Think Create - Leon Grey's Blog

The last two weeks has been extremely busy.  I started my new job with News Ltd and also started filming my first piece for my show reel course.  Jake and I filmed at the Attfield Tavern in Maddington, it was a great location and we had lots of fun filming.  My character had an American accent and I think it sounded ok, we will just have to wait and see when it comes out.  The scene was taken from the movie Heat, where Pacino and De Niro are in the diner talking.  It’s a really cool and intense scene.

Here are two photos from the filming

I received my next scene for my show reel in the email today and I have two more scenes to learn, plus a monologue for another class.  Things will be very busy for the next few months.

I  played a dead vampire victim for a feature film called, Bio.  What was really cool was that we were filming at a cinema, Toy Story 3 was playing and I was underneath the cinema seating playing dead with a film crew. Naturally we had to be ultra quiet, so not to let the movie watchers know we were directly underneath them. 

It’s also been six weeks since my photo shoot with Actors Now, I have spoken to them and they will be ready to pick up next Thursday, I am interested to see how they turned out.  I am keen to be put on the books officially and be promoted for advertisements.

In the three months that I was not workingI put on 4kgs.  This is something that will be rectified in the thext few months as I am joining the gym at work.

I am learning new things every week and hopefully am becoming a better actor.  Will keep you all posted!

Leon

It’s a cold Sunday afternoon and I have just come back from acting class.  I have been putting off writing this blog for two weeks because everything I do is acting or looking for a job (I will have a job shortly, just negotiating some stuff out with a company).  Then I thought to myself that acting in itself is a huge journey and I should just write about my acting, what’s happening in the industry,  where it has taken me and where I am going.  So I have now made an executive decision to change the direction of this blog again.  This blog is now officially Think Create - My actors journal.  I hope you will find this change in direction entertaining and enjoyable.  I will take you through the ups and downs and everything in between.

So much has happened in the last few weeks and it has been a little overwhelming.  I have started a showreel class with Worldwide Screen Actors Online and have been looking for scenes to perform for my showreel.  For those that don’t know the industry, a showreel ia a compilation of many small scenes performed by you to send out to casting directors.  This way if there is an audition in another country you can simply send the showreel to the casting directors for them to view and they can make judgement on your showreel whether to bring you in for a audition.  Showreels are also good to show any people your acting skills.

I have also started Luciano’s course and am relieved that the first two classes are voice and breathing classes.  This means there are no lines to learn yet,  and gives me some time to concentrate on my showreel class.  I am considering taking up Yoga to strengthen my core, stretch muscles out and learn to breathe properly.

My weight has ballooned out of control again, mainly because I have not been working, been eating badly, done no excersise and I guess lost a bit of self confidence.  I had two weeks of bad performances in the showreel class and it really made me doubt myself as an actor.  I had a good chat with lots of friends and now am feeling more confident in myself, I haven’t restored my full confidence. but it is coming back.

One reason I love acitng is because of the awesome people you meet.  I find acting friends are different to everyday friends, I believe it is because as actors we are all vulnerable on stage, we get to see the truth, the real soul of a person, and it makes you closer.  I have made some fantastic friends in the six months of acting and just love hanging out and chatting about acting, life and everything.  Actors are a intense and passionate bunch, the energy is great to be around.  Thanks to all my new friends, you know who you are:)

Here is a scene from the movie, Heat, that I have chosen to do for my showreel.  The scene starts at 47 secs and is between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro speaking at a diner, I have big shoes to fill to make it work but I am in confident in my acting skills.

Thanks for reading and I hope you like the new direction I have taken.

Holy Smokes! June has come quick, and here’s a half time update.  Things are progressing well and I feel I am moving in the right direction.  I am still unemployed, but that’s OK, I am looking for the right job. I have knocked back a couple of offers, even when they have offered me what I want.  I feel like Tom Cruise in the movie, Top Gun, when he says, “It’ just doesn’t feel right”, and in the last minute disengages with his jet fighter leader.  I know in the next few weeks I will find a job I am passionate about and also get paid the money I want.  I am positive and confident in my future! 

