Introduction
This portfolio reflects work that I believe has been,and will continue to be, vital to shaping my career as an actor musician. This portfolio discusses the way in which each and every one of my aspects of actor musicianship, be it technical, aesthetic, or, has contributed to each other in a multitude of ways. This portfolio discusses the culmination effects of technical, aesthetic and ‘business’ that have shaped my acting and musical performances over the second year.
I have deemed all of these factors essential to my future in the arts industry, due to my use in others and their professional practice. I will continue to refer to this as I go on. I have deemed such factors essential to my future in the arts industry through visual and practical testing and observance.The following CV, a product of the last few years, will continue to be shaped by my future performances, and should be taken as a reflection of the current moment.
as I find who I want to be in the industry and if that person is right for the industry. All of these opinions will be based on my studies and research into what professional agents, directors, casting directors, and actors, deem industry standard. This essay will also evaluate plans and projections I wish to lay out for myself, in order to solidify where I wish to be entering my 3rd and final year of Leeds Conservatoire.
Section 1 – Technical
To the public eye, agents and casting directors may seem to make definitive decisions, through mass and quick rejections, but my own findings lead me to contest this. This is mainly due to the various casting types that can be on offer for only one single character. In my industry experience I have found this to be because of disparity between preferences in audition techniques. Be it in friendliness, professionalism, creativity, or even the clothes you wear, each and every audition requires a different approach. So I ask myself and others how do I prepare myself? I found in my research that it can all boil down to one main factor- Who is the target audience of the performance? Knowing this will more than often help with the choices one wishes to make in an audition. For example, in Aaron Paul’s audition for Jessie Pinkman in ‘Breaking Bad’(2008) (see appendix 1) he sits in a chair, wearing a jean jacket and fingerless gloves. Pinkman louches into himself and crosses his arms, head tilted down and to the side at almost every moment.
I believe this to be an excellent example of controlling every factor you can to create the ideal outcome. From wearing the thickest clothing he could, without restricting his expression too much. o having all of his body language exclusively inward and away from any typical signs of child-like joy, that you would typically expect from a ‘teenaged audition’. Aaron Paul’s performance as Jessie Pinkman perfectly exudes the depression-like dramaticism that the director, Vince Gilligan, ultimately wants to show to his target audience; adults with escapism fantasy and realism drama lovers. This example is important to me because it displays the raw talent of a professional industry worker.
My practical audition experience had also led to observations in projection. The singular most consistent note that I have been getting throughout all of my assessments in 2nd year, is my volume, playing too much to the front row as it were. Something I have been doing to combat this is placing extra focus on the ‘on voice’ parts of my warm up. For example when in an ensemble vocal warm up and the class is offering warm ups, I will always offer a volume range based exercise or an energy based exercise. Some of my favourites being; a vocal slide from your lowest to your highest note on an ‘ng’ sound. Alternatively, jogging around the room while holding an ‘ah’ sound, or tongue stretches against the teeth while moving through ‘ee’ and ‘ah’ sounds. I believe these exercises to be valuable to me because of the practical improvement I have felt in myself and the scientific research done into it (see appendix 02).
Another strong part of who I am as an actor musician is my musicianship. My musical capabilities have always been something I have felt I am lacking in, compared to my peers, as I came to Leeds with only my piano and a handful of experience. But now after a year and a half I would consider myself a confident guitarist, a competent drummer and an improving pianist.
So where too next? An important part of my preparation for 3rd year will be choosing what instruments I wish to have 1 to 1 lessons in. This decision comes down to a question that I will continue to refer to in other scenarios. Is it more important to have a wide range, but to an average skill level? Or to beprecise and hone your skills beyond what’s expected? In the context of instruments this is a question I have yet to fully answer, so for now I will most likely be choosing something familiar to the instruments I already play, bass or accordion being two examples. This decision of where I place my time and effort will continue to be something I will work on, as I go into third year.
Section 2 – Aesthetic
Headshots
During college I had my first headshots taken, by Ho-tography (see appendix 03), I had little to no idea of what I wanted from them, nevermind thinking over details about my casting type or what the industry would want to see. But considering all of these factors I still believe these two year old headshots to be useful as the range in clothing and background colours has helped me today to find my best headshots.
