Good news on the acting front, I’ll be playing the role of “John” in the short film John Jack Friend being filmed next week. It’s a student film, produced through the Pasadena Art Center College of Design, which is fairly prestigious as film schools go.

Obviously this is not the height of fame and glamour, and I will not be paid. But when it comes to the on-camera aspect of my acting career, it’s the right thing for me right now. To explain why requires unpacking the common trajectory of actors in L.A., as well as my own position on the path.

I’ve built up a respectable stage resume. The Shakespeare credits are especially worth a lot to casting directors, and I’m starting to mix L.A. venues in with my Orange County experience.

But the primary currency of actors looking for on-camera work is the reel. Now, the famous catch-22 for actors is that it’s tough to get in the union without being hired for union work, and it’s really, REALLY tough to get hired for union work without being in the union. I haven’t crossed that particular bridge yet so I won’t claim to have advice about it, but the acting reel presents an early, more simplified version of that same paradox: it’s tough to get even called into audition on-camera without a reel, but it’s really, REALLY tought to build a legitimate reel (shorthand for a brief collection of on-camera performance clips designed to highlight your abilities and range as well as how you look in front of the lens) without getting a few of those auditions and landing the roles.

So there’s a kind of apprenticeship period where you are going to have to pursue stuff that’s on the lower rungs because that’s what your credentials give you a reasonable chance to land. I have a :30 clip from my last Squaresville appearance but I’ve yet to post in on-line. And I have this ridiculous thing:

That’s a fake commercial for a Dungeons & Dragons-themed energy drink that my friend produced for his podcast. We worked on a play together and he remembered the crazy voice I used for it and reached out for this. That’s how you get a lot of opportunities early on. I can use it as a sample to submit for voice-over work, and, once the video game I worked on is released, that will provide yet more voice samples.

Still, nice resume aside, that doesn’t give me a lot; which means I aim low. Strategically low, but low. Non-union shorts and commercials, student films, promo trailer voice-overs, that sort of thing. Even at this level there is a lot of competition, since this is where you’re essentially up against all the “raw material” (aka the full pool of aspiring-but-not-established talent).

That makes this student film good for me, because it will provide reel footage. Not just that, I’ll be working in front of 15 student directors from one of the best film programs in the world; which can’t be a bad thing if they take a shine to my work. At some point we might talk about the realities of that big, vague word “networking”, but this is part of it.

Then there’s the mathematical truth that these short projects require short commitment. This film I’ll do will probably be shot in just a couple of hours in the middle of the day (after which I’ll be headed to Glendale for a tech rehearsal – the life of an actor!) Which means that if you can start landing them, you can knock out a lot of them in a short period.

So hopefully in the next couple of months, I can land a few more of these sorts of projets and reach critical mass for producing a good reel. At that point, I can get ahead of the unreeled masses in line for some more ambitious fare. It will increase the number of projects I get called in to audition for, and so on, and so on.

It’s a slog, and a huge financial drain. No way to dress that reality up nicely. But I think people can often find it a huge, cloudy mystery what steps you take to get from Newcomer With Ambition to SANDRA BULLOCK. But this is what it takes – to see the path, see where you are, and aim clearly for that next step.

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