a part that I would have gotten from an audition. It really fits me well and I think it showcases me nicely as a comedic actor.

I think I might have forgotten how much I love working on a project that is more than just showing up on the day and doing something really quickly. I miss the prep work and rehearsals that larger projects have. While I love any job I get and am grateful for every single one, this is such a different experience than booking a job after a very quick audition and not working with the cast and crew until when you arrive on set (and a lot of time that time on set is extremely limited). But now, I get to spend a lot of time with the script and we have rehearsal time to figure out how to make this film the best it can possibly be.

The next steps for us will first be to get the Kickstarter done (which will be at 5pm today) and then get those funds as well as the personal funds we are using together to finalize our budget and hire our crew. Things will be happening pretty quickly between now and the shoot date, but I really couldn’t be more excited about it all! This is exactly what I want to do with my life and I’m lucky enough that a friend wrote a script for us so I could live my dream (even if it’s only for a little bit).

Thank you again all so much for supporting our Kickstarter and I can’t wait to blog about each step of the way of making this movie! I hope that you enjoy following this process as much as I love being a part of it!

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Default ThumbnailAlmost Ready To Make A Movie! (or Can You Spare A Buck?) Default ThumbnailMaking A Movie (or Pulling An All-Nighter) Default ThumbnailA Lunchtime Meeting (or Feeling Very LA) Default ThumbnailA Premiere Morning (or Seeing Myself On The Big Screen) Default ThumbnailTable Read (or Spending My Saturday Acting) Default ThumbnailFiguring Out The Next Step (or I Need To Keep Acting)

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Missing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management)

Posted on May 12, 2016 | Comments Off on Missing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management)

This week has been a pretty crazy busy week for me. I’ve been very busy with the day jobs, including learning how to do a new task for my research job. I now have 4 extra hours a week plus a new aspect of my job that takes up 50% of my hours. I’ve done some phone training, but we’ve also had a bunch of technical issues and it’s required so many phone calls and emails back and forth (I’m so grateful that my boss is chill about all this).

I’m very happy to have the new tasks and the additional hours because the extra money helps and I want to make sure that this day job continues beyond when my contract ends in October. But learning new things and trying to balance the hours split between the two jobs for one job has been a bit much. I’m finally starting to get into a good groove with the new work and things are much more normal, but that definitely affected the beginning of my week.

And the beginning of this week was supposed to be pretty packed with social events. But because of the stress I was dealing with from the job, I had to make the decision not to go to them.

I’m not too happy about missing the events. Both of them were actor events. And I know I’m been slacking a bit with my acting career lately. I need to make more of an effort to make my career a priority. But that’s not easy when the money-making jobs need to happen too. I thought I had figured out a good balance, but all the technical issues really made me have to reorganize my time and figure out what things had to be sacrificed. And sadly, the free acting related things had to be sacrificed over the money-making jobs.

Time management isn’t usually my weakness, but I’ve realized that flexible time management is. I get my schedule set for the week (or day), but I don’t allow for issues to come up. I have to get from one thing to another really quickly at times, and if there is a delay it can affect multiple things at once. The delay isn’t usually traffic (I typically give myself double the time I’m expecting it to take to get somewhere), but something in my life that stops me in my tracks and requires my attention before I can move on. Sometimes, these things aren’t avoidable like health issues (panic or gallbladder attacks can easily ruin an entire day). But I need to be aware of other issues that might need extra time and to build that into my day at some point.

I am glad I stayed home to work on the things I had to do, but I can’t help but feel that there may have been another way for me to deal with them and still make it to the events that I want to go to. I’ve been looking at my upcoming calendar and the fun events I have planned. I want to make sure that I can add in some flexible time in there to help make sure that I can do whatever needs to be done without missing out on the events.

I think the reason why this has never really been an issue for me before is that I’ve never been as busy as I’ve been lately. I miss the days where I only had 1 day job and that was it. It was super easy to schedule around that because my hours were pretty set and nothing would change. While my box office job hours don’t change (unless they need me to cover for someone or I have to make up hours), my research hours can be at any time. I try to do them around the same time as the box office job, but sometimes they have to be done late at night. I try to keep things as stable as possible, but life happens and since my job isn’t restricted to certain hours I can’t say that if I miss work at a certain time that I get to skip it. I have to find the time to make it up.

