The Family Christmas (In Texas, Not Louisiana)

To Be Home

Once again, I am home safe in the heat of Texas. I've already had fun chillin' with the Steven-bro and his fiance at their wonderful apartment. We watched a little bit of South Park Christmas and had plenty of laughs. I'll soon be off to Chick-fil-A with Ariana and Deitz to catch up on life happenings and such. And to top it all off, we all received an early family gift from uncle Dave and aunt Bonnie. Her name is Evangeline King Mead, and she's precious.

Last Day Of The First Semester

Today was quite pleasant! I'm fairly certain I made an acceptable grade on my Film Genres final. After the test, we watched "Easy Rider" with Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson. Yet another great film!

We said our goodbyes to each other once Actor's Lab was over at 4:45. When I arrived back at the dorm, AJ informed me that there was a snow storm advisory in effect until eleven o'clock Sunday morning. "Not cool," I exclaimed... Pete (my awesome cab driver), called a short while later and told me the same exact thing. He was worried he might not be able to make it, and if he did, if the airport would even stay open or not on Sunday (we're expecting a good 6 to 12 inches of snow apparently). So I called up de momma and she quickly rescheduled my flight for 12:40 tomorrow afternoon! It's going to be a great break!

Battle of the Monsters, Anyone?

New project...

A Tough Morning Precedes A Fine Day

Even though the morning brought plenty of unnecessary stress, the day itself was quite nice. In our last class of Meisner for the semester, John thought that what I had to bring to the "stage" was very nice, truthful and honest.

I feel I did fairly well with my Voice final, although Eileen commented that we all could have done better. I agree, we all could have been a little more rehearsed in our monologues, but she also said we all had some nice moments. Being the optimistic and spirited lady that she is, she simply said, "this was a challenge, ya did it, let's move on."

Adam and I got to rehearse and shoot our scene in Intro to the Camera today. We were the last ones to film in that class, and I must say I think we ended it on a high note. Alan loved all of our work on the soap scenes, and everyone was so supportive and generous in their comments.

So now, at the end of the day, I get to enjoy an "A.J. Opp" panini and my ZBrushing madness. Oh! And the water's back on!... Although it's not hot... Whaddayagonnado?

"...Good..."

Well, Wednesday did start off with some positive energy. I got a good work out at the gym, so I'm ready to tackle the rest of the day. What I wasn't prepared for was the lack of any running water when I got back to the room. And apparently the Clark St. subway station is closed... Can't wait to see how the rest of the day goes now.

Vital Source - The Lecture

This is a commercial for Vital Source, featuring my Film Genres teacher, Peter Mattaliano.

A Day Of Excellence

What-a-day! From the hour of ten o'clock on was nothing but excellence and excitement in everything my classmates and I did. We've built up a lot of anxiety about our finals, but so far we've managed to do very well in just about everything so far.

In Actor's Lab, we had four couples perform their scenes for the last time this semester. I was one of the ones who presented today and was totally anxious to do so. I hadn't had as much of the scene memorized as I wanted, but with what I had, I did "absolutely wonderful," as Ms. Ruth Nerken said. I was overjoyed when she named my work as "truly professional." Between my partner and I, she said she would definitely pay to see it as a whole performance.

An hour and a half later, I was blown away once more by the poems performed by my section. Every single one of us had excelled in one area or another and left Ms. Rebecca very impressed; she even decided to let us out twenty minutes early!

Then came Mrs. Connie Rotunda's class of movement and viewpointing... We got to viewpoint to our own music, so I chose the song "Tetrished" by Zoe Keating, a cello soloist. Great work throughout the class. Afterwards, I received plenty of enthusiastic comments on how "cool" and "crazy" my viewpointing is.

'Twas a tremendous day, and it's only seven o'clock.

One Final Down

Yesterday, I had my final in Berry McNabb's movement class. We all did ok on the warm up. He said we were applying ourselves to it very well, but as far as remembering what came after what in the warm up, we didn't do so well. We then had a written test with four questions on them, followed by naming the movements/weight shifts demonstrated by Mr. McNabb. Pretty sure I aced it the test.

In Meisner, John had some okay things to say about me; said I was working well off of my partner, letting the moments affect me and take me where they needed to go, allowing myself to adjust with every new moment. That's what the goal was, so I believe I reached it. Huzzah!

Rockefeller Center

Getting To Know IMovie

This is the final product of a quick little test on IMovie. We didn't have much filming to work with, so I made do with what we had and added a soundtrack by Zoe Keating, a cello soloist.

IMovie Magic

A few days ago, ol' Johnny West and I felt it a good idea to go ahead and start filming something... ANYTHING! I broke out the camera and he exercised his improvisational skills to create a basic plot. And when I say "basic" I mean "basic"...

While working around in IMovie, I happened to learn how to do some classic Hollywood style editing. It's not enough to post online yet, but it's gotten me excited enough to start doing a lot more filming. Won't be able to do a lot this week do to finals, but I can bet he'll be anxious to start filming as soon as we get back from the Christmas break.

Assassination Tango

Woke up feeling a bit of sickness settling into my throat, so I threw on some proper work-out clothes and headed over to the gym. The sauna helped clear a lot of it up, and the warm Denty Moore beef stew I had afterwards helped even more.

I then took a couple of hours out of the day to enjoy Assassination Tango, a film by (and starring) Robert Duvall. The Granddad suggested it to me a while back and claimed it to be one of Duvall's best films. I now share that same opinion.

One Week (Preparing for Finals)

With the first quarter of my film training here at SFT almost done, it's high time I start preparing myself for finals...

For Mr. McNabb's movement class, we are expected to know the full thirty-minute warm up by heart. Not sure if there will be an actual test on paper for all of us or not, but there will be questions on what part of the warm up comes next and for how many counts (ex, arms at second position, rotating front to back, four counts). He will also be demonstrating a series of dance movements and weight shifts, in which we will have to name. Fun stuff!

Don't have a final for Meisner, I believe... We are still working with partners using activities and emotional preparation.

For Actor's Lab, we are performing scenes in partners. We have been working on these scripts for about four or five weeks now, figuring out character intentions, objectives and motivations.

In both Voice and Speech classes, we have a Tolstoy monologue/poem to perform, demonstrating proper usage of breath, resonance, articulation, tempo, pitch and volume.

In Mrs. Connie Rotunda's movement class, we are to perform our monologue from the book "The Secret History" after a moment of viewpointing with two other classmates. The constraints include a limited number of gestures and weight shifts.

We are continuing to finish up soap opera scenes for Intro to the Camera.

The Film Genres final will be a test over all of the film genres studied this semester.

And that concludes the "things to practice before next week starts" list!

David Del Rio

On Wednesday, David Del Rio decided to pay a little visit to the school! David graduated from SFT in 2008 and is currently acting in a show called The Troupe on Nickelodeon.

Not only did David sit in on our Voice class for a few minutes, but he gave an entire lecture in our Intro to the Camera class! He told us all about the industry, working on sets, working with a crew, internships, and most importantly that the industry is far from a luxury. He is constantly working on some kind of project, whether it is acting or writing. David was a major inspiration for me as an actor and gave me a tremendous amount of motivation. Thank you, David!