On the acting side of things I have signed on for two new courses, the first being a 14 week masterclass show reel course with Worldwide Screen Actors Online, and the second is a 1 year course with Luciano Vecchio who is a great mentor and also has experience in L.A.  I believe both these courses will greatly boost me in the right direction and give me the lessons I need to become a greater actor and perfect the craft.  Another great update about my acting career is that I am having a photo shoot with Actors Now (Acting Agency) for their commercial faces portfolio.  In simple terms I will have an agent who is going to represent me for TV and print advertisements!  So in the future you might just see my face on your TV or when you are reading your next Target catalogue.  Scary isn’t it. 

My photoshoot happens in two weeks and now I am back on the wagon to losing weight and looking and feeling good.  I did waver for a while but I am back and focused!  I am training daily to lose the weight again.  This involves, walking my 10,000 steps, training with my personal trainer, boxing at home and also eating healthy fresh food.

Lot’s of my time has been consumed by job hunting, acting related activities and exercise…..oh and Facebook.  I think I’m a little addicted to staying in touch, I am working on slowly weaning myself off being on Facebook 24/7.

I hope to have a more exciting update next time, so stay tuned

It’s been a few weeks since my last post and at that time I had just resigned from my job.  Between that time and now I have been actively searching for a job as well as acting as “Steve Wong” in the feature film called Redback.  I cant say too much as we are still in production and have signed confidentiality agreements, but what I can say is that the cast and crew are fantastic and it is an absolute pleasure to work with them.  There is a great bond between all of us and I have made some great friends and met some lovely people.  My new nickname on location is ‘Wongy’, which made me cringe for a while but I’ve taken to it affectionately now. 

I stayed over a few nights ago and had a few spooky experiences in our cabin.  I spoke to lots of the cast and crew an they also had experiences, so I know its just not my active imagination.  I have a 6am shoot on Saturday and don’t particularly want to stay over on Friday night, I am still tossing up whether to wake up at 4am at my house and drive up or take the chance to be spooked again and stay the night.  The location of filming is up in the Perth Hills, its about a 45 minute drive with long roads, hills and the occasional kangaroo.

Here are a couple of spooky things that have happened in the past 2 weeks.

• Objects being moved
• Bed shaking
• Footsteps following you but when you turn around no one is there
• A girls scream from a certain cabin, when investigated no one is there
• Lights switched off
• Sheets being pulled off whilst sleeping

The above is why I don’t want to sleep there, my personal experience was a pen being moved when I know I placed it somewhere else as well as lights being switched off. I am not particularly fond of spirits and ghosts so I am really leaning towards staying at my house, waking up extra early and driving up.

On location at Redback we had channel 9 and Fairfax media come up to interview Loren Johnson, Luke Ledger and the rest of the main cast about the upcoming film.  Here are some photos taken from the WAToday news site.

Moving on to my job search, I never thought it would be so hard to find a job I would like.  With my experience working for two of the largest media companies in Australia coupled with my Internet and business development experience it’s not hard for me to find any job.  What is hard is finding my ideal job,  here is my essential criteria:

• I must feel I am making a difference
• Work/ life balance
• Excellent remuneration
• Opportunity to be mentored
• Management and skills training
• Team environment
• Large multinational company with clear paths for advancement

I don’t think I am asking too much, do you?  Hopefully my next blog entry I will have some great job news.  Fingers crossed.

Happy Easter everyone!  This long weekend has been really hectic and fun at the same time.  On Friday and Saturday I was able to assisting the the casting of a new Australian film called, “Redback”.  I was able to see how auditioning process worked and also get a better understanding what the directors were looking for in an actors audition.  I had the opportunity to see a whole range of auditions from exceptional to ordinary (mostly because of nerves).   I have a featured extra role in the movie, what that means is that I will be in the background somewhere doing or saying something.  Happy Days!

One thing that I learnt was that the camera picks up everything.  It notices peoples twitches, eye movement and everything, worst thing is that it magnifies it!  I must have a look at my show reels to see if I have any of these things.

