Advertising!

<a href="http://www.buzzerhut.com"
title="promote blog at buzzerhut.com"><img src="http://www.buzzerhut.com/images/widgetimages/buzzerhut1.gif" /></a>

Advertising my blog!

Well, as long as I'm advertising mine, I might as well give you some tips...

Advertising is easier then most people think!  There are so many websites out there for you to use, especially for blogging.  For instance, I am using http://www.buzzerhut.com/.  These websites make it easy for you to advertise your blog and check out other blogs.

Speaking of other blogs, you can use them for advertising too.  Find a blog with your particular subject matter (for instance, I would search theater and acting blogs) and read them.  When you're done, you can comment on what you think of their blog and leave a link to your own!  It's good to help other people out too.

You can also use social media.  Do you have a Facebook?  A Twitter?  Tumbler?  YouTube? Then, you're all set.  Just post a link to your blog on these sites and ask your friends to check it out and tell their friends.

To connect this back into acting, all of these advertising techniques can be used for that too.  Join some casting websites (like the ones on the sidebar), post your story on twitter (like Taylor Swift), or, and I can't stress this enough, USE YOUTUBE.  Do you know how many people get discovered on YouTube?  A lot.  It's crazy.  For my Twilight Saga fans BooBoo Stewart (Seth Clearwater) got a very big fan base from his YouTube videos that ultimately led to his enormous success.  But, no matter what you use, you are building connections and, most importantly, a fan base, just by sharing your experiences with people.

It's a very connected world we live in.  Use that to your full advantage.  A lot of people have succeeded by using media.

Well, thanks for reading!  See y'all soon :)

Acting Class 3

So, last week for acting class we were asked to make up our own characters using a technique of acting.  In this technique, we were supposed to think of a character and answer really in depth questions about them (like where does she work?  what's her favorite color? what's her deepest fear?  what's her favorite memory? etc.) Basically, we were supposed to be thinking like our character to answer the questions.

With these back stories in mind, we came in and told the class a little bit about ourselves (as the character).  Then, we did scenes normally and then with the character we chose in mind.  It was funny to see the difference a  well developed character can make in your acting.  It adds a whole other level to what your feeling and thinking, and subsequently makes your acting better.

So, that's all we did this week, but my blog for next week should be fun (we are doing accents)!

What's your favorite method for acting?

Thanks for reading another blog and tune in again soon!

Coming up: blog post about the Oscars ;)

Acting Class 2

The picture to the left is from the movie What's Eating Gilbert Grape, in which a young man, Gilbert, is left to care for his brother Arnie and his mother, a task which somewhat holds him back from moving on with his life (for a more accurate description go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What's_Eating_Gilbert_Grape).


Why is this relevant?  Gilbert's brother in the movie, Arnie, suffered from a mental disorder.  As you can imagine, this was a difficult thing to portray for young actor, Leonardo DiCaprio.  This is the basis of what we learned in acting class today. 

Last week, my teacher told us to look up one of these choices and study people with it: deaf, Cerebral Palsy, bad stutter, Parkinson's disease, drunk, or Tourettes Syndrome.  All of those afflictions on that list are very very very difficult things to portray as an actor.  You really have to study the physical/mental/vocal aspects of each disorder to get it right, which required A LOT of research on our parts. 

We all came in today with our research in  mind and acted out scenes as if we had the disorder.  It was REALLY hard.  I picked a bad stutter, and, even with all the research I did, it was hard to stay in character while trying to bring out this disorder.  You also have to keep in mind while doing this is that you're portraying a person who actually has a disorder, and you should do it with respect, not cruel intentions (haha that movie was pretty good).  But, I totally encourage you all to try it.  It's a way of acting that I would have never thought of, and I feel like it really broadened my ability.  

That's all we did in class today, it was pretty hard work.  If you try the activity, let me know how it went for you and what you think of it. 

Had to throw that in =>

Thanks for reading again guys and tune in next time for another exciting (well, at least semi-entertaining) blog!  