I can’t go back in time to fix the scheduling issues so that I could attend the events that I wanted to go to. All I can do is learn from the mistakes that I made (or the issues that I experienced) and try to make things better for me for the future. Hopefully, I can find a great way to balance out life and work and I can make acting events a priority in my life again.

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Default ThumbnailStaying Super Busy (or Another Job) Default ThumbnailBack To Normal (or Catching Up On Life) Default ThumbnailI Got A New Day Job, Sort Of (or Maybe I Won’t Be Unemployed For Long) Default ThumbnailProductive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time) Default ThumbnailGetting My Butt In Gear (or Missing Out On Fun Stuff To Work) Default ThumbnailFitting It All In (or Getting Better At Time Management)

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Bikini Audition (or Finding My Confidence)

Posted on May 6, 2016 | Comments Off on Bikini Audition (or Finding My Confidence)

Last week I got a text from my agents. They typically only text me when I have an audition, so I immediately took a look at my phone to see what audition they had gotten for me! But instead of the text saying I have an audition, it said that I had a potential audition but before they confirmed me for it they wanted to double-check about one thing. They wanted to make sure I was ok being in a bikini. As an actor, you feel like you have to say yes to whatever (unless it’s something not safe like they ask you to ride a horse and you are terrified of horses), so I said yes right away.

The only problem was I didn’t have a bikini.

I have the bathing suit that I wore in Hawaii, but that was a tankini and this audition notice said specifically that the actor must be comfortable in a 2 piece bikini. I had a couple of days before the audition, so I figured I had time to find a bikini top and figure out a way to feel confident in it.

I’ll be honest, shopping for the bikini top sucked. I had to go to multiple stores with no luck. It seems like no place carried bikini tops in my size. I was able to find a ton of skirted one pieces or baggy suits, but nothing fun or cute. And it was too close to order something I could find online. Finally I had to realize that I was going to have to spend a decent amount of money on the top and I figured I could keep the tag inside and return it after the audition.

I eventually found a top that worked at Torrid (and had a coupon to save some money on it). I didn’t hate it too much when I bought it and I was planning on using the bottoms I wore in Hawaii (I didn’t need the matching bottoms).

I spent my weekend preparing for my audition and didn’t really think too much about having to wear the bikini. It was only going to be a minute of my time wearing it so I was trying not to worry about it. I focused on learning my lines and being as ready as possible for the audition.

The day of the audition, I worked my usual work shift (my audition was after work so I didn’t need to ask for time off). But since I didn’t feel like getting dressed for work and then dressed for the audition, I worked in the bikini with some yoga pants. I passed myself in a mirror a couple of times while I was walking between my desk and kitchen, and I have to say that I didn’t feel like I looked that bad. In fact, I was pretty happy with how the bikini looked on me!

Bikini Audition

I liked how I looked so much that I ended up taking the tag out of the top because I knew I had to keep it!

All of the sudden, I was no longer nervous about the bikini part of the audition. My only nerves were the normal audition nerves and I tried to get those out of my system when I was driving to the valley to the studio where the audition was held.

I personally think the audition went great! The casting directors and I made jokes about me stripping down when I was taking off the yoga pants and tank that I wore on top of the bikini. And they loved the bikini so much that they had me turn around so they could check it out (and they commented that they would totally buy that for themselves too). They laughed at the scene I read and I had no confidence issues at all. Who would have thought that being half-naked in front of a camera was the best way to get my nerves to go away?

In the lobby of the casting office, they had a selfie station. I didn’t have time to take a photo before the audition (and we all were focusing on our lines), but a friend who was there auditioning too took a picture with me after we were both done auditioning.

Selfie Station

On the drive home, I just felt so great. I had a weight lifted from my shoulders that I never knew was there. I know that I’ve heard that every body is a bikini body so many times. But I honestly never believed it until this audition. But now I’m excited to figure out when I can wear the bikini this summer. I’ll be going back east for a family reunion and I think there is either a pool or hot tub where we are staying, so I’ll bring it then. And I want to figure out some fun beach adventures to go on in LA too.