My last class for 10 weeks is next Tuesday and we start the Show reel workshop in 2 weeks, exciting stuff.  From the actors that I have seen in the last two days I feel I have a lot of improving to do.  But I have also noticed that there were actors that didn’t know their lines, so I guess Im half way there in regards to professionalism.  I would always know my lines when going in for an audition as well as have developed a very distinct character.

Life is becoming full on, with things happening at work as well as looking for auditions and honing my acitng skills.  I do hope everything falls into place. I will just trust the universe will deliver to me what I am working towards.  I feel I am walking in the right direction to have the opportunities delivered to me.

Don’t eat too many Easter eggs!

It hit me right smack between the eyes! You might ask yourself right now, what hit me?  We’ll put simply, it’s life.  I have such a hectic schedule I don’t have too much time to do anything other than my set tasks for the day.  I have been concentrating heavily on acting for the last few weeks and the pressure is definitely starting to tell on me.  My performances have been second rate to say the least and I really  need to manage my nerves better.  The last two weeks have been quite stressful, I had a my performance review at work, where they sent a trainer from the east coast to see gaps in my abilities and also reworking of my character and monologue.  Stressed and exhausted is what I am feeling right now. 

I performed my monologue last night and it sucked…..I move my eye brows too much and use my hands to much, its the salesman in me.  I need to cut out the animation from my face as well.  I have hit the wall in regards to my acting capabilities and now have to train like heck to get on par with some of the other fantastic actors in the class.  As I was driving to work today I thought to myself, when can I officially say that I’m an actor?  I’m not sure I can comfortably say that because of my inconsistent performances,  I’ll ask the other students out there the same question and see what they tell me.

Heres a photo of me in my costume for my monologue.  My character is a soldier who killed an innocent child during a firefight in Afghanistan.  Simon, another actor in class kindly taped my monologue, Ill put it up once I get it converted into a smaller file.

This weekend I have a 3 Day casting workshop with Worldwide Screen Actors Online in conjunction with JC Casting, one of the biggest casting companies in Perth.  I must bring my A-game and perform to my best abilities because this could help me with breaking into TV advertisements and also still-shot catalogues.  There is quite a bit of money to be made in that side of the industry.

Confidence has been low and I really need a pick me up, I’m getting a little run down but I know it will be all worth it in the end. 

On a brighter note I have hit 97kg. Woohoo! I am doing fantastically well in the weight loss side of things so if i keep it up ill get to my goal of 90kg in no time.

As you guys know, things are going fantastically well in my life for 2010.  I’m learning new things, meeting new people, reconnecting with old friends and making opportunities and taking them.  My theory is that life is like an orange, squeeze everything out of it and make sure not to spill any juice (that’s are your wasted opportunities). 

I’m siting here in my home office looking around and noticed that whenever I look at my UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship) figurines, I get motivated and excited.  I have one figurine which clicks me into gear and wants me to keep fit.  Wanderlei Silva is my all time favourite fighter and he inspires me to become the fittest toughest mofo out there.  Check out the figurine and a real life image below. This guys is a brutal fighter, he takes his hits and throws them hard too.  Not only do I admire his fighting skills and strong physique, but most importantly his mental strength and his drive to win no matter how hard his fight is. This makes me into a more focus and stronger player in the game of life. 

I had personal training on Thursday and my trainer Mark said that if I lose one more kilo then I would have shedded 10 kilos since Janurary.  Thats huge!  I am definately on my way to the second milestone of 90kg.  Myfirst milestone was to get under 100kg which I did 2 weeks ago.  Once I make 90kgs I get to reward myself with a professional photoshoot for my actors portfolio, this is a driving motivation for me as I really want to get into acting on the screen.

Life is a fantastic journey, I like to avoid the well worn paths that everybody follows and make my own tracks. See you in the big wide world and hopefully we will cross tracks one day!

Well, what a great week.  I had my official weigh-in with my personal trainer and I have lost a huge 3kg in 2 weeks. My results are from eating well and doing a minimum of 10,000 steps a day.  I eat a lot of fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts and drink heaps of water.

