Labels: inspiration, other actors

Labels: acting, acting process, events, other actors, resume updates, showcase

Labels: acting, events, gigs, other actors

Labels: acting, biz, business, headshots, other actors

Labels: acting, biz, business, other actors

• Heinz commercial

Labels: acting, Filmed in Austin, gigs, other actors, voice acting

I am freaking exhausted. But it's that great "I - just - worked - my - tail - off - had - a - blast - met - brilliant - inspiring - people - maybe - have - new - relationships - and - opportunities - on - the - horizon" kind of exhausted.

So I feel great.

In a previous post, I said I was hitting Comic-Con as a comic book & cartoon fan, toy collector, video game aficionado, voice & film actor, for professional (technical and management) opportunities, and for camaraderie.

Other than the last item, these were the roles under which I was going to play at Comic-Con, but as an abstraction, I was going to Comic-Con for camaraderie, passion, and potential.

Camaraderie:

Like I said, "I'm looking forward to sharing this experience with someone who gets all of this as much as I do." I've been meeting with a mentor pretty much every week, for at least six years. Not only is he a life / religious / business mentor, but he's an incredible friend and comic book and cartoon nut (like me). We mutually encouraged each other (led astray?) to go to Comic-Con this year, and we each probably would not have done it without the other. We were a great pair. There were things I was interested in and he wasn't (largely gaming), and we'd go to our respective panels, then re-sync and share. Or, there would be two panels we both wanted to go to, so we'd "divide and conquer" and fill each other in. Or we'd attend each other's event of interest, and broaden our horizons. Or there were panels or experiences we both wanted to do, and we'd experience them together. That last was the best, because we both "get it", and had common, amazing shared experiences. And we were there with like 100-150 thousand other folks who get it -- to some degree or another -- like us. And we realized we are far less geeky than some other human beings.

Passion:

Make no mistake, I am a huge fan of all of this stuff. I wasn't there to placate a friend or to exploit people for work. I am a lifetime comic book, toy, cartoon, video game, and film fan. Comic books and toys informed my creativity and story telling as a kid, and continue to inspire me with their artistry. Cartoons and video games got me into voice acting. Film got me into my current on-camera work as I bust my tail on the training front, and come alive under the lights.

I want to act in cartoon, comic book, video game, and film properties because I'm a voracious consumer of all of this stuff. I get it, and I want to give it. I'm like Phil Morris (I so admire and am happy for that guy).

Comic-Con was the place to be to get an inspirational re-charge, get closer to the creative and logistical process that gives me these things I enjoy, meet the folks responsible and say "thanks", and see what stuff is coming down the pipe, before anyone else knows. Sure, stuff makes it out on news wires and such shortly afterward, but it's nothing like being there and watching it for the first time it's ever been shown, with the creators (often seeing it themselves for the very first time), and talking to them afterwards.

Opportunity:

I am a working professional. I work ridiculously hard at creating opportunities for acting, for technical development, and for management. I do this for me, I do this mutually for other people, and I do this for people independent of whether there's anything for me. I almost never stopped moving at Comic-Con as I tracked down the right people to whom to give a voice demo, head shot, or resume. I hit up the companies I'm passionate about from a creative or business perspective, and there were so many of those, that I didn't hit many "new business opportunities" while I was in San Diego. That means I was hitting up the folks whose stuff I love, and asking to work for or with them.

There were more than 50 companies and people I wanted to meet in the four days. I knew this was shooting for the stars, but not only di I connect with roughly 30 of those, but some additional, unlooked-for, awesome, what could become "I was discovered" kind of moments. Great stuff.

I also sought out the PR or events folks for booths that I was particularly impressed by, just to say, "Good job." It is important to give the workers their due.

And my new demo has (so far) been very well received.

What sucked:

Nothing bad happened that can take away from the overall amazingness. Plus, I'm going to send a thoughtful note each to Comic-Con and the San Diego Convention Center calling out some of the challenges and offering some suggestions.

But yeah, it wasn't all roses. The "Red Shirts" -- folks who were supposed to help attendees out, were very disconnected and caused some serious pain to my buddy and me. More on that later.

And I had one of those "This is Hollywood, be-otch!" experiences with a biggie that was a good reminder for that I wasn't in Kansas anymore. I reset and changed my tack with a couple of opportunity folks that seem to be not so relationship-oriented. Seriously, I manage multi-million dollar, international programs and services, so if people want to go toe-to-toe on that hard-ass front, I can play.

Oh, and too many people. Lines kept us out of things we'd liked to have seen and done, because the prospect of hours in line with no guarantee of getting in didn't appeal to us. And we had a bad Thursday night experience. More on that later.

