Jace’s Place

Like I said in a previous post, I’m the go-to guy for tech industrials.  My tech background comes in handy when it comes to pronouncing all the technical jargon and conveying the meaning and concepts of the scripts.  I booked a fun and challenging gig for Intuit where I had to speak about one of their flagship products, Quickbooks.  There were a lot of tech terms in the script along with strings of multi-syllabic words.  On top of that, I had to get the mood and delivery just right – friendly, not salesy; intelligent, not stiff.  It was fun and kept me on my toes.  Great people to work with.  I’d like to work with them again.

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I’m a tech geek IRL (yea, that’s a geek acronym for “In Real Life”), so it’s only natural that my art imitates my life.  I seem to be the go-to guy for tech company industrials which is alright by me!  I booked and shot a 2-day industrial for Citrix (makers of GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, and much more) playing IT Director “Paul Kwon.”  The rest of the cast was made up of four other principals who are very talented and very funny.  It was like working on the set of a sitcom or even performing in a play.  The script was well-written with a lot of comedy and some room to improv.  It was a play on “The Real World” so we had some really fun confessionals, too.  It was written like an episodic so there were arcs and several wardrobe changes.  My character even gets together with another character!  It’d really be great if there was a continuation with the same cast of characters.  It was such a fun shoot with a great group of people.  Crossing my fingers…

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(Note: this entry refers to the weekend of Jan. 22-24, 2010. Yea, I’m a little slow at posting my blog entries!)

I was a virgin until this past weekend. A virgin with no clue as to how this was all going to go down. I’d heard the stories and rumors and even saw bits and pieces of video clips.  But I didn’t know whether it was going to chafe or leave me wanting more.  Over the course of two highly anticipated days, I popped my sci-fi geek cherry and I got my answer.

I attended my very first Official Star Trek convention in San Francisco at the Westin St. Francis Hotel on Union Square.  Patrick Stewart and William Shatner headlined with Armin Shimerman, Max Grodenchik, and various minor, but no less entertaining, players.

Time for a little background. I don’t really qualify as a serious Star Trek geek. I’m more of an enthusiast compared to the many die-hards I saw at the convention.  But I still have mad love for Trek. It wasn’t always this way. It was more like I had like for Trek.

I grew up watching the reruns of Star Trek: TOS with the original Kirk, Spock, Bones, and gang.  I saw all the films either on the big screen or on VHS (old school, baby).  My favorites were Wrath of Khan and Voyage Home (not for the whales, but the comedy).  It wasn’t Star Wars, but I still generally liked Trek because, well, I love sci-fi. In other words, Trek was OK whereas Star Wars rocked.

And then Star Trek: TNG hit the airwaves. It took a few episodes but I was really hooked. I became one of the TNG-is-better-than-TOS camp. Now, I was bi-sci-fi.  I loved both Star Wars and Star Trek (as long as it was TNG). Favorite character of all time: Picard because he saves ass. 2nd favorite: Riker because he taps ass. Collectively, I liked all the women of TNG except of course for the replacement doctor in Season 2.

Flash forward to more recent years… I own the entire TNG series on DVD as well as the entire TNG Movie Collection box set (the most recent release as of this writing).  I’ve watched the entire TNG series at least twice, counting the original airdates, and watched all the TNG movies multiple times on DVD, except for Nemesis which I only watched a second time to see whether it still sucked after all these years (it does).  My wife got hooked when she joined me for my second viewing of the entire TNG series on DVD.

We’re both huge fans of the J.J. Abrams Star Trek film, too.

So, for my wife’s birthday this year, I surprised her with tickets to our very first Star Trek convention in one of her favorite cities.  And my teen-hood hero, Captain Picard, was the main draw.  I have a fun little story about this.

After probably about 2 hours of speaking to the crowd and doing Q&A on his own and then side-by-side with Shatner, it was time for Patrick Stewart to sign autographs.  I had bought a ticket to get his autograph and stood in the extremely long line.  I think by the time I got up to him an additional hour or two had passed.