I have won a competition with Nova 93.7 to have Breakfast with Donna Hay (Celebrity Chef) at the (A)Lure resturant at Burswood Resort.  Since my lovely wife Kirsty is in Bali, I invited Travis, my collegue, to come with me and share the experience.  I hope to get a photo with Nathan,Nat Shaun and Donna.

I performed my first acting scene this Tuesday with another actor, Lizzie.  We were the first performance of the night and were told that it was awesome and that we both played our characters well.  I played the creepy psychopath and I guess it comes easily for me. Hahah.

Next Tuesday I am performing a scene from a movie called Gattaca, I’ve never seen it but understand that it’s a futuristic movie.  It’s better I don’t see the movie so I can create the character from my own thoughts.

This week has been awesome and I am loving every new opportunity that comes my way.

Bring it on!

Wow January had passed by so quickly and so far so good I have stuck to my plan of taking my life to the next level for 2010.  I noticed last year I never really achieved anything great because I never set myself small goals, this year with my new plan I am achieving all over the place.  The downside of course is finding the time for everything, but as they say, “When there is a will, there is a way”.

So in January I did the following things.

• Complete a 3 day acting workshop (I am currently doing a 10 week one now, exciting times)
• Make new friends
• Reconnect with my old friends
• Apply for the Vodafone World of Difference Competition
• Resigned from Perth Zoo docent committee as well as being a docent altogether (This was to make time for my acting passion)
• Met with WWF and Free the Bears Fund to discuss ways I could help their causes
• Making a real effort to reduce my weight

Those are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head, but this list really makes me proud as I now can see that I am moving forward in life.  February will be a fantastic month as well with heaps planned but that will have to wait for my next blog entry.

Last night I started my Tuesday night acting classes which go for 10 weeks.  As usual I was nervous, but all the actors there seemed nice and they were very supportive, I can foresee great friendships being formed.  I turned up to class after a 10 hour working day and was handed a script to learn.  The script was essentially a author interviewing a inmate on death row, I was the author.  My first performance was absolutely crap, I just wasn’t able to portray my character in the right light.  My second shot was much better, as I played more of a sadistic, perverted psychopath, not much of a stretch for me. Hahaha.

Some of the class approached me after my performance and said I did well in my second shot because I really transformed myself into the character.  I think that by watching my first crappy attempt anything would look better in comparison.

After a few wise words from my teacher, Loren, I was able to dig deep and pull out a good performance.  I took inspiration from Heath Ledgers, Joker character in Batman.

So this week I will need to know my script completely, have a costume and 3 props for the scene. Mentally I need to be prepared for some tough criticism on my performance because its no holding back from Loren in his critique.  He wants to make us better and needs to point out the small things we could improve.

Looking forward to it all!

Wow this year has started off with a Bang!  Instead of writing down resolutions or goals, what I have done is written down what 2010 means to me.  So, for example 2010 is ….

• Being a do’er
• No Fear….ever
• Building new friendships

You get what I mean.

So in the spirit of having no fear for 2010 I finally signed up for a 3 day acting workshop, this was back in Dec 2009.  I have been procrastinating for over 2 years!

Last weekend I had my workshop and WOW! was it an experience.

The I enrolled in a 3 day workshop run by Worldwide Screen Actors Online, it is a class developed for beginners to learn, gain experience and undertsand the business of acting.  I highly reccomend it to anyone  considering enrolling in an acting workshop.

Friday 8th Jan 2010 | 6:30pm

I turned up early, registered myself at the front desk and chatted with a few people and sat down nervously.  In the next fifteen minutes, six girls aged between 13 and 15 wander in.  Now you can guess what I’m thinking…… uh oh, I signed on a beginner class but I didn’t think it was young beginner.  20 minutes pass by with me sweating bullets trying to figure out how to get out of this situation.  Luckily a nice stream of adults turned up making me feel a whole lot better.

The first class was really good, with two students, Jessica and Aaron getting into character and improvising a scene where Jessica and Aaron are siblings and Jessica is handing over their mothers ashes to Aaron.  Aaron does not want them and so the scene begins.  Both were awesome, real emotion laid bare in front of a new class.  I was impressed by their commitment to the character and also not being embarrassed.

