With the Blowflies webseries winding up I have signed on to a new webseries called, “And Several Butchers’ Aprons”.  I look forward to meeting the cast and crew and we start filming in March through to early April.

Lately I have been thinking about the film industry, in particular about Perth actors and if they value helping others or if they are solely focused on their own career.

Acting is such a competitive business and sometimes its easier not to tell other actors about casting calls and auditions to reduce the competition.

Personally I am all about helping other actors, if I see a role that matches an actor I know I would always tell them about it.  I have been on the receiving end myself with friends like Jessica Hegarty and John Mcpherson alerting me to roles that I could audition for.

So to all my acting friends who are all about teamwork, thanks, I look forward to returning the favour one day.

Leon

Location: Qantas Flight - QF 582

So I’m writing this blog post on a flight from Perth to Sydney. Its been quite a while since my last post and this is a habit I intend to break in 2012. I plan to write shorter entries more frequently.

This week I filmed a TV commercial for South Australian Health. It was my first experience being a lead actor and definitely was an experience I want to have again. We wrapped after 6 hours of straight filming. I was utterly exhausted and crashed in bed at 3:00pm.

The last time I felt that buggered was in November when we filmed Blowflies for 4 full days. It was a great experience to work with Perth talents, Samantha Zinner, Anita Barnes, Alyson walker, Jackson Wimhurst and Rose Mckenna. Of course I cant miss out on the very talented writer, director and producer Jonny Walker, who was also the creator for past web series Flatmates.  There are a few bits and pieces that we have to film for Blowflies and I hope to see it released in February / March.

I’m taking a few breaks between writing this entry and I have just watched Inside the Actors Studio with Bradley Cooper.    His passion for the craft and his openess is refreshing, I love Inside the Actors Studio, it never fails to make me want to work harder and push myself further.

I really want to have that feeling where I gave  everything in a performance and left a piece of myself behind.  Thinking about it gives me chills and I actually feel a little terrified.  I guess its a journey that I need to make as this is my only path to becoming a professional actor.

I found something quite interesting the other day and wanted to share with you.  I typed in, “actorsnow” into Google and I found that my name actually appears below.  I’m not sure how that happened but its great exposure for me. Check it out on the photo for this blog entry.

Well I hope to blog again soon, have a safe holiday break.

To start the photo for this blog entry is a Telethon Poster that was put up by the guys at work during Telethon.  The posters are usually supposed to be for stars and performers but as a joke these guys printed one of me and had it up all through the day.  I loved it and I got great exposure. Thanks guys, love your work :) 

Blowflies, the new web series by Jonny Walker has been progressing well.  We have been rehearsing for the last month and today just finished our final rehearsal.  We successfully got through all six scripts and have had a great time developing our characters and their relationships with each other.  We are  scheduled to start filming on location next week – I still want to add a few tweaks to my character and hopefully will have it spot on for next Saturday.

On another note I recently filmed a short scene for a feature film called Deadtime a couple weeks ago.  It was a pretty cool action scene and I had the opportunity to unleash my mean, tough guy streak.  The shoot took approximately three hours and it was great to act with Jessica Hegarty and catch up with good acting friend John McPherson.  I am looking forward to working with directors Kylie and Rody again on any future projects.

I also attended the Perth Film Networking Night last Monday and had the opportunity to catch up with some acting colleagues I haven’t seen in awhile.  I met a few new contacts too which I hope to work with in the future.  I did notice attendance had dropped a little for the night and I am wondering why.  Surely any driven actor knows that networking is an essential part of making it in this industry, especially a small one like Perth.   What are your thoughts of the networking nights?  Are they worth going to?

