Day 351 - 363: Wrapping things up

Day 351- 360: Took a little over a week off to spend time with family for the holidays.

Day 361: Returned to submitting myself on Actors Access. The breakdowns are very slow right now but there are still a handful.

Day 362: Met with the director of the Mitrice Richardson documentary to discuss our goals for the upcoming year and the things I need to set in place to make sure we meet them.

Day 363: Researched nutritionists to consult with in the new year that are near my side of town and won't set me back $1000 bucks like many of them. I've narrowed it down to either Healthee Life or Learn 2 Eat Right. Both have a nice variety of services that I'm interested in, including body testing to determine what type of foods don't work for my particular body & blood type and both have excellent reviews on Yelp so now I just need to choose between the two.

Day 262: Interview

Day 262: Met with Latice Sutton, the mother of Mitrice Richardson at the cemetery where Mitrice is laid to rest for an interview. I always try to put on the "professional" face but listening to her tell her story can be very  difficult sometimes, which is exactly why this story needs to be told over and over until this case is solved.

Day 256: Coffee Date & a Booking!!

Day 256: Coffee with Issa Rae, the creator of the webseries Awkward Black Girl. She gave me some great marketing tips that I plan to use to promote DWP after we finish these last 3 episodes. I also told her about the Mitrice documentary and she was more than willing to help put the word out when we start our fundraising campaign.

Even better news is I FINALLY BOOKED SOMETHING!!! YIPPPPEEEEEEE!!!!!

I booked the Epson industrial shoot and we filmed it today. It was a small cast & crew and a nice easy gig. Hopefully more to come before the year is up.

Day 239 - 245: A week's worth of updates

Day 239: Wrote a procedural - CSI, Criminal Minds, Law & Order type scene for Yvonne and I and I love it. Now we have to find a place for us to shoot and someone willing to shoot & edit it for a free lunch or a low cost.

Day 240: Casting Internship, sent an eblast of DWP updates to hundreds of real wedding planners as well as family/friends/colleagues and mailed the From The Heart proposal.

Day 241: Wine with Greg & Lex which ended up being a 4 hour conversation. Between the wine and the time, I had to completely give up on going into work but it was so worth it!

Day 242: Documentary meeting. There have been lots of rumors regarding the possible settlement in the Mitrice Richardson case. Though any settlement will probably hinder some of our film efforts, it was nice to learn what is fact and what is fiction from her mother.

Day 243: Rewrites- edited 2 scenes in episode 7 of DWP.

Day 244: Worked on episode 8 of DWP. Added one scene and rewrote an outline for the remaining scenes of this episode.

Day 245: Watched another interesting documentary: Hot Coffee. Remember that multi-million dollar lawsuit some lady won against McDonald's after she spilled coffee on herself? Yeah, this film is about that. It's all about tort reform and it was very enlightening.

Day 238: Mitrice Richardson proposal

Day 238: Fine-tuned a proposal on the Mitrice Richardson documentary that I've been working on all week to submit to From the Heart Productions {Thank you Lex & Hollie for the heads up!}. They offer a grant for films that fit the criteria of what we're trying to do: make something that sparks change that will not only benefit Mitrice's family but society as a whole. Created a Facebook page for the documentary as well. If you are at all interested in her story, please consider liking the Facebook page so that we have as many supporters as possible when the time comes for funding.

Day 171 - 173: Commercial Callbacks

Day 171: Natural Foods Commercial Callback- Always funny to audition in a room full of people. This one went well. Commercial drop-off at Michael Sanford Casting, it was near my callback so why not?

Documentary Meeting.
Website Wednesday- took care of updates.

Day 172: Lunch with Leshelle, a friend of mine who's just got promoted to PR Director for Tavis Smiley's book division and is moving to New York next month to get started. Congrats girl! 

McDonald's Commercial Audition at Kathy Knowles Casting. Was paired up with a guy who I had really good chemistry with so I fully expected a callback!

Day 173: McDonald's Commercial Callback- this wasn't nearly as smooth as the audition. We were brought in in groups of 5 and one of the girls I had to interact with was a hot mess. I don't know any other way to say it. She was needy and gave so many excuses as to why she didn't bring what they asked for and talked a mile a minute about irrelevant crap to the session runner right before he said action. We were supposed to do some improv and then say our lines and I had to keep feeding her her opening line and it was just... irritating. I'm sure there was something I could've done better too but in the moment I was just thrown off by her weirdness. Of course, in this industry there's no rhyme or reason to any of this so she could easily book this spot and leave me scratching my head wondering what the hell they were looking for in the first place.

Day 155 - 161: A week's worth of stuff

Forgive the abbreviated posts. My body has been experiencing murphy's law over the last week so I'm going to keep this short and sweet and then go back to getting some rest.

Day 155: Mitrice Documentary Meeting. Came up with some deadlines for what we need to have done in order to get a rough cut of a trailer by mid-July.

Day 156: Set up an account with Basecamp, a project management website that is a WONDERFUL tool producers can use to both organize and collaborate with key crew more efficiently.

Day 157: Studied Sides for the comedy scene I have to put up in class on Saturday. Not really feeling it because comedy isn't my strong point but I'm definitely looking forward to LEARNING because this is certainly an area where I can grow.

Day 158: Power Group. This monthly meeting alone makes the membership to TAN more than worth it. I got some great ideas for CD drop-offs that I plan to implement sometime over the summer. I also got a referral to a regional agent on my target list. Score!

Day 159: Emailed my website along with a quick blurb on who I'm training with and what I'm working on to a colleague of mine who offered to pass it along to his manager. He has a pretty good amount of co-star credits and has read for guest star roles as well so he's told me she's a good starter manager in his opinion. He  forwarded it to her and within a few hours he emailed me back to tell me she wanted me to give her a call. I did and I now have a meeting with her scheduled for next Friday.

Day 160: Audition Bootcamp Part 2 - Today we worked on a comedy scene and wow did I learn a lot of technical crap. Reversals, turns, builds, triplets, mirrors, patterns, we worked on ALL of that and though it was a bit mind-boggling at first, the ish works! Using these techniques made every single person have funny moments throughout the piece, including myself. It was incredibly freeing for me to discover that even if you're not inherently funny you can still kill a comedic audition with the right technique.

Day 161: Bought 100 envelopes from Office Depot for $9.99 since I was fresh out and want to do a mailing tomorrow.

Day 140 - 142: Theatre, Film & More

Day 140: Saw Gypsy performed by members of West Coast Ensemble Theatre. I wasn't familiar with this musical before, though I did know Bette Midler was in the movie, so the story was completely new to me. I went with Stephen and we both had a nice time. The entire cast did a great job but the standout to me was Stephanie Wall who plays Louise.

Day 141: Watched Blue Valentine- a heartbreakingly beautiful movie about the beginning and end of a relationship.

Day 142: Had our first production meeting with the main crew for the documentary. 4 hours later we had to call it a night after a successful brainstorming session. We'll probably hold these once a month.