Talent Jug - Casting Calls and Auditions

Goals and External Conditions

There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better.

-Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Acting With an Accent

Years ago, one of my teachers had us learn an accent (or dialect) with ‘David Alan Stern: Acting With An Accent’ tapes. I think I used the Standard British one and found it one of the better tapes I’ve encountered.

If you have any experience with the others, or any other good tape/s or discs or mp3s, please leave a comment and tell me, and everyone else, about it.

Career Anxiety, Success and Tragedy

Alain de Botton’s TED talk on career anxiety, success and tragedy re-frames the common ways people tend to see success and failure, and lauds tragic art, in other words, what actors do.

SAG Announced Candidates for 2009 National Elections

Screen Actors Guild today released the official list of candidates for its upcoming national officer and national board elections. National president and national secretary-treasurer positions are up for election, both of which carry two-year terms. Approximately 1/3 of the total 69 national board seats are open for election this year

(from sag.org).

SAG Ballot Mailed for Basic Cable Live Action Agreement

The SAG Basic Cable Live Action Agreement ballot has been mailed.

In this proposed contract, a production made for new media, based on an existing basic cable television motion picture, pays no residuals for the first 13 weeks of free to consumer streaming and the first 26 weeks on consumer pay platforms. In the first year after the end of the 13 or 26 weeks of streaming, for each 6 months it pays only $20 or $25 in residuals (for programs up to 10 minutes and programs more than 10 minutes respectively). After the first window plus the a year, it pays 6% of distributor’s gross receipts thereafter, I imagine split evenly among the actors.

It is worth noting that, like the recently ratified TV/Theatrical Agreements, this new contract does not raise pay 3% as claimed; it only keeps up with inflation since 2007 (Dept. of Labor data).

Disclosure: I am both a SAG Actor and a SAG signatory producer.