Last night I was an extra for a TV commercial.  I arrived 45 minutes early to make sure I wasn’t late and we started from 6:30pm and finished at 2:20am.  I can’t say too much about the commercial due to confidentiality but it was an interesting night and I met some great actors, one of which was Eddie Stowers, who I saw as a reader for PAC Scriptlabs .  I’ll be able to speak about it more once the commercial has aired, so until then…

Now that my monthly update is out of the way I want to air my feelings about being my own worst critic.  I have a strong background in business and so as an actor I believe the way I come to learn something is much different to an artistic actor.  I believe the artistic actor has the natural ability to learn because of their creativity.  I always feel that I am behind as an actor as it takes me a while to switch from ‘Business Leon’ to ‘Actor Leon’.  Business Leon hates mistakes, because in the context of business, mistakes cost money. But Actor Leon knows that only through mistakes can you truly learn.  Success is built on the base of thousands of mistakes.  

This strict self-critic style has me double guessing my work on my character Simon in Blowflies.  I’m not sure if I’m obsessing, but I want this character to hit the mark.  I have been quite frustrated over the last month because I feel I might be missing something.  The Director, Jonny, has been great and giving me feedback but I feel that my character is missing something. I do wonder if I have missed the character or am I being overly critical of myself?  I believe Jonny would say that this goal to obtain perfectionism comes from a place of ego and I’m sure he would be quite right but I still want to give this character everything and make sure what is on paper comes to life as close to what the writer / director envisages.  I wonder how other actors out there handle their own doubts and inner critic.

Thanks for reading

Tortured Acting Soul

I had the pleasure of watching the Lion King musical in the Marina Sands Theatre in Singapore.  I really enjoyed how the actors dressed as animals paraded down the aisle’s dancing and singing, it was a magnificent sight, especially the giraffes and elephant.  The puppetry, vibrant colours and performances where spectacular but I did notice that the young Simba had an American accent and the older Simba had a British accent.  Overall it was a good show.

Rottofest Film Festival was on whilst I was away – two short films that I acted in were accepted; Looking Ridiculously Good for his Age Man and Flatmates – Popcorn.  Both missed out on winning, but I am happy and proud that they both got accepted into the finals.

Since my return from Asia a few cool things have happened.  Firstly I received the link for the City of Swan video that I did a few months ago.  You can watch it here, it’s pretty long so just cut to 4:26 to see my part.

Secondly I received scripts for episode 1 and 2 for the new web series I’m acting in, Blowflies.  This professional project written and directed by Jonny Walker already has already scheduled rehearsal and filming dates which takes us through from October to December.  To get the latest updates on Blowflies, ‘like’ the new Facebook page here.

I’m running the Foxtel Lap on the 14th of October to raise money for Murdoch Children’s Research Institute. I’m raising money and would love if you could sponsor me.  I need to start training soon as I want to run as many laps as possible.

Thanks for your support.

I want to say a heart felt thank you to everybody who has watched and supported Flatmates for the past 8 months.  With a  heavy heart, I am sad to announce that the Flatmates web series has come to an end and the cast and crew have decided to go their separate ways to work on new projects. 

Flatmates has given me a wealth of experience and I want to thank Jonny Walker for having faith in my abilities and casting me as Steve.  I look forward to working with Jonny again soon in his next project.

I have a few projects in the pipeline which will be released in the last quarter of this year, so I wont be off the radar for long.

Thank you all again.

Leon

Official statement. “Leon Grey is incredibly passionate about the craft and is still actively pursing a career in acting, if you have any paid work please contact Maxine at Actors Now on 08 9486 8488″

Thanks to the person who started this rumour, I’m actually quite amused about it all.

I have also launched my Leon Grey – Actor page on Facebook. Please ‘like’ it to receive regular updates on the latest projects I have been working on.

WICKED was the first musical that I have ever been to and I absolutely loved it!  You could see the amount of detail that was put in to every character on the stage, the costumes, shoes and wigs were beautifully designed and detailed.  Reading the program I noticed that a lot of the cast were WAAPA graduates, so goes to show just how talented West Australian actors are!

