After I completed the classes at the Neal Hamil Agency, I scheduled a photo shoot with a respected female photographer. I prefer to work with women when it comes to that. The next thing that I needed was some video footage of me acting.
I had thought about asking some of my friends to be in a scene with me. I know several real-life characters. Then after just a few classes, I had the idea to work with a woman from my class. She is the cute redhead that I’ve mentioned before.
After the classes ended, I reached out to Sherri Roberts to see how she felt about working with me on some clips. She seemed eager and so I began to write a short script for us to do together.
An acting clip doesn’t need to be that long. Sometimes longer clips won’t be watched by a casting agent just because of time. I was able to write a 2 page script, which equates to about 2 minutes of film time.
Sherri liked the idea in the script, and we went back and forth a few times, refining it. She was helpful and gave some good suggestions. When Sherri, myself and the director were all satisfied with the script, we scheduled a time of noon on a Sunday to meet and shoot the scene.
My friend, Jeff, was the Director for the shoot and beforehand, he made a logo for Sherri’s character’s company. Sherri’s character was named Vivian Alexander. I had 5 different ties picked out to choose from for the shoot. I asked Sherri and she selected my blue one. It was a good choice.
The scene we were doing was an office scene with two contentious co-workers. The conversation escalates and I quit after Sherri threatens to fire me. It took us about 4 hours to film a 2 minute scene. And we were shooting in a non-linear style also.
Sherri looked fantastic. Here’s a photo from the shoot.
We shot Sherri’s scenes first to make it easier and a little quicker than going from her to me several times. Sherri looked comfortable in front of the camera and was well prepared for work. I will add that I had trouble with a few of my lines, but Sherri knew her lines perfectly.
As some of my readers may know, I’ve been a confessed bachelor my entire adult life. For about 10 years, I’ve had little or no contact with a woman. Then, I find myself doing scenes with this gorgeous redhead. One tough part that I realized was that during our scenes, I had to maintain eye contact for a good while. Sherri has blue eyes, so it’s easy to get drawn in. I have made a joke that staring into Sherri’s beautiful, blue eyes will put you in a trance.
After we finished shooting everything, I surprised Sherri and Jeff with champagne. We shot our first scene and had our first wrap party.
A day after our shoot, I went by Jeff’s office to look at the footage. I’m happy that we got the first one out of the way, but I see several areas for improvement on my acting. It is a journey that isn’t completed in a short amount of time or without hard work and persistence.
We’re shooting another scene this Sunday. This one will have some comedic elements to it. I look forward to getting better at this craft. And having an acting partner like Sherri makes it fun. I like having her on the ride with me.
Spider Michaels 