Monologues for my Monoblog

Hi guys!  So, this is a pretty short one today.  When I do monologues for my YouTube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/annamariejean?feature=mhee ... yeah I just plugged that ;)) or just for fun, I like to do cool modern ones.  I mean, the ones we do for auditions or professional things are good and all, but, I want to be on TV and in movies, so, I really like to do monologues from shows or movies that I like.  Well, that's great and all, but they are SO hard to find sometimes.  So, I thought I'd share the ones I found with you so you can do less Googling and more acting ;) :

The Hunger Games: http://dmwiki.reedschools.org/users/cagotz/weblog/d569f/
One Tree Hill: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/one_tree_hill.html
Mean Girls: http://www.monologuedb.com/comedic-female-monologues/mean-girls-regina-george/
The Notebook: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/notebook.html
How I Met Your Mother: http://aht.seriouseats.com/archives/2008/09/marshalls-burger-monologue-how-i-met-your-mother.html
The Dark Knight: http://www.whysanity.net/monos/dark_knight3.html
Dawson's Creek: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080106160559AAkJtsE
Twilight: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081212181144AAG2f65
The Vampire Diaries: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110518115554AAWaCgn
Easy A: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20111029163619AAwAqD6


Okay, well my copy and paste buttons are getting tired, so that's all I'll post on this blog.  But, if you're ever looking for a monologue from a show or movie you like, or just a good monologue to do, feel free to ask me and I'll get it for you.  Thanks for reading the blog again!  My question for you: If you have any favorite monologues, what are they and how do you find them?  Come back soon :)

Acting Class 1

Hey guys!  So, I go to acting classes once a week (currently every Monday) for about an hour.  In my opinion, it's not enough time.  I love it so much.  I've been going for about two years now and basically we do  monologues, scenes, and a whole bunch of really wacky stuff.  I thought it might be fun to blog about my acting class when I get home every Monday so I can share what I learned with you guys.  Here it goes...

Today, the guy who runs the class asked us what film genre was considered to have the worst acting.  Take a guess.  If you guessed horror, you are right.  Apparently, actors and actresses in the horror industry have a bad rap for... well... sucking.  I don't know about you, but I've seen a lot of good horror movies with good acting in them, so I was a bit confused.  Basically, he explained that, unless your pulling out real emotions, your acting is going to suck, and if your acting sucks and you don't feel the emotion behind it, neither will your audience.  I think this was a good topic to bring up.  All of us have different methods to acting, whether it be imitating others, imagining ourselves in the situation, or so on, but, no matter what, we should always be feeling real emotions about the scene we are doing.  A good way to test this in yourself, which is what we did today, is to do a scene or monologue that's  horror based.  Before you start it, though, you have to think of something that really scares you, your biggest fear, and bring that out in the scene you are doing.  Here's a good monologue to try for a girl or a boy (technically it's written for a girl but, don't worry, anyone can do it).

http://www.whysanity.net/monos/blair.html




Whether you do this one or you pick your own, the point is the same.  If you felt genuine fear while doing it, you got it right.  If not, really try to pull whatever scares you into your head and let it effect your emotions.  Hard stuff, but it makes for good acting.


Well, I hope that was a little informative.  If it wasn't entertaining enough, I'll tell you what our "warm up" was.  We had to make a dating video, but we had to be really weird people that no one would ever want to date.  You can imagine that in a class full of spazzes, that was pretty funny.  But, it is an interesting idea for a party game...

My question for you today is:  Is it easy or hard for you to pull up emotions while acting and do you have any techniques that makes it easier?

Anyhow, thanks for reading again!  I'll be posting pretty frequently about random things and I will post every Monday about my acting classes.  Thanks for reading and I will talk to you later! :)

How They Made It

Hi guys!  I thought I’d start things off by talking about something that has always interested me as an actress:  How other actors and actresses made it in the business.  Everyone has their own story and background and I always thought it was smart to learn what other people did to get where they wanted to be so I could learn from them.  Every single working actor and actress out there right now has had to get from where they were to where they are now somehow, and my question is: How?  Well, if your anything like me, you’re curios too.  So, I've compiled a few popular actors and actress to show you the different ways that they’ve made it to success.    

One way to break in that pretty much guarantees you a good shot in the industry is having parents or friends who already have a foot in the door.  Here, we look at Chris Pine, most known for his role as Captain Kirk in the 2009 Star Trek, or, for my not so star trek savvy audience, the voice of Jack Frost in Rise of the Guardians.   He comes from a whole bundle of connections.  His grandparents were both super involved in Hollywood and, as a result, their daughter, Gwynne Gilford, became an actress.  She married Robert Pine, also an actor, and they had two children, Chris and Katherine Pine, who both became actors, as well.  Long story short, Chris was pretty much born right into the industry.  
 Another example of major connections is our talented, yet very connected, Troian Bellisario, an actress most known for her role as Spencer on the ABC Family hit Pretty Little Liars.  Troian saw her film debut at the age of three in the movie Last Rites.  Three-years-old and she was acting in her first movie.  Why?  Her parents, Donald P. Bellisario and Deborah Pratt, are both producers.  So, her career as an actress was pretty sealed. 




