Aw, Shoot!

A couple of things have been fun the last few days:

I did voice over for two pig characters last monday, and then yesterday, I did some ADR for a short I shot with my friends last summer. Perrywinkle, who directed it, is friends with a lot of awesome people, and I got to rerecord my lines in a fancy schmancy Foley room. Normally, I'm in a teensy little booth, surrounded by noise reducing foam, but this time, man! Huge room with lots of different things to make noise. There were chain links, several different squeaky chairs, and the floor was seperated into 4x4 blocks of concrete (3 of which were different cement grades which give different sounds when walked on, for instance, the difference of walking on a street versus a sidewalk), floorboards with space underneath (to sound like an apartment floor) and even a dirt patch. All I wanted to do was walk on the different floor patches and hit and bang on things, like a little kid at an interactive museum.

I had my earphones on and got to see the short for the first time. I was able to see and hear myself acting in the film and then recorded my lines again.

ADR can pretty much make or break you as an actor too. You might be amazing in the scene when it's actually shot; the emotions you need to get to, you got to and everything's awesome, but if the sound needs to be redone and you don't match it to what it was when it was shot the first time, it doesn't match. You could be really crying in the film part, but if you don't cry in the ADR booth to match it, and only fake it, it doesn't match and it's unbelievable. The audience will see it and think you suck and instead of following the movie and what's going on, now look you up on imdb and trash you with things like, "Yo! Um...You Can't Act!"

So! If you need some time to get to the point of tears in the Foley room to match the tears of you holding the teddy bear in the film, TAKE YOUR TIME to get there! The Sound Mixers know you're an actor. They work with them all the time. So Take Your Time.

THIS WEEKEND!
We are finally going to shoot the pitch presentation that I booked last month!

What is a pitch presentation, you ask? Well, let me tell you!
For this one in particular, two writers came together and came up with an idea for a television series. They wrote the pilot and the first season episodes, and have storylines for the next couple of seasons. They found a director and producer to come on board and help make a small version of the pilot episode, about 5-7 minutes or so, and the producer and director started casting. I was cast and this week we're going to film those 5-7 minutes, which is basically going to give you a taste of who these characters are, what they want, and the obstacles that are in their way.  Once that is shot and edited, the director and producer are going to go to pitch meetings with a few networks where they will try to sell the show. Several things can happen from this point: The Networks can say, "We love it! We want to make it! Put it on our production schedule with those same actors you cast cause they're awesome!" or "We love it! We want to make it! Put it on our production schedule with Rumor Willis instead of that Lira girl!" or "We like it, but we're going to pay you out so we can change everything about it so that it's a former shell of what you originally created!" [Read the book Wicked and then see the musical Wicked to get an idea of how that works.] or "We kinda like it, here's some changes we'd like to see made, come back when that's done" or "We kinda like it, here's some changes we'd like to see made, and here's some money to make a full pilot." or "We don't like it, what else you got?" or "Get out of our office."
And that's just a few of the possible outcomes!

We have a tentative costume fitting on Wednesday and I'm excited to see what's pulled for this character I'm playing. She's a 22 year old hipster in Los Feliz and her wardrobe is going to be super hip.

Who doesn't like playing dress up after a long week, you know?