Trying Something New

When Dreams Come True

It's an amazing thing when you realize that your Dreams are beginning to come true. This month has brought it's own wonderful surprise. I am currently working on a film Cull, not only as an actor, but as the Assistant Director! No, I'm not starring in this one, but I do have a couple scenes and a few lines, and I'm AD! I never realized quite how awesome that could be! Thanks once again to Don Baldwin, Director of Master's Class, for giving me the opportunity to move forward with my life dream and goal!

The Movie is a dark comedy about 2 female serial killers, Victoria and Claudette. I play Jack, one of Victoria's coworkers at the post office. This has been quite a process. I've taken 3 weeks off work from Eden Alley to completely dedicate my time to the Movie. We have completed one week of filming, and have two more to go. The fun really is just starting. We have a wonderful cast and crew who work really well together, and we have incredible talent! Susan Traylor is playing Victoria, and Alex Farnham is playing Dell, Claudette's Love interest.

I'm so happy right now because this is happening. Even with all the stress and last minute changes, I'm doing whtat I love, and that is all that matters. I will keep everyone updated on the process, but no promises as to when because I am strapped for time!

Acting Needs: Training

Last night I attended my very first Film Acting class! Thanks to Bailee and KCStage I found a great little training studio just up the street from where I live. It’s Brian Cutler’s Commercial Actors Studio, and the main instructor is none other than Brian Cutler. The class set-up is done so that all the levels are in the same class together, just working on varying degrees of difficulty. Every time you take the class, you move up to more difficult levels, and new students join in and get to learn not only from the instructors, but from the more experienced students as well. Last night was the first night of a 4 week On-Camera Class, and we started with Commercials. So the two other new students and myself got to watch the dozen other actors perform what they had been working on (oh, almost forgot, they film it all with lights and sound so you get a feel for the camera), and then received a little extra instruction about marks, slating, and things to keep in mind before we did our own one-line commercial. We were then given notes, and got to try a couple more times. Before the night was over everyone had a couple more commercials to shoot, and us first timers had some larger ones, and a partner one as well. After everyone presented what they had been working on, we then got to watch and critique all the shoots we just did. During all of this Brian and Jill (who was running the camera) were giving constant feedback, and would take the time to talk about auditions and agents, even what to and not to wear to a Film audition (guess what color is most suggested to wear…blue! Blah!). The great part was the other people in the class, everyone is very welcoming, supportive and encouraging.
I realized that I have a lot to learn. While yes my experience in theatre will help me, I've always been winging it when it comes to camera work. There are some very little things that I could do to be better. For example, I need to work on keeping the action and energy of a scene going until the director says cut. I usually would freeze when the scripted action was done, I did this because I didn't know what else to do. What I was doing was making the directors job more difficult by giving them less to work with. The second major thing is that I keep shifting my eyes away from the camera. I've become so used to being told not to look at cameras (photo, not video) that I've adapted it to film as well.
Next weeks class will be cold reading of scripts! The format will be very similar to the commercial class, I can't wait!

The Fitness Journey Begins

Well, as I stated in my first post, one of my main goals is to get into better physical shape. "Why" you ask? Why when there are a number of professional actors that are not in great shape, and have still made the A list? Well there are a number of reasons, and the main one is simply that I'm not comfortable with myself the way I am. I've never been one to take an active role in my physical fitness, at least that is how it was until about a year and a half ago. I don't buy into that crap that says you're not responsible for being overweight! BULL! I was lazy, ate what I wanted to, and just didn't care. I'm not afraid to take responsiblity for my actions. It was and is my fault that I have never been and am not in shape!

For a little background, when I graduated high school back in 2002, I was 5'7" and I weighed 225 pounds. When I moved to college, a series of events happened, and I was lucky to drop 75 lbs in 6 months (don't ask how, it wasn't illegal or with drugs, but it wasn't healthy). Since then I have slowly put weight back on, lost it, gained it, and mostly without trying. It wasn't until 6 months after I quite smoking that I realized I was back up to 195 lbs! That is when I started actually trying. Now understand, I have always been friends with a number of guys who are all very physically fit, and don't even try. They have six pack abs (or close to it), well defined muscles, they look great (I have no problems admitting when another guy looks good). Truth be told... I've always been jealous as heck! My friends Jake, Brandon, and Cody are the first three that come to mind when I think of the guys I'm jealous of (luckily a couple of them do try).

The problem has been that for the past year, I really haven't seen the results I wanted. I joined the gym, started dieting, but I could never really stick to it. I have been able to maintain a weight of about 175 lbs, not bad, but I'm only 5'8", and I just haven't been able to get rid of this belly flab. This is where my recently developed close friendship with Cody has started helping. First off, Cody is pretty, plain and simple, Cody is pretty (for the record we are both heterosexual, but we are both comfortable enough with ourselves to be able to say things like that). But we both have goals for self improvement, we are very supportive of each other, and we push each other to be better. This recent "obsession" with my physical fitness started one day when Cody was talking about his nightly core exercise routine that involves 400 - 450 reps of different exercises, and I told him about my nightly challenge to do 100 push-ups. Next thing we knew, we had taken up each others challenges. Then, back on the 20th of August, I looked at Cody and the following conversation took place:

Me- "Cody, I've got a new goal."
Cody- "Alright Mike, what is it?"
Me- "I'm going to lose 20 lbs by September."
Cody- "You can do it Mike, I know you can."

I believed him, and I still do. It has been been 19 days since I made that statement, and I have lost 10 lbs. It hasn't been easy! I started by watching what I eat. I've cut out a lot of meat from my diet, while animal protein is good to build muscle, it is not so great to loose fat. I only eat when I'm hungry, and that is after chugging water and waiting to make sure I'm actually hungry. Then I only eat an appropriate proportion of food (I might add a meal log later to show what I eat), the key has been to not overeat. The second part of this has been daily exercise. Every day at work, before lunch I go out and run 1.5 - 2 miles in interval speeds. It takes about 9 minutes by alternating sprinting for about 45 seconds with light to medium speed running for 2 minutes. Then at least 5 out of 7 nights a week I'll do a 400-450 rep core exercise routine and 3 or 4 sets of push-ups totalling 100-115 push-ups.

This sounds like it would be no fun, but let me tell you, I feel great after my daily runs, and I feel a great sense of accomplishment after my nightly workout. Most of all, it's working! I have 22 more days, and the next 10 lbs won't be easy, but darn it, I can do it!