For example in one of them you can see the clear difference in the way that a blue toned background (see appendix 03.1) affects my eyes, in a brighter, more joyful way, compared to a brown toned background (see appendix 03.2) which gives considerably less clarity to my eyes and instead darkens my hair and face.
In my search for photographers I knew I wanted to go with somebody who could give me this sharper, brighter and overall clearer look. Such a look I figure would have the clarity and versatility needed for both Shakespeare.The brightness for family theatre, or indeed the close ups of screen. I believe these qualities are all vital to showcasing myself on Spotlight. And vital for a casting agent or director to imagine me with the ‘crispness’ that an industry standard lens highlights.
APPENDIX 3
3.1 3.2 (APPENDIX 04)
The selection process for such an image required meticulous attention to detail. One of the first things I did to find headshot companies/photographers, was to go through the list of current 3rd year actors and actor musicians. I then looked through all of the individuals with similar hair colour, skin tone, and eye colour to my own, (see appendix 04),
From here I looked at each of the photographers they had used, and I analysed which styles I believed best suit myself.
The overlapping answer amongst these headshots was Yellowbelly photography. While I admire and appreciate this company and their stylised choices, looking through their packages I found an issue, their pricings were out of my current budget. Although this was a setback, I thought it best to take what I had learned from this process, and apply everything I wanted from Yellowbelly into finding a company more affordable and local.
After advice from professional contacts, I looked into york based James Drury photography. I favoured his work because of the way they use warm light to establish the face, while also using shadows to accentuate and define facial features.
I believe headshots with these qualities will suit my up and coming career greatly, because of the way they will personify the sincere yet serious tone that I may offer, not only in performances, but as a person. Without these headshots my chances of receiving attention from casting directors and agents alike would become slim.
How I present
My third point is the importance of my aesthetic presentation. During my second year, realisation hit. I care for my image and how I present myself a lot more than I used to. This became a contributing decision factor when I have been going over my potential spotlight images and headshots, I have wanted to consider my casting types. In our screen lessons this is something we discussed, whether we should embrace a single casting type and make ourselves a clear character, or reach for as many casting types as we have offered to us.
However, with all of these thoughts only ever being biased opinions from our own perspectives, some of my classmates and I all collectively took it upon ourselves to discuss, not only our casting types, but what a casting director would want to see from these castings.
In my classmates’ evaluation of me I received many notes about how I can present as a ‘90s college kid with a confident walk’. Other relevant typical characters were; ‘a wealthy man in a Bronte sisters novel’, a ‘confident man’, a ‘leading man’s friend with advice’, and an average playing age of 21. These are all important ideas for me to remember when shaping my spotlight account.
Biography
Another major step in developing my career as an actor musician will be my biography. As much as I may have strengths in specific areas of the industry, I wanted to write my biography with the mindset of openness and range, without making it seem like I was just saying yes to everything. Something else that was important to me was the layout. Similar to the CV I didn’t want to overwhelm the reader with any unnecessary colours or big changes in font. You can see here (see appendix 05) how I have kept the layout and word usage simple and clear, as to allow for a smooth read.
(APPENDIX 05)
APPENDIX 05)
(APPENDIX 06)
Section 3 – business
CV
While my headshots are the largest part of my CV, they aren’t everything. Making my name and contact details clear and grabbing for any future readers was very important to me. In one of my first drafts (see appendix 06.1), I used fonts and colours to help not only separate it from other words, matching the colours with the background of the headshot.
sense of theme in my CV. This is something I have carried over into my final CV draft as I believe it is a strong artistic choice and will set me apart from others.
The rest of my CV was not as thought out until a later draft (see appendix 06.2), where I decided on having my information formatted into physical skills, mental skills, and natural attributes. All of these features were written in a clear simple font with the headings underlined as to enable a reader to find key points. I believe these clear font ands colours are essential to my CV because of the way they give meaning and life to my words.
Networking and contacts
Now I turn to my practical and real industry experience. I will discuss the things I have learnt.