What about Jennifer Lawrence, the actress who is most known for her role of Katniss in the Hunger Games?  Where did she come from?  Jennifer was actually born in Kentucky, pretty far away from any serious acting work.  So, what did she do?  She decided she was going to graduate high school two years early so she could start her acting career.  From there, she spent a summer in New York, where she was discovered.  Jennifer said, “My mom and I were watching street dancing and some guy asked if he could take my picture. That picture got around to all these acting and modeling agencies, and when we went home to Kentucky I begged my parents every single day to let me try it,” (Wall Street Journal).  Basically, she went to NYC and got her face out there until someone decided to give her a shot.  She started by acting in small roles and then, finally, she landed a few big ones that would end up making her name.    

Jennifer’s counterpart in the Hunger Games, Josh Hutcherson, also has a pretty interesting story.  Josh’s film debut came when he was eleven-years-old, playing a big role in American Splendor.  After that, his acting career exploded, acting in big movies like Kicking and Screaming, Little Manhattan, Zathura, Bridge to Terabithia, and so on.  That’s a pretty big career for someone who only started acting when he was nine.  But, from four-years-old, Josh told his parents he wanted to become an actor.  So, he got into a local agency in Kentucky.  His acting coach told him that he should go to California for “pilot season.”  So, what did he do?  When he was nine-years old, his family picked up and moved to LA .  There, he landed himself a few small roles which would launch his career. 



Emma Stone, an actress who’s been in a wide variety of movies from Easy A to The Help, has a similar story.  At the age of fifteen she had been acting in small play groups her whole life and finally decided to make it a career.  Apparently, she made a power point presentation to her mom to pitch the idea of moving to Hollywood so she could become famous.  It worked.  Jealous?  I am.  She and her mother moved to LA and she auditioned and auditioned until she finally landed a small role that, like all of the other actors and actresses, would launch her career.  

So, what if your parents aren’t going to move to LA anytime soon and you have absolutely no connections?  Then, you’re like Josh Radnor, the actor who plays Ted on How I Met Your Mother.  Josh always loved acting, but he was on the college-bound path and put most of his focus into his education.   He finished high school and when it came time for him to pick a college, he decided he wanted to go for performance.  He got into an acting program at Kenyon College where he graduated with a B.A. in drama and then went on to receive his Master of Fine Arts degree for acting at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.   When he got out of college, he used his education and connections he made there to start his career, writing screenplays and auditioning for roles until, finally, his hard work paid off and he landed the lead role in a very popular TV series.    


Deborah Ann Woll, most known for her role of Jessica on True Blood had a similar story.  She was always involved in performing, taking acting, piano, and dance classes while attending high school.  After her high school education she went off to get her BFA in the USC School of Theatre.  During her studies at USC, she auditioned a lot in the area and actually landed a bunch of small roles, making her television debut in 2007.  Eventually, these small roles grew bigger and she landed her first big role on True Blood.  


So, what if you finished high school, but you need to start your acting career and college just isn’t your thing?  This is probably the most common pathway for actors and actresses to take.  Adrianne Palicki, for example, most known for the role of Tyra on Friday Night Lights.  She finished high school and realized that she wanted her primary focus to be on acting.  So, instead of going to college, Adrianne went to LA.  Here, she worked in a sandwich shop and pursued her acting career, going to auditions and sending in to agencies in the area.  Eventually, she scored small roles in shows like South Beach and Popstar, and, thus, her career began.



Ian Somerhalder, better known as Damon in the CW hit the Vampire Diaries, also jumped from high school into acting.  At ten-years-old, Ian started modeling (a great way to get connections in the industry by the way), but put it on hold to focus on schoolwork and sports in high school, until a few years later, when he was offered the chance to model in Europe.  But, by the age of seventeen, he was back and in New York.  He decided then to start seriously studying acting and, by nineteen, he was already working with an acting coach and pursuing his career.  Luckily for him, he landed the extra role of a life time.  In a crowd of four-hundred other people, Ian was spotted by a talent agent who immediately signed him.  Let that be a lesson that no extra role is too small if you’re as good looking as Ian Somerhalder. 

Well, that’s it for me.  Besides giving some very interesting and helpful info, the point I was trying to make in this first blog is that no matter where you come from, no matter what background or family or life or story, you can do what you love and succeed in it.  People all over the country are doing what they love to do because, one way or another, they worked for it and they believed they could do it, and they did.  The actors and actress I talked about in this blog stood out to me as people who worked with what they had in life to get to where they are today.  They inspire me to do the same with my life.   So my questions for you guys are as follows:  What’s your story?  What’s your plan to succeed in life?   What are some stories or people that inspire you? I hope you liked my first blog post!  Tune in soon to see my next one, I’ll be posting pretty frequently.  Thank you so much for reading and I can’t wait to read your comments J!