Aaron Marcus flies to Atlanta for a feature film shoot after a Philadelphia workshop, only to find a last-minute script change adding a full page of dialogue. He memorizes the new lines mid-flight, then spends the next morning on set blocking scenes as a teacher character, with multiple takes to nail camera positions and timing.
Hi, this is Aaron Marcus, and welcome to your weekly acting and modeling information. Well, this is kind of a little bit of background into the day in the life of an actor. I did a workshop, a really fun workshop in the Philadelphia area on Sunday, and Sunday evening, late Sunday evening, I was being flown down to Atlanta to work on a feature film. And I had my script, everything was set, and I'd say about an hour and a half before I got onto my flight, I was checking my emails on my phone and there was a complete script change. About a page of dialogue was added. So what I wound up doing was completely rewriting everything from the phone so I could put it on a piece of paper because I didn't want to have my phone on, on the flight. And sat for, you know, 2 and a half hours or so just going over the lines, memorizing them. And by the way, if you're ever sitting next to somebody on a flight and they're just mumbling to themselves and talking to themselves for a few hours, either they're an actor, you know, trying to work on their sides, or you've got somebody with some real issues sitting next to you. So be careful. And so the windup was I got to bed. Gosh, I don't know, 12, 12:30, something like that. I was up around 5:30. I was getting picked up at 6:00 AM at the hotel. That's where I am right now. And it was good. Got there and they got a little breakfast for me sitting in the trailer. And I had some questions for the director about some of the changes that were made. And they wanted— they completely rescheduled my scene. I was supposed to shoot around 2:30 this afternoon. They changed it. We changed it to very early this morning. It was like 6:30, quarter to 7, something like