I’ve had such an extremely busy few months that I’ve barely had a spare moment to update my blog! It makes more sense to just do one long autumnal blog update.
Over April/May I had a last minute call to play a ‘camp 60’s drug dealing concierge conman’ in the feature movie The Next Big Thing. It was 5 days of filming in Hatfield and a very funny script. The humour was very old school ‘Carry On’ style. All of the cast were really great and I made a couple of good friends who I’m still in touch with.
Back in June I finally signed up as a member of The Actors Centre, I had heard lots of good things about the place and my mate Ore Sanderson was raving about the workshops there. She was absolutely right, I joined up and booked myself onto a few classes. They do some great screen courses such as a weekly ‘putting in the hours’ workshop where you are sent scene scripts a few days before to learn, which are then filmed and discussed in the lesson. Of particular note was Thinking and Reacting Truthfully – From Script to Screen with Pia Rickman. Pia works closely with the amazing Mel Churcher (of CSSD) so her workshop was a welcome refresher course of the work I did with Mel at her Pinewood Studios workshop last year. The Actors Centre also provide a free mentoring session for all new members, during which I got some very useful advice on approaching agents.
In July I had a few nice acting gigs. I played a prison warden in Nick Lester‘s MA dissertation movie (CSSD). Nick is a lovely, genuine and talented chap and has an amazing natural Viking look about him. I fully expect to see him cropping up in one of the Game Of Thrones offshoot series in the near future.
At the end of July I also had a nice little corporate stock footage gig with ReelDeal. Although corporate footage acting sounds like it could be incredibly dull it was actually a fun packed day. All of the actors there were very upbeat and since no sound was being recorded we ended up having a gas coming up with ridiculous meanings for the various graph projections on the OHP and some hilarious Q&A sessions. So, it was basically a day of getting paid to lark about in suits! There is the promise of further work with ReelDeal so I’m looking forward to working with the guys again.
I was approached by Imperium Management for representation in July and signed up with them. It’s early days so far, but I’ve had a fair amount of auditions with them. Though the majority of work I have gained so far this year has been through my own efforts and networking.
In August I was cast in a short film ‘WEB’ by Dan Daniel. I was impressed by the production quality of his previous shorts so I’m looking forward to seeing the final screening of that. It’s mainly shot from the sinister triplet’s point of view so not sure how much of the parents will be seen in the final cut. But it was a nice shoot and very professional. The kids playing the triplets (all aged around 11) were very good, and gave extremely mature performances.
I also auditioned for a lead role in a music video for musician Tiberio Ventura (what a great name!). For the audition they wanted silent movie style acting so I ended up running around Royal Festival Hall like a nutcase. They seemed to like my antics as they called me back the next day saying they wanted to work with me. By odd coincidence the two day shoot location was in Caradoc Street, Greenwich where they filmed Tom Hardy in Legend. The last time I was filming in a car we used a low-loader truck that had been used for Locke, so I felt a bit like I was inadvertently stalking Tom Hardy’s previous locations. We have a few pick up shots still to do later on today (3rd October) and then that’s another project in the bag.
I had a short break in Norfolk in the middle of August, then on the first Saturday back I had an audition in the evening. It was at The Cockpit Theatre in Lisson Grove which is where I had my first ever stage appearance aged 8! Also, we had school music recording lessons there when I was at secondary school. The audition was in Studio 2 where we had lessons, so it was all a bit surreal. The audition went well and I was cast as Rich in the feature movie Nice Mike, which will be shooting over the next couple of months. It’s a dark comedy written and directed by Kelly Smith and the script is hilarious. We had our first table read on September 9th which went really well. Since then we have had three days of shooting and it’s going great. It’s very much in the style of Shaun of The Dead and Peep Show. Also, my lovely other half Jessica has joined the production as on set photographer and Social Media guru.
Also of note recently, I was cast in a TV docudrama as FBI agent Steve Carbone for ‘The Real Goodfellas’. I had worked with WMR earlier in the year as a supporting artist, so it was great to get invited back by them for a featured role.
In other news I was fortunate enough to win a StarNow competition for a free Cinematic Showreel scene to be filmed with Slick Showreels! So I’ve been trying to find time amongst everything else that has been going on to find a good scene and scene partners. I’m going for something in the Crime Drama genre as I feel my existing showreel could do with something harder edged. So watch this space for more info on that!
All in all I’m so very grateful that 2017 has been such an amazing year so far!