From what I could tell, he hadn’t even had lunch.  So I kind of assumed he’d be a little grumpy by the time I got up to him.  Everyone in line had something flat and typical for him to sign – an 8×10 headshot of him, a poster with him on it as Picard, etc. – something easy and obvious so that he could whip right through the autograph session without too much delay.  Oh but not me.  I, the newbie, brought the frickin box to my Star Trek: The Next Generation Motion Picture Collection DVD box set.  It has absolutely no image of Picard on it.  Instead it has a raised Federation lenticular logo on it (you can’t sign on top of the logo with a paint brush if you tried).  So when I got up to Stewart, he looked down at the box, perplexed and a little annoyed.  I had interrupted his flow.  Now imagine 1st Season stern and crotchety Picard.  The brief conversation, if you could call it that, went like this:

Stewart: “WHERE?!”

Me: “Um, right along the top is fine.”

Me: (As he’s signing my box) ”Thank you very much, Mr. Stewart.”

Stewart: (Looks me dead in the eye, still a tad annoyed) “You’re welcome.”

He passed the box to one of his handlers who gave it to me with a warm smile, probably to make up for the gruffness from Stewart.

I interrupted Stewart’s flow, got him to say (bark?) three words to me, and felt like a young Wesley Crusher getting his ass chewed out by the child-averse Captain of the Enterprise.

Awesome.

Overall, the convention was a lot of fun. I probably don’t need to attend another one ever unless Frakes is making an appearance.  I wouldn’t mind chatting with No. 1.  I hear he’s a bit more laid back.  I must say though, getting Stewart to bark at me was the highlight of the experience.  It’s a story I’ll tell for quite some time.

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I had a great time appearing in four web spots for LG’s new eXpo smartphone with Pico Projector. The web spots are a tie-in with James Cameron’s upcoming film, Avatar, his first feature since Titanic.  The shoot lasted about two days for me and was shot a few weeks ago in a vacant office.  I play an office guy named Larry who does a little CSI action with a fingerprint in the video entitled “Magic Fingers.” I make smaller appearances in the other three videos, “Cubicle to Pandora,” “The Lively Presentation,” and “Triathlon.” Everyone was great to work with on the shoot.  I had a blast.  Check out the videos here at http://www.lgexpo.com/.  Click on “Project Avatar” and look toward the bottom of the page for four thumbnail images.  Click on those to see each of the four videos.  Explore the site for additional videos and more information on the LG eXpo and James Cameron’s Avatar.

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I was thumbing through a book called Everyday Greatness: Inspiration for a Meaningful Life
by Stephen R. Covey, author of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
and other books on goal-setting, self-improvement, and leadership skills. In this book was an anecdote about how changing two words could change not only your perspective, but quite possibly your results. I want to talk about those two words and how changing them can help you improve your acting career and maybe even other areas of your life.

First, what are the two words? They are “if only” as in:

• If only I had an agent.
• If only I didn’t mess up my lines in that audition.
• If only I got called in for the audition in the first place.
• If only I had better headshots.
• If only they were looking for my type.
• If only there were more opportunities for me to be cast in something.
• And on, and on, and on.

Ever catch yourself having one of these gripe sessions? Look, we’ve all had our woe-is-me moments. It’s understandable. Sometimes our acting careers and lives don’t always go the way we plan. It’s OK to vent a little. But it’s not OK to stay in this downward spiral of negativity. So how do we break the pattern?

Simple. Replace the two words “if only” with “next time.”

Is it really that easy? Well, you do have to do a little more work than that, but yes, essentially, it’s that easy. You also have to reframe what you put after those two words. Using the preceding list, I’ll give you some examples:

• Next time I’ll look up acting jobs myself and submit myself for them.
• Next time I’ll do a better job at preparing for the audition.
• Next time I’ll increase my submission rate so I’ll get called in for an audition.
• Next time I’ll find a great photographer and get great headshots.
• Next time I’ll focus on getting the right auditions for my type.
• Next time I’ll create my own opportunities by writing my own script and shooting my own movie with friends and other actors.
• And on, and on, and on.

You can already see from these examples that “if only” shuts us down and limits us while “next time” opens doors, opens our minds, and creates opportunities. Give it a try and see if next time you get closer to what you want and further away from what you don’t. Oh, and it works on other things besides your acting career. Try it out on your current job, your finances, your relationships, etc. Feel free to share your success stories and positive results.