Not that we were going to see everything anyway. Between my split personality roles and passions, a top-notch packed programming and events roster, and my working so hard to make sure my opportunities didn't impact my buddy, I knew we were going to miss stuff. Which is fine. As in the rest of life, what should have happened did; what shouldn't have, didn't.

So what happened?

I'm a big tease, so I'm not going to tell you.

Actually, I will, but this post is already too long, so I'll do separate, day-by-day posts of Wednesday through Sunday. I'll try to hit them from the perspective of the roles and abstractions that were my "filters" for attending, and I'll also try to break stuff up by summary, cool stuff, genres, panels, twitterings, and pictures.

As far as pictures, there will be some, but not many, and they won't be overly high quality. The reason is I honored the "no-flash" rule during panels and reveals (I think I may have been the only one). Between that and popping my hand up and down quickly to snap a pict (so as not to block people behind me), the picts are a bit blurry.

And there are some things I snapped picts of that have not been released to the general public, so I won't be posting those picts. Creative and business folks work hard for their IP, and I'm not going to do them a disservice by leaking stuff they're working to release in a controlled, exciting way.

More later ...

Labels: biz, business, comic books, Comic-Con, Comic-Con 2007, events, festivals, inspiration, other actors

Labels: acting, acting process, events, Filmed in Austin, inspiration, meisner, other actors

Labels: acting, acting process, other actors

Labels: acting, acting process, Filmed in Austin, gigs, industrial, other actors, voice acting

Labels: acting, inspiration, meisner, other actors

1. Make choices
2. Rehearse monologue
3. Stand up when ready
4. Pick my focus
5. Introduce myself
6. Give my monologue
7. Get feedback
8. Give my monologue again
9. Get feedback again

"I am Adam Creighton. This is 'Harold', by Glenn Altermann."

"So, are you bitter?"

"Bitter? No. Resentful? Why should I be? I'm free ..."

"You see how great they were? That's because of everyone that went before them."

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, other actors, training

Labels: acting, inspiration, other actors, training

Labels: acting, inspiration, other actors, training

Labels: acting, acting process, biz, business, other actors

Labels: acting, acting process, meisner, other actors, training

Labels: acting, biz, events, inspiration, other actors

Labels: acting, biz, business, comic books, events, festivals, other actors, toy job, video games, voice acting

Labels: acting, biz, business, events, inspiration, meisner, other actors, ramblings

Labels: acting, inspiration, other actors

• Send out your holiday cards!
• Foiled, every step of the way ...

The latter post (about the rough time I've had with holiday cards and gifts this year) was picked up in a post by voice talent Bob Souer, and I noticed Bob's linked to my posts a few times. I've been Emailing about with him and another voice talent, Karen Commins, who noticed Bob's reference to my post, and has also linked to my blog in the past.

And I've been talking with some local actors, after a conversation with one guy about how he doesn't do birthday or holiday cards for professional contacts, because he's concerned about coming across as ingenuous.

Me too.

1. The stuff I'm talking about is not a replacement for networking and building relationships.
2. Don't hide behind business and marketing and neglect your craft and relationships.
3. Business and marketing should be an extension of your authentic self, not selling something you're not. What good would it do for you to nail a job interview for a position for which you are in no way qualified? That will likely end badly for everyone involved.

1. Self-aggrandizement (arguably the smallest group, especially among the genuinely "good" actors)
2. Hiding behind marketing and promotion, and not networking, connecting, and building personal craft (a larger group)
3. Laziness (honestly, the biggest group; seriously, if you've auditioned for BigNameCastingDirector once, and haven't for 1.5 years, your excuse for not sending her an occasional postcard, birthday or holiday card is what, exactly?)

For the first group, read Karen's "5 Thoughts About Self-Promotion in Social Settings" -- speaking for myself, I don't want to be "that guy".

In the interest of full disclosure, Group 2 is where I struggle.

Right now, there are a whole bunch of people in Group 3 that are probably upset with me, while at the same time convinced I'm not talking about them.

I'm glad I had so much trouble this year...

This year's card/gift troubles were good for me. I'm thankful for them, because they helped
me prioritize my contacts list into "important", "less important", and "drop" categories (obviously I'm not categorizing the people, just the amount of effort I spend to stay in touch with them). And, as Bob mentions, it shows me I'm "gaining some needed health in this [being too careful] area."

Who I hit up...