All my confidence issues aren’t gone now. I’m sure I’ll still feel a bit insecure when I wear the bikini in public where I’m the only heavy person (it helped that all the ladies at my audition who were auditioning were heavy too). There may be people who make fun or me or laugh and point at me in public. And if that happens that it going to suck and I’m sure I’ll feel down about it.

But for now, I’m just so excited that I’ve found even the smallest amount of confidence and that I’m ready to rock a bikini for the first time as an adult (and possibly the first time ever in my life)!

 

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Posted in Acting, Fun Stuff, Shopping

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Reflection on April’s Challenge (and Looking At May’s)

Posted on May 4, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve been keeping up with the monthly challenges with my Spark Planner. Even though I do weekly and monthly goals in the planner, the monthly challenges are nice because they are something I want to do every day and for each of them (100% accurate food tracking, daily gratitude lists, and no ordering delivery food), I’ve been able to maintain those habits since then. I’m sure that eventually I will not be doing everything 100% perfect, but it’s nice to know that I’ve added some great daily habits into my life that I’m keeping up.

For April’s challenge, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do but I eventually settled on doing daily weigh-ins. I have such a love/hate relationship with my scale and tracking weight can be so emotional for me because it’s a black and white status. If I gained 6 pounds because I ate something really salty, it upset me and any weight tracking things I used made it look so horrible.

So once I knew that I would have this as my challenge, I looked for a new way to track my weight. Weighing in every day is great, but if I don’t keep records then there is no point of doing it. After searching in the app store, I came across Happy Scale. You still track your weight similar to any other app, but in the tracking it shows trends versus just the current number. So if you are overall down 10 pounds but you happen to gain a pound, it will still have a line headed down. It also shows you what you will weigh by a certain time based on the trend that you are currently on. This app really helped me to focus on the overall view and not just pinpointing this particular moment.

As far as my monthly challenge goes, I wasn’t 100% this time. I didn’t bring my scale with me to Santa Barbara, so on Sunday and Monday that week I didn’t weigh in. But every single day beyond those I weighed in (I set an alarm to remind myself but I didn’t really need it). I’m fine that it wasn’t 100%, and now I’m trying to figure out how I want to continue in the future. I don’t know if I love the idea of daily weigh-ins, but I don’t know if weekly ones are good enough if I’m tracking a trend. I’m going to play with the frequency of the weigh-ins and I feel really confident that I will find a happy medium.

For my May challenge, I decided to change things up a bit. Most of my challenges have been related to my health or eating disorder recovery. I love that I’m making great strides in that, but I also want to improve other aspects of my life. And one thing that I feel has been falling behind is my acting career. I’ve had some great things so far this year with the short film I helped a friend with and the new short film that I’ll be starring in (don’t forget to donate to our Kickstarter!).

But I know there is so much more that I can do. And I can’t think that my agents will do 100% of the work for me. I need to be proactive and work on finding great parts to audition for as well. So for May, I’ve set my challenge to search the various self-submission acting sites every single day. I can’t guarantee that every day I will submit myself for something because there isn’t always something that matches me. But every day I will check to make sure. I used to be really great at doing this, but lately I’ve been slacking.

I’ve set an alarm to go off every single day to remind me to look on the self-submission sites. It does come in handy to have the alarm because it’s so easy to forget. But this way my phone (and computer) will keep reminding me until I click that the task is complete. So far, it’s been pretty easy to remember to self-submit but I know there will be days that I completely forget until the alarm goes off. But that’s exactly why I have the alarm and there’s no shame in needing to be reminded to do something.

Hopefully out of doing self-submissions checks every day, I’ll get some more auditions this month. Getting auditions isn’t something I can control, so I’m not focusing on the results (just the action). But having results would be awesome and I know that every opportunity I have to audition is another day that I get to live my dream and be closer to my dream career.

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Almost Ready To Make A Movie! (or Can You Spare A Buck?)

Posted on April 26, 2016 | 1 comment

I’m so excited about the short film that my friend Christopher has written for us to star in! It’s a super cute story, I like the character I’m playing, and I think it’s going to be a really fun shoot! I’m so happy that Christopher wrote a film and had me in mind for the other lead. And since he and I are basically the only actors, we haven’t had to do any additional casting.