Later on that night we got our scripts andwere assigned our characters.

I play Charlie, a guy who gambles away $42,000 on a poker game and now needs to fess’ up to his wife.  I kept thinking how scarey this was and if I could pull off such a great performance like Jessica and Aaron did.

I rehearsed my lines to 1:00am in the morning, and still couldn’t remember my lines.  Damn I was buggered.

Saturday 9th Jan 2010 | 10:00am

I woke up early in the morning so nervous I couldn’t eat breakfast, but as I was on my way to class, driving on High Road, I heard the Golden Arches call me, so after a Hash Brown, Bacon and Egg McMuffin and OJ I felt ready to go…

Class started with a meditation session to get us relaxed and clear our minds.  This was good cause my mind was like racing around as if a Lion escaped from the zoo.

We were split into our groups and I was lucky enough to be able to act with two fantastic girls, Jessica and Robyn.  I feel I was lucky because while everyone had one acting scene to do, I hadthe opportunity to do mine twice, I gained more experience out of it.  Both girls had fire so I knew i had to step up my game.  Jessica already showed me her talent on Friday night so I was literally shitting my pants hoping I wouldn’t let her down.  Robyn on the other hand I didn’t know much about, but was soon to learn she had a fire burning within her, actually you can call it an inferno from the depths of hell…… hahaha

We rehearsed our lines outside and to my surprise the girls knew their lines and I was bumbling like an idiot trying to, ‘fill in the blanks’.  Trust me, there were a lot of blanks.

My lines were quite easy, lines like, “I’m sorry” and “I know” and also the tough line of “$42,000″.  So you can see why I was a little embarrassed about the whole situation.

Loren, our teacher, called us in and we had to do our scene in front of the class, the word terrified is an understatment to how I felt at the point of time..  What was good was that my screen tests were last so I got to watch everyone else do theirs.  There were four sets of couples who were Amy and Charlie so it was good to see how each pair interpreted their scene.  I was most impressed by Blair and Natasha, holy smokes were they good, I sat there thinking, is this the beginners class?

I was comforted to see that lots of groups had not memorised their lines correctly, what Loren was looking for was for us to become our character, bascially not to, ‘Play’ the character but to, ‘Be’ the character.

So far all the Charlies had been quite the tough guy, not really caring about the loss of the money, even though his wife Amy was losing the plot.  I interpreted it differently and basically thought about a real addict and a guy who is scared to lose his wife but just cant fight off the lure of the poker game.

Both Jessica and Robyn played Amy, and they rocked it.   I was really lucky to get two girls who could act, it made me step up my game, if i had any that is.

We were informed that the next day that they would be filming our scenes and to know our lines. I practised all night…..

Sunday 10th Jan 2010 | 10:00am

Met the girls at 8:30am to practise our scenes, I was still having trouble remembering a few of my lines, but was about 98% there.  Filming got started straight after we meditated, it was amazing to see how everyone had stepped up their intensity when the cameras were rolling.

Most of the day had went by and at around 3pm I was called up to do my scene with Jessica.  Wow it was scary.  I managed to remember my lines and Jessica really embodied Amy as a character, I thought she was crying, must have been my acting that made her crack like that. hahaha 

My second scene was with Robyn, and Loren asked if it was ok for her to hit me.  He slapped my shoulder to show the intensity and location.  I agreed, excited to have a second shot on the camera.  I assumed my hit would come when I leant in for a kiss to say hello, but it didnt happen.  I figured that Robyn decided against it, so I just kept going.  When I said my line, ” $42,000″, out of nowhere her right hand flashed and went whack right across my face!  I heard the class gasp! My head was spinning and my left ear was ringing, I managed to stay in character and meeking say my next line of, “I’m Sorry”.

Everyone was clapping and laughing once we ended our scene.  I hope they liked our perfomance and not just the ass whooping I recieved.

I am have requested the footage and hopefully get it in the next few weeks.

Overall I enjoyed the experience and really kick myself for not doing it earlier, but I look at it this way, if I was any earlier I wouldnt have met some great actors in this class.  I can see some great friendships being formed.

Till next time!

Ciao