I have two general groups of industry contacts related to acting:

1. "Acting" -- This bucket includes Directors, agents, fellow actors, select crew, Casting Directors, writers, producers, studios, and other Biz folks.
2. "Video Game" -- This bucket includes folks related to this more specific voice acting opportunity. At the same time, these contacts are of a more general interest for me, because I enjoy playing games recereationally (and like to say "thanks"). I also have my "arcmchair industry analyst" video game blog). Finally, because my toy job is in managing technical development folks, I have a broader interest in the gaming industry that spans the creative, technical, and leadership areas of that idustry, in case I ever choose to jump vertical markets.

I send postcards to my contacts every couple of months throughout the year, largely for "non-standard" reasons (think "Groundhog Day"; "4,000 people read my blog last month. Were you one of them?"; retro-esque "Be my Valentine" cards; etc.). I do birthday or other gifts for appropriate Biz folks (long-term relationships, not just "I took a class"), but not for people I haven't met but solely just want to stay on their radar; that seems gratuitous to me.

What am I trying to do?

I believe I was made for acting, and I've reached a point where I don't know what to do, other than pursue it with my all, damn the cost or outcome (within reason). This plays out in how much work I put into marketing. And it's a lot of work.

Make no mistake, a big part of what I do is because I do want to "stay on people's radar". I'm an actor, and I want to be acting all the time. I am trying to create opportunities all of the time.

But I try to make the communications/gifts/contact effort fun for me too, and I'm learning to more quickly change my course and do something simple if it gets too onerous.

I've got one Casting Director who loves my custom-made thank you cards for auditions. I have sometimes made myself nuts trying to come up with something creative, sometimes at the expense of genuinely more important things. I'm getting better about sending "regular" thank you cards to her (still with my headshot and contact info), and balancing that with not becoming lazy (Group 3), which would cause me to always send vanilla cards. And it makes my creative cards more special, more appreciated.

Holiday gifts, in particular, are a chance to do something creative and show industry folks a little about me, and show them I'm listening to them, too. And have fun all the while.

Here are my general criteria for industry gifts:

1. Unique
2. Useful
3. "Adam-branded"

So my gifts can contain something that seems a little kitschy or schlocky, but is totally usable, very memorable, playfully self-promoting, and a pain in the ass to regift. I take twisted pleasure in that last one.

A marketing example...

Some might argue against the judgement of my sharing this, but here's a specific example.

My last year Christmas gift for select Biz folks (many of whom I knew were coincidently all going to cold-weather climes for the holidays) was a sweatshirt with a bunch of caricatured pictures of my face across the back, my Website address, and the words, "The many faces of Adam Creighton". The note (unique to each recipient) that came with the sweatshirt was a version of, "Yeah, pretty narcissistic of me, huh? Glad I'm not like this in real life. Good luck re-gifting this one."

I designed and printed the shirts, which minimized costs and increased personal investment (and therefore object worth), taught myself some new stuff, and had fun.

And the shirts were topics of conversations during December and January industry mixers and parties.

Set yourself apart...

I make all of my own stuff. That way, if anyone sees two of the same thing, it's because it came from me; not Hallmark. But I'm a perfectionist, so my stuff generally looks like it's professional -- which is an extension of me.

Think you're not creative? You're wrong. And if you're stuck thinking you can't do the kinds of stuff I'm talking about, I'm pretty sure you know someone who hasn't fooled themselves into thinking they can't do this stuff. Barter with them. Trade something you can do for something they can do.

Or you can take advantage of professional services (I've had good luck in other contexts with Branders.com and cafepress.com).

And figure out what works for you. What does being hungry for the Biz look like for you? How does hustling for gigs play out for you?

Turnabout is fair play...

You'll notice I've added links to Bob Souer's and Karen Commins's blogs in my blogroll. This isn't one of those "they reference me, so I'll reference them" listings that seems to plague a lot of blogrolls.

I think these two voice actors have great stuff that I can benefit from, and you may be able to, also. Like with any of my blogs, I've asked their permission to add them to my listing. Check out there sites. They've got good stuff.

Labels: acting, biz, other actors, voice acting

Labels: acting, inspiration, other actors

Labels: acting, biz, gigs, other actors

Labels: acting, other actors, ramblings

Labels: acting, gigs, other actors

Labels: acting, other actors, voice acting

• Lev Chapelsky (the luminary behind Blindlight)
• Cam Clarke (voice actor behind The Tick's Die Fledermaus, Akira's Kaneda, and Metal Gear Solid's Liquid Snake, and more)
• Jennifer Hale (voice actor behind Metal Gear Solid II, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty ("except on the original films"), Jonny Quest, Iron Man, and more)

• Blindlight
• Cam Clarke (official site)
• Jennifer Hale (official site)

Labels: acting, other actors, voice acting

Labels: acting, other actors

Labels: acting, inspiration, other actors