After meeting with my friend Bryan, he agreed to direct the film (which makes me so happy!) and he connected us with his friend Jaime who is going to be our producer. We’ve been getting things done pretty quickly and we think we will be able to shoot the film at the end of May or beginning of June. But then we found one small roadblock that’s preventing us from scheduling our shoot.

Money.

We are cutting costs where we can (and Christopher and I are going to do deferred pay so we aren’t paying ourselves for the project), but it’s not cheap to make a movie. Even a 10 minute movie like ours will be has costs like sound, camera equipment, lighting, editing, and other post-production costs. We have reached out to all of our friends and I think we have a great crew put together and they have all agreed to work at a reduced rate to help us keep costs down.

We put together a budget that is as limited as possible without putting the quality of the film at risk. Even though everyone is helping us keep things as cheap as possible, after we pooled our money together (I’m taking mine from my new computer fund) we found ourselves a bit short. We need about $2200 to make sure we can afford everything we need to in order to make this film a reality. It’s not a lot of money, but we’ve all stretched our personal budgets as much as we could and that’s how much left we need to find. We thought about ways to raise the money, and we’ve agreed that a Kickstarter campaign is the best way to go.

I hate asking people for money and I don’t expect any of you to donate (although if you want to I’d be so grateful!). But what I’m asking of you all is to please share our Kickstarter campaign with people you know. You might not be able to give anything, but someone you know might want to do it and you are the way to connect them to us. You never know who will want to help a short film get made just because they think it sounds cool.

As with all Kickstarter projects, we have rewards for various levels of donations. We are going to have a link to watch the finished movie online for some donors. Other donors are going to be able to name my pretend kids in the movie (I play a single mom). If you are an actor or know an actor, we also have a limited supply (we only have 5) of headshot shoots with our director Bryan! The donation level for the headshots is a fraction of the cost of what headshots normally cost, so this is a great deal for getting new headshots done! And if you know an actor who might want new headshots soon, you can donate at that level and gift the reward to them. And for the ultimate reward, our highest donation level gives you a producer credit on the film plus you get to be on set while we are shooting!

We have donation levels from $1 to $1000. Even a $1 would be amazing because if enough people each give us $1, we’ll reach our goal! I don’t care if we have 20 donors or 2000 donors. As long as we are able to fund our project, I’m ecstatic! The most important thing to me is that we are able to film what I think will be a wonderful short film and that we get to share it with the world!

If you have the ability to donate, any amount will be such a gift to us and every single dollar will be appreciated more than you probably think. And if you can’t donate (and trust me, I can relate to not being able to donate), please share this post or our Kickstarter campaign online so others can see it and they can either donate or share. We know the only way to make this film happen is with help and we can use as much help as we can getting the word out about this!

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Back To Normal (or Catching Up On Life)

Posted on April 15, 2016 | Comments Off on Back To Normal (or Catching Up On Life)

Even though I was only gone to Santa Barbara for a couple of days, when I got back to LA it felt like I had been gone for a lot longer. I’ve done other weekend getaways before, but for some reason it felt like this one was different. I’m glad I was out-of-town as long as I was (I had time to relax and see my family), but I’m also happy to be home.

The first thing I had to catch up on was work. I did miss work on Saturday last week (which was fine because I had worked extra hours not too long ago to cover for a co-worker), so I had to see what had happened while I was gone and if there was anything weird that I needed to know about. I ended up logging into my work email on a day off to see what went on while I wasn’t working and I looked at some of the issues that my co-workers had to make sure I was ready for any customers with the same issues. It didn’t take too long, but since my brain was in vacation mode a bit it seemed to take longer.

Also, in my other day job, I’m getting more hours soon. I can’t start the new hours until I have some training (and they might have to set me up with some work computer stuff), but since I know that it’s coming up I want to make sure I’m prepared. I’m trying to do as much as I can now with my current responsibilities because I know that when I get my extra hours my time needs to be split between my current work and the new work that I’m being trained on. I need to figure out a good time management system to split up my hours and I’m trying to look at that now before I have the extra responsibility to deal with.

I’ve also been busy working on the short film my friend wrote for us to star in. We have our director and our director got us a great producer. We’ve had a couple of phone meetings to work on budget and other things and we are all hopeful that things will be ready to go at the end of May when we are hoping to shoot. Even though I’ve produced a documentary before, working on a narrative (scripted) film is very different and there are things to think about that I didn’t have to worry about with the documentary. Fortunately, everyone else is much more experienced than I am so they can help guide me to what I need to help with. It’s a little overwhelming, but I’m so excited to be working on this project and seeing what ends up happening with it after it is done.