*This article was reposted here from my newsletter.

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I threw some clips together of my commercial and industrial shoots.  These were a lot of fun, especially the one for Seagate.  Like I did with my actor reel, I cut out as much of the other actors as possible while trying to retain the flow and meaning of each clip. Enjoy.

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Here’s a new cut of my actor demo reel. I’d been waiting to get some footage for this for a long time before recutting it.  And there’s still some footage out there that I’m waiting on.  If/when I get that footage, I’ll probaby cut a v2.1. 

After scouring the web viewing other actors’ demos and after corresponding directly with a fairly well-known casting director for some advice, I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. 

Here are several changes I made from the last time I cut my reel.  If you’re an actor about to cut your demo for the first time, or if you’re like me and are about to recut an existing one, these are things you might consider doing with yours.  As always, do what works for you, throw out the rest.

1. I eschewed the montage up front as well as my headshot stills at the end.  Unless you don’t have a lot of footage on yourself, the montage simply eats up valuable time on your reel.  In most cases, your reel shouldn’t be more than 3 minutes so I decided to make the most of every second and just start off with a strong scene.  Stills of my headshot don’t add value to the reel - people want to see acting.  You can always give or send them your headshots or point them to a website that displays them.
2. I got really cut-happy.  I looked long and hard at the scenes I have and really whittled them down.  The first scene is really part of a longer scene that clocks in at almost 2 minutes alone.  It was a really strong scene that I wanted to keep in its entirety, but it was just too long.  Instead, I was careful to cut it down keeping 3 important things in mind: a) keep the focus on me, b) keep up the intensity of the scene, and c) retain the meaning of the scene.  The end result is tighter, still has the punchy parts of the longer scene, and the meaning still flows.  Notice at the very beginning when my name fades in, the audio of the scene kicks in right before you see any actors.  This served 2 purposes: a) that opening line “You lied to me…” grabs viewers, you want to know what’s going on – in fact, you want to SEE what’s going on – who’s lying to whom? and why?, and b) that line happens when the other actor is on screen.  It gives me a chance to cut her out (sorry Yvonne, I love ya, but this is my reel - feel free to cut me out of yours) and fade in on me so that I’m the first face you see.  I whittled other scenes down quite a bit, too, especially my scene opposite Ben Stein.  Again, I have a really long scene with him but it’s just too long for a reel.  I kept the parts that show humor and a little variety in my reactions.
3. Instead of fading in and out of scenes to create a smooth transition, I just let each scene cut into the next. Some of my scenes had natural fades in them that appear in this finished version.  But I didn’t add any additional fades.  It allowed me to utilize every precious second to show my scenes and ”gets on with it” faster.  I’ve seen other actors’ reels do this and I like it.   
4. I kept the F-bomb scene.  I got some really good advice on this from a casting director.  If you mainly get cast as the type of character who drops F-bombs, leave stuff like this in your reel.  I mean don’t overdo it but it’s OK to have a scene or two with some profanity.  However, if you normally end up doing Disney or Nickelodeon roles, well, you might not want to fuck around with the Big Mouse.  Yea, you can tell what kind of roles I usually nab in the film world.  Maybe it’s the shaved head and goatee.
5. I added a scene from my own short film “Bite Me.”  Hey, come on, who wouldn’t put a scene from their own movie on their reel?  Isn’t that one of the many reasons we make our own films?  It’s comedic to show that I can do that sort of thing but I’m still kind of the “straight man” (yea, no pun intended) so I’m not straying too far from type.  But because it’s more over the top than say the Ben Stein clip, I placed it at the end. 
6. Lastly, I killed the music bed.  I had this techno-ish beat and crap going on in my earlier cut.  Even though I got a kick out of it, not everyone has the same musical tastes as I do.  In fact, I’m not really into techno anymore either, so tastes change – and bad taste kills.  Don’t turn off your viewer with crappy music before he/she gets a chance to see you act.  When in doubt, leave it out.

I hope this helps those of you getting your reels ready.  If you have any questions or input, feel free to leave a comment.  In the meantime, break some legs.

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