This February I was lucky enough to get the role of a guitar playing cowboy in a short film. This experience was incredible for my understanding of direction from professionals, and how you communicate back and forth with fellow actors on set. It showed me the real life pressures of not having enough time or budget, while also giving me a standard for where I wish to be within this industry.
While this time on set was valuable to me for the experience, it has also been a catalyst for me to keep myself within the industry by staying in touch with the director, the other actors, and even the producer. Staying in touch with these local industry workers has, and will continue to, proven useful.
For example, a Leeds based producer messaged me approximately 3 weeks later about a potential voice acting role in a film a friend of his was putting together. I was sent a phone number and a drop box, and after an initial conversation about the script I sent through a voice tape of myself reading the text. A week later I received an email saying I had got the role, but at this stage in my life it is more about establishing my professional practice rather than my career. Nonetheless I was absolutely thrilled to be given this opportunity to implement my skills.
So how did I prepare for this opportunity? Firstly, the script followed a pilot in the second world war. In order to prepare for this role and the historical accuracy it would require, I investigated what a pilot would have most likely sounded like back then, factoring gender, class, and ethnicity into my research. The first man I took inspiration from was Geoffrey Wellum (see appendix 07). This video gave me a very clear idea of what sort of tone I wanted to go with while also giving me a backstory I could possibly use for my character. I believe that if I had been given this opportunity prior to my second year at leeds conservatoire i would not have had the facilities to take this opportunity to its needed level of attention.
A great example of the industry research that helped me would be the study into different types of recorded media that we did,
specifically the section on voice acting where we discussed the practical requirements for a voice tape. It was here that I learnt about, needing to be in an echoless room, having a blanket over yourself if static sound is too much, exaggerating your breath between lines to help create an image of your character, and other useful details. This experience was important for me, not only in the acting process of it all, but because of the contacts that I have now built further relations with. This is a standard I will continue to strive to meet.
Industry research
A large part of pursuing this degree is not only to train and hone my skills, but also to get more work, contacts, and hopefully even an agent. Like many alongside me, I wish to successfully gain an agent from my work in the showcase and performances in third year, so preparing for this opportunity is vital. During one of our artistic development lessons we discussed this preparation. This included how we would act towards agents, what topics we might bring up, and how we would balance being social, yet professional.
Reflecting on this class has led me to look into the current third years and the agents that some of them have successfully signed with. I started this process by compiling a list of all 3rd year actors and actor musicians with agents, who those agents are, where they are from, and what kind of agency they are (see appendix 09). While the result of this research is helpful to me, because of the way it allows me to view a lot of my target audience for third year, it was the actual process of going through and finding things about all of these agencies that I have found vital for my prospects.
For example, when looking through the agency, ‘Articulate’ I found that they have a distinct favouring for screen acting opposed to stage. Articulate offers weekly zoom calls in groups of other articulate members, to keep up practicing monologues and duologues with other actors. This is something that I would make sure to keep in mind if I ever got an interview with one of their agents, as I much prefer screen acting and would love to have an agency supporting me in this. Although I have a lot to thank the conservatoire for, in pushing me to this level of work, I am still very proud of myself for being able to explore agencies and find things I do and don’t like.
Summative statement
My time at Leeds conservatoire, so far, has been vital to my career. From changing the way I approach problems, to the way I view my career and its future. I have learned so much from my reflections on myself. Going over what I believed was useful to my future, and what I believed wasn’t. But it wasn’t just my reflection that taught me more. The strive to dig deeper has been the real moment of growth that I have felt. All the topics I have explored above have developed my second year because of the result and
So how can I further develop and pursue what I’ve learnt? And who do I want to be in my third year?
Something that I have learnt over the past year and a half of this course is that I will never stop learning. There is always another perspective, a different idea, a new method and always a new talent. And so I will go to great lengths to continue practicing this in my process.
My friendliness and curiosity when talking with industry professionals are vital to me because they allow me to hear people’s thoughts on something I never even considered, or even on something I loved for years. Furthering and mastering my professional practice has been the overarching process that second year has taken me through, and I hope to keep my passion just as alive in third year.
I’ve grown my understanding of the industry in leaps and bounds compared to first year, and I can’t wait to continue this into third year.