Besides all of that work plus the usual stuff that I have to do every week (errands can get annoying and time-consuming!), I’ve been running around like crazy and I’m finally starting to feel caught up on life. I have some really fun adventures coming up over the next few weeks and I don’t want to have to stress about not having a ton of free time to catch up on other things. It seems like I have weeks where everything is overbooked and crazy and then weeks where I’ve got nothing to do. I wish the weeks would be a bit more mixed up, but I’m dealing with the craziness (and lack of sleep) just fine for now and I know soon enough I’ll be wishing I had more stuff to do.

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Default ThumbnailMissing Out On Some Fun (or Flexible Time Management) Default ThumbnailProductive One Way And Slacking In Another (or Working On Finding Time) Default ThumbnailEvil Twin Brunch (or Catching Up On Life) Default ThumbnailThe First Mentee Meeting Of The Year (or Catching Up On Life) Default ThumbnailGoing From So Much Excitement To Normal In A Few Hours (or Life As An Actor) Default ThumbnailFeeling Like Normal In More Ways Than One (or Getting Better)

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Wrapping Up An Awesome Year Of Movies (or Still Loving SAG-AFTRA Film Society)

Posted on April 6, 2016 | Comments Off on Wrapping Up An Awesome Year Of Movies (or Still Loving SAG-AFTRA Film Society)

This past weekend was the final weekend of screenings for this season of the SAG-AFTRA Film Society. I’ve written about the Film Society in the past and how awesome it is. It’s one of the few union perks that cost above and beyond your membership dues, but it’s totally worth it! Right now they are taking applications and it is $115 for the season (which runs May-April). Each season there are about 4-6 first run movies a month that you can go to see and you can always bring a plus one.

I’ve been a member of the Film Society for a couple of years and it really is one of my favorite things. Movies are so expensive so paying for the season is so much cheaper than buying all those movie tickets. And since it’s a one-time annual fee, I go to see more movies than I probably would have anyway because I know it’s a free night out. You almost make up the cost of the membership after seeing just a few movies since they do show 3-D movies in 3-D (and in LA 3-D can cost about $25 a person). So to me it’s obvious that I would sign up for it each year.

I think this past year I went to more movies than I have the past few years. Part of that is due to having my friend David (I met him at Orangetheory) who likes to go to movies pretty much as much as I do. He’s already called dibs on any superhero movie that I get a screening for, and since most people haven’t called dibs on other movies he ends up joining me a bunch. We’ve seen a bunch of crazy movies this past year, and it’s better to have someone else driving home with you so you can discuss the movie and rant or rave about it. And I’m glad he goes with me to superhero movies because he knows the back story of them and doesn’t care that I ask a million questions after the movie since I’ve never read the comic books.

The second to last weekend of Film Society I saw 2 movies. First I saw “Midnight Special” (which was good but I was a bit confused at the end) and “Hello, My Name Is Doris”. I absolutely loved “Hello, My Name Is Doris”! Sally Field was amazing in the movie and I loved the journey that her character took! Without giving away a lot about the movie, the final few seconds were my favorite. It was not how I expected it to end but it made the movie wrap up beautifully and really showed how her character grew. I walked out of the theater with the biggest smile on my face and couldn’t stop thinking about how much I loved the movie! It’s one that I think everyone should see but a lot of people might not because it’s not a big blockbuster getting a ton of promotion.

For the final weekend of Film Society, I went to one movie: “Batman v Superman”. This was one of the movies that David had called dibs on if I got a screening for it so as soon as I saw it was coming up I let him know. He was so excited to go see it, but I was feeling a bit worried because of some of the negative reviews I had read online (and a friend who posted a major spoiler that I was afraid would ruin the movie for me). While I did think that it might have been a bit long, I really enjoyed it. There was a lot of good action, I liked seeing all the superheroes working together at the end, and it actually did make sense to me that Batman would be fighting Superman (I didn’t get it before the movie). After it was done, David and I both thought it was a fun and entertaining movie and it helped get both of us excited to see the Justice League movie. I still have some questions about the movie, but none of the things I’m wondering about ruined how entertained I was watching it.

