One Last Update on the Acting Thing...

OK, one last update on all things acting, and then I'll get back to business as usual, I promise!

As I mentioned in the previous post, I went to my first real audition on Saturday, for a sci-fi web series that will be filming locally starting January. Well they called me back in the next day (yesterday as I write this) to read scenes again, this time in a setting more like the way the scene will be when it's filmed, with lighting, props, multiple cameras, slating, audio, etc. The lines were memorized by this time, and I played the scene with only one other actor this time. We spent maybe 45 minutes beforehand rehearsing and getting to know each other a bit better. We hit it off really well.

Anyway, after we filmed the scene from several angles, etc., a number of times, we went outside and the director and a couple other members of the crew talked with us, together and individually. I think we did the scene well enough, but I felt it was still pretty rough. I suppose that's to be expected. Still, I felt oddly apologetic. But by the end of the conversation, the director decided to give the roles to the both of us... I got my first gig! It's a substantial role, too.

My character, as I said previously, is Russian. He will have lines in Russian as well as lines in English with the accent. Challenge accepted. You know, I'm not really nervous about that... at least, as nervous as my head thinks I should be. Not only will I need to act well, but I'll need to do the accent in a pitch that matches my appearance... I have to speak the accent so well that it looks and sounds like it's my normal voice... and I need to speak the Russian lines well enough to please the Russian producer, lol... plus, if I understand correctly, I need to handle firearms, and possibly be involved in fight scenes, etc lol.. oh, and my character is a smoker... not sure how I'm going to fake that, short of learning to smoke for the role.... I've never smoked a thing in my life...

And the braces... they may actually write that into the character somehow, so that my character has braces in the story... it's that or try to hide them, or pretend they aren't there...

All that to say, I should be nervous, a role of this magnitude, with so many facets, for my first real gig. But I'm not. In fact, my confidence is pegged. I know I can do this. My fear is that my perfectionism will drive me (and others) batty. I want to absolutely kill this role... kill it! I want it to be so good, it hurts. I want the whole project to be awesome. But I just know I'm going to obsess over the role... I already plan on taking every line of my dialog, having it translated (properly) into Russian, and then memorize my lines all in Russian... and then translating them back into the English versions for when the accented English lines are said... I want every line to come to me in Russian first, and then translate them into English as I say them, like anyone with English as a second language would... I don't have time to actually learn Russian before January... but I'm going to learn the heck out of the lines I do have...

That's just the beginning... I have other ideas on how to tweak and massage both the voice and the character until it seems natural. The last thing I want to do is give a performance that seems like an American dude pretending to be a Russian dude... immersion time, DDL-style...

Or maybe this is all just the typical panic-driven machinations all actors go through in the immediate aftermath of getting a part... and I'll mellow out and just roll with it. I just feel compelled to do this well. I mean, really well. Bad acting really galls me... I don't want to give a crappy performance and have it gall me every time I watch it...

All that having been said, I am SUPER excited, and fairly blown away by how fast this is all unfolding.

The next step is to wait to be contacted in a few weeks, presumably with the scripts and further instructions... I'll try to keep mum on it in the interim - I'm sure you're all sick of hearing about all this acting nonsense. I can't really help it... it's filling my vision at the moment, so it's all I want to talk about.

Thank you for your patience... I now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

Dave the Surprisingly Confident