I was introduced to this video at a workshop called “Acting Success Now”.  The workshop is a wonderful three day event that is filled with tools and techniques for getting out of you head and out of your own way.  Many ways to help you achieve the very to the point advice Bob gives his client in this video.

After so many years, I’ve learned that being creative is a full-time job with it’s own daily patterns.  That’s why writers, for example, like to establish routines for themselves.  The most productive ones get started early in the morning, when the world is quiet, the phones aren’t ringing, and their minds are rested, alert, and not yet polluted by other people’s words.  They might set a goal for themselves – write fifteen hundred words, or stay at their desk until noon-but the real secret is that they do this every day.  In other words, they are disciplined.  Over time, as the daily routines become second nature, discipline morphs into habit.

In other news, I had a lovely visit with my cousin this weekend.  I am looking into getting some extra work and thinking a lot about how to make this site more fun and useful.

This first is a video specifically for people who do voice over work.  It talks about the importance of developing accents for the current voice over market.  It also gives some tips for how to go about developing those accents:

These next two resources are both websites with extensive databases of audio clips.  The first is a bit more scientific.  The clips feature the same carefully selected paragraph which contains “practically all of the sounds of English”.  Many of the accents have a phonetic spelling out of the audio on the page with the clip.  It’s a treasure trove.  Check out the Speech Accent Archive.

This second site is less scientific, but it’s also a little more fun.  The standard paragraph that gets read is not so specifically chosen, but it is followed by a couple of minutes of the subject talking about some experiences in their life.  It’s more personal and free from.  This site was put together by a theatre professor for the purpose of studying accents.  Take a look at the International Dialects of English Archive.

I am going to start with a British accent and possibly a German one.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

This advice comes from one of the teachers at the New York Film Academy (Universal Studios branch), I didn’t catch her name and they have no faculty listed on the website (that I can find).  So, if you read this and know who it is, please share.  I went to a open house they were having and ended up in a room with two of the acting teachers there.  They shared info about the program and why they felt the various aspects were important.  It was fun and informative, but the piece that stands out in my mind is what the lady said about monologues. These are the points she made (and my elaborations on them):

1. Pick monologues you love. If the monologue doesn’t move you, it’s unlikely you’re going to move your audience performing it.

2. Know how the whole play (movie, episode) goes. Monologues do not exist in isolation, they are parts of a bigger work.  If you don’t know the larger work and how your monologue fits into it your performance may ring false to people (the ones you are auditioning for) who do know the larger work.  And if you’re doing something from a television show it would be good to be familiar with more than just the one episode because that episode is just one small piece of a larger work.

3. Know your monologue inside and out. Don’t perform a monologue you haven’t studied, broken down, analyzed, and pumped for every ounce of emotion that it offers.  If you haven’t spent the time with the monologue to really get inside it and work it frontwards and backwards reciting it can easily fall flat.  You won’t do it justice and it won’t serve you as showcase for your talent.

4. Know four or five monologues. Break it down like this:  two classical monologues – Shakespeare, Sophocles – one comedic and one dramatic.  Two contemporary – take your pick – again one comedic and one dramatic.   And the fifth one?  If you want find something that speaks to you, that showcases you and your strengths.  It never hurts to have a little something extra in your pocket.

This is the advice I have banging around in my head as I look for monologues.  Got anything to add?  Or maybe you know a great monologue…