Since I’m already signed up for the next season of Film Society, the movies will be starting up again in a little over a month. I know that I’ll be taking advantage of the membership as much as I have in the past and I’ve got another great year of movies coming up.

I’m aware how lucky I am to have this option for me plus the screenings I get for the SAG Awards voting. Not everyone has that luxury and it’s something that I really do appreciate having and I try to share my plus ones with as many friends as possible. It’s fun getting to bring people to screenings who have never seen them before and seeing the experience through their eyes. Hopefully this season I’ll have more friends joining me and more movies that make me just as excited to be an actor.

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Default ThumbnailA Summer Of Movies (or Grateful For Union Membership) Default ThumbnailMovies And Christmas Lights (or A Busy Movie Week) Default Thumbnail3 Movies In 4 Days (or I’m Grateful For Free Screenings) Default ThumbnailWatching Some Inspiration (or A Weekend Of Screenings) Default ThumbnailSuch An LA Night (or Just Having Some Fun With A Friend) Default ThumbnailNew Year More Brunches (or Awesome Company, Not So Awesome Restaurant Service)

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Networking Brunch (or Having Lots To Share)

Posted on April 5, 2016 | Comments Off on Networking Brunch (or Having Lots To Share)

I’m so happy that I’m still meeting with my fellow mentees from my WIF mentoring circle. We are assuming that we are not meeting with our mentors anymore (we didn’t have anything officially said to us, but the year of our time has passed), but that’s no reason for us not to keep meeting!

All of the past mentee-only meetings have been at my house. I’m totally fine with that because it’s pretty easy for me, but we decided this time that we wanted to change things up a bit. We had a couple of emails going back and forth about what we wanted to do and when we could met, but we settled on meeting for brunch this past weekend.

It was a nice change-up. Nobody had to cook or bring food and meeting on the weekend meant that nobody was exhausted from working all day. We decided to meet at Rush St. (where I had my birthday party) which was great since there is a free parking lot across the street and it seemed like everyone knew where it was.

We had 5 of us at brunch (the past few meetings have only been 3 of us), so it was a decent sized group. And after we all ordered food we got down to official business. Everyone went around and shared what they had been up to since the last meeting. Some people have won awards, some people have entered contests, and some people have booked amazing jobs. I usually feel like I don’t have much to share, but this time I had some good updates.

First of all, I shared how after paying my taxes I had leftover money. This is a big deal because I need a new computer and I’m still thinking about taking the next level of classes at UCB. The extra money is going to come in handy for both of those things and I’m happy that I don’t have to stress about how to afford them. I also shared about how I got a raise at one day job and might be getting more hours at another. Again, the more money I can make or save, the better off I’ll be as far as not getting into more debt and paying off my existing debt. I’m still making strides toward that goal and it’s tough when you are just making enough to cover living expenses.

Besides money and job things, I was also able to update the group on fun projects like the short film my friend Christopher and I hopefully will be shooting next month. This will be my first short film in a long time and I’m really excited to work on it. I think it’s going to be a great project and I think that it will be a lot of fun to be on set and work. I’ve missed that feeling lately and I’m happy to have it back. There are a couple of other projects in the works that are in the super early stages, but I tried to update the group on those as much as I could (it’s tough when you don’t really have details that can be shared yet).

It was really nice to have some fun things to update everyone on and not just to say that nothing is really different but I’m still pushing forward. I know the other women in my group don’t judge me on what I have or have not done, but it’s nice to have some things that are real proof of my efforts and not just ideas or plans.

Technically now I believe I’m eligible to apply for the next cycle of mentoring circles. If I do that, it will be my third one. The circles have gotten better so far, so I think that when applications are open again I’ll go for it. I can still meet with this group while having another group to work with as well. This industry is all about networking and who you know/who knows you, so it’s not a bad idea to get to meet as many people as possible. Especially if they are up and comers like I am.

As far as my current group, we still plan on continuing our meetings. We haven’t decided yet how often we will do them, but the plan is to keep them regular and hopefully as many of us will attend as possible. It’s a great accountability group to have and over the past year I have become friends with these women. So even though technically it’s a business meeting, it really just feels like hanging out with my friends.

