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Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Is it Spring yet?

One of the best things about living in New England is Spring. It's probably my favorite season. I guess tied with fall. And also, summer. Basically all the seasons that are not winter. I really enjoy going out in a light or medium coat. This is of course especially true after like five months of crappy weather, basically the stretch from November to somewhere in March where things start to turn...

And we are fast approaching that turning point! Exciting, yes? We had a few days in February where it got up into the 40s and 50s, and man were they delightful... more so than when the weather did that in November and December that was just creepy. But now that the days are elongating, the angles of sun light actually match up with those kinds of temperatures.

Speaking of Spring, that's when Crooked Arrows will be arriving at a theatre near you (if you live in select markets) May 18th! Wow so this thing I've been talking and thinking about will be becoming concrete and then onwards from there! I want to speculate on what this could mean for me, but I won't because I don't know and won't know until after it comes out so what good is speculating?

Meanwhile in the present, I did my second round of ADR yesterday. Fun fact: ADR stands for Automated Dialogue Replacement. I did a bunch of this in LA while I was out there, I think they wanted while they had me in person to just record a bunch of extra stuff while they could and it was actually a pretty fantastic experience, both in learning a new skill set and in collaborating with the film's director Steve Rash. This was also quite an experience, as this time I actually had to redo lines so that they synced up with my performance on camera, I essentially had to lip synch myself. Generally with Chad Bryan, because I had such a strong understanding of the character, I could knock out my stuff in at most three takes also depending on the complexity of the text at hand (some of his lines get pretty wordy) but this took me like ten or twelve takes to nail down the exact rhythm that I was saying the line at. Later on, I had to deliver one of my lines from a place of actual... sincerity. Generally, Chad is kind of a smug bastard. He's a big lacrosse nerd at heart, and he loves the game so much that he can't help but run around to all these prep schools and do his little online show of live commentary on the games and over the course of the movie he goes from viewing the Crooked Arrows as pitiful to really admiring them. And it's in a moment of sincere admiration that he talks about the conclusion of the typical sports movie cliches and delivers a heart felt line about how they won't give up. So I really had to drop down out of Chad... but I still wanted to fight to keep some of him in there, but stepping away from the cartoonish persona that I was dependent on to drive the character while keeping the shading of those characteristics... the best take and the one I assume they'll go with was the one where I was able to drop way out, and then at the end bring it back in. That also took me like ten or twelve takes to really nail down, and it was hard!

But I'm a better actor for it, and I'm glad that they decided to go back in and add that heart to my character. I think it will reflect better on the film, on Chad's role and on me as an actor in relationship to all of that. All in all from what I was able to glean, I think it will be a really entertaining family film. So that's that.

In other news, I had my audition for Three Sisters on Sunday, and I felt like it went really well. In the four major plays of Chekov of which I am a big fan, Chekov is probably my favorite playwright ever, there are maybe half a dozen roles I'm in a place age and I guess life wise to play right now. Konstantin in the Seagull being a big one, the young communist in The Cherry Orchard who's name I can't remember is another, and Tuzenbach and Andrei in Three Sisters are two others. And if nothing else in that audition, I got to play those two roles, just a few pages at a time, for a little while. And it felt very satisfying. Chekov is just such an actor's dream to play if you know where to look for the nuances of his writing which I frankly do because I had good teachers who taught me how. I can't make the callback on Thursday, which is unfortunate, but I felt like I put forward good work and the director said they would keep me in consideration and that's all I can hope for.

Oh and lastly, why can't I make it to callbacks on Thursday? BECAUSE THAT IS WHEN SWIMMING IN THE SHALLOWS OPENS. Holy shit. How long has it been? Like a month? A little less than that I think? Wow. This is going to be a great show. It hasn't really hit me yet, here we are in tech, this is the moment where everything really comes together. And then an audience enters the room, and BOOM ACTING *MAAAAAAGIC*. Seriously, it's going to be a great show, hopefully if you are reading this you got an email invitation but if not consider yourself invited! It's really been a fantastic experience with a fantastic group and I've been able to push myself to do things I've never done or thought I would have been capable of a few years ago.

So come see it. That's all for now, ciao!

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