Lucy Durack (Glinda) and Jemma Rix (Elphaba) were both top class performers, their voices beautiful and they took me on a wonderful journey.  The whole cast helped create the magical atmosphere and the live orchestra tied it all together.  I can still hear ‘Defying Gravity’ in my head today - this morning I watched a few of the American performances of WICKED on YouTube and I believe the Australian version out perform them.

WICKED takes you on a journey, a prequel if you could call it, and takes you through the magical world of OZ.  It’s a world you will not want to leave and you will be smiling all through the performance.  I highly recommend watching this wonderful show.

My urge and passion to perform was given a supercharge after watching WICKED and I feel a bit sad that it is unlikely that I will reach the same level as those brilliant performers.  I assume those performers started training at a young age and I’m afraid that I won’t have the time to train and reach the level that it requires to perform in such a magnificent show.  This morning going to work and waiting in my car at the electronic gates at the work car park made me ask myself why am I in this ‘rat race’?

Just a reminder I need to take a few steps back and do another SWOT analysis on myself and see what I need to do to reach my goals.

LOVE.

You may remember me mention the City of Swan corporate video that I was in.  I filmed my part last Monday and was in and out in 20 minutes and the director seemed happy.  So stay tuned because it should be out in a month or so.

Last Saturday I had Debbie Thoy with the Show-reels Elite Scenes cast and crew set up and film in my garage.  It was a long shoot from 7am – 7:30pm, and it was great to see so many talented actors as well as director, Mark DeFreist in action.  I would love to work with Mark one day,  the closest I got was being an extra in one scene and he told me to move quicker when I left the room. Haha!  You can read about the filming of the show-reel scenes on Debbie Thoys blog.

Last night I had the great pleasure of being interviewed by Anita Barnes about Flatmates and being an actor.  It was a fun night and we got to test out Jonny Walkers new camera and other gadgets.  The interview should be up on the Flatmates site in the next few weeks, I hope I don’t sound too boring.

Speaking of Jonny Walker, I am excited to announce that I have been cast in his next 6 episode webseries.  I can’t say too much because its all a bit top secret but I can say it’s going to be a lot of fun.  I have been to a few improvisation meetings in the last few weeks and met a lot of the cast, I think I am safe to say who the actors in this series will be.  In no particular order:  Anita Barnes, Samantha Zinner, Jackson Wimhurst, Alyson Walker and Rose Mckenna.  I am certain that casting hasn’t been completed so there are quite a few other roles out there to be snapped up by the proactive and talented actor.

Happy Days….

Curtin University has recently launched their ‘Wellbeing’ program and I was fortunate to have filmed a short scene for them as a struggling student.  In the video was also the very talented, Jessica Hegarty and Chanel Marriott.  You can view the video here.

I spoke with Fern Nicholson a few weeks ago about some upcoming classes and she informed me that the launch of Nicholson’s Academy of Screen Acting (NASA) was very soon and in about 4 weeks she will launch a NASA Boot-camp as well as a NASA 8 week workshop.  To receive updates on NASA, visit their Facebook page and click, ‘like’.

I am half way through my 20 weeks of voice coaching with James Hagan and I’m glad to say that I have a pretty sharp standard American accent.  I do however have some holes in my voice, which means that sometimes when I speak, only air comes out.  This can be fixed with more voice exercises.  I’m getting a new New York accent speech next week, I hope its a gangster one.

I have a new web series project that I am working on which is currently in pre-production. It’s very exciting but  I can’t say too much about it.  It should start filming in September and I’ll keep you all posted on any new information I am allowed to speak about. 

I had an improv session last night with Jonny Walker and Jessica Hegarty to develop some characters for my show reel.  Let’s just say I bombed out and am feeling a bit low at the moment.  I need to shake it off and keep moving forward.

This coming Monday I am filming a short scene for the City of Swan, I am excited to get in front of the camera again, but I really want to be the lead for a TV commercial. This will come soon, I feel it in my bones.

So as you can see I have quite a few peaks, and a yucky trough.  But I will keep moving forward and learn as much as I can.

Big Love!