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Default ThumbnailLast Mentoring Group Brunch For The Year (or Switching Things Up For Next Year) Default ThumbnailA Casual Brunch (or More Hangout And Less Catchup) Default ThumbnailLess Networking More Socializing (or Another Evening With My Fellow Mentees) Default ThumbnailAnother Brunch Check In (or Wishing I Had Done More) Default ThumbnailAnother Mentee Meeting (or Beach Brunch) Default ThumbnailBrunch Celebration (or Everyone Has Awesome News)

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A Lunchtime Meeting (or Feeling Very LA)

Posted on March 30, 2016 | 1 comment

I’ve talked about a couple of projects in the works that I’m a part of. Each of them are taking steps forward and hopefully they will be happening at some point this year. The project I’m farthest along with is the short film that my friend Christopher wrote for the two of us to star in.

He’s written 2 drafts of the film so far. The second draft happened after he and I met to read through the script, discuss ideas, and make changes. I’m really happy where the script is now and I think it’s a super cute and funny short film. I think the way it is right now is a finished draft and we are ready to get this project filmed!

Of course, in order to film we need to find a crew and get some money together. The money thing isn’t going to be easy, but we are hoping that the crew part won’t be as tough. We first focused on finding a director and I reached out to my friend Bryan who directed the documentary I produced. I sent Bryan the script and fortunately he really liked it and we set up a lunch meeting to discuss things.

There are times where I have to laugh at how stereotypically LA I am sometimes. And going to a lunch meeting with a writer and director with a script in my hand was really funny to me.

Lunch meeting

We met up at Public School 818 (where I’ve met my Tone It Up friends before) and it was a pretty awesome meeting. I hadn’t seen Bryan since he helped me with my demo reel a while back, so it was great to see him again! We caught up on life (he and his wife had a baby since the last time I saw him) and Bryan and Christopher got to meet for the first time and chat.

Meetings with potential directors kind of feel like first dates. You are feeling each other out and seeing if you can get along. I already knew that Bryan would be an amazing director for this and Bryan was really impressed with Christopher’s past work. So I felt pretty good that the meeting was going to go well.

Honestly, most of our lunch meeting was just chat about almost everything besides the script. Christopher and Bryan are both dads, so they talked a lot about that (and I just listened). We talked about random LA stuff and eventually we got to talking about the film. Bryan has a couple of minor adjustments that he thinks would make things better, and both Christopher and I were totally fine with his suggestions. And we discussed how much of a crew we would need to shoot it. Christopher wrote the script with a minimal crew in mind, so we wouldn’t need a ton of people. But we do still need a crew.

Where we left our meeting was that Bryan seemed pretty enthusiastic about the script. He has a producer friend in mind who might be able to help out and help us find crew members who want experience (and wouldn’t cost a ton of money). And Christopher and I need to try to find some post-production people since Bryan doesn’t really have as many connections there.

Overall, I felt like the meeting went really well. Progress is being made in the project and we have a timeline in mind for when it is best for us all to shoot. Hopefully if things go the way we want them to, by my birthday the film will be done and I’ll have another credit to my name before the fall tv season starts this year. This will also help me refresh my demo reel since I don’t exactly look the same way I did when I shot the scenes I’m using now (my hair is different and I’ve lost weight).

The best thing about this meeting is just how everything came together. This is why it’s so important to meet creative types that aren’t doing the same thing that you do. I met Christopher years ago when a friend of mine was in one of his films and he and I have stayed in touch since then. And Bryan was brought to the documentary by a friend and I’ve stayed in touch with him since we filmed it. Hopefully I’ll have enough connections to help us find our crew. But even if I don’t, I have a feeling that we will be able to figure it out somehow. Things always seem to work out somehow if they are meant to be.

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Default ThumbnailCast and Crew Read Through (or We Get To Make A Movie!) Default ThumbnailPlanning My Next Project (or Meeting A Director) Default ThumbnailAlmost Ready To Make A Movie! (or Can You Spare A Buck?) Default ThumbnailGeneral Meeting (or Hanging Out With A Casting Director For Free) Default ThumbnailMaking A Movie (or Pulling An All-Nighter) Default ThumbnailBeing Proactive (or Bringing Acting To Me)

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