Good to myself

Productivity, exercise, adequate sleep, casual reading, career momentum - many things moving in the right direction here. And despite the random bouts of doubt and frustration, I've been proud of myself lately for pushing through and moving on.

I started two good reads this weekend. One, Infinite Jest, has been sitting on our bookshelf for over a year, ever since we saw a display about the author, who had recently killed himself, at New York's Strand. I also picked a new collection of plays with all women casts in hopes of finding some new monologue ideas. I've just started both, and am already eagerly wanting more time with each of them.

I collected almost all of my footage to date and am delving into them to pick material for my reel. It's been an adventure, both because it is an interesting experience to examine yourself, and because I have little knowledge about file types and programs and codecs and all sorts of other hurdles one must leap over to successfully view and edit video. But I'm making progress and am finding that, surprisingly, I can do more of it myself than I thought I could.

I've been prepping the role of Elena for the upcoming short Bloodstained Canvas and the male lead and I met with the director Friday for our first rehearsal. It's an intense script with little on-camera time for character development so it is especially important for us to develop our parts as fully as possible before we get on set. We spent the rehearsal improvising scenes that lead up to the beginning of the script and, I feel, really made progress in making our characters alive and connected to one another.

I'm especially looking forward to the special effects in this project. My character, who dies in the script, comes back to haunt her ex-lover. I spent all Friday afternoon with the FX gal making life casts of my face and neck. This involves a silicone under layer poured and dried and then a plaster layer on top of that. For the face mold everything was covered except for my nostrils, and as the process took about an hour and I am a bit claustrophobic, I practiced lots of deep breathing, meditation, and visualization. Panic creeped up in waves, but I put it aside. (All for the sake of art, right?)  It will all be worth it though, I'm sure.

So, I'm well-rested and recovered from my last blast of filming, and am moving forward on other career planning, including an extended visit to LA - soon!!!


-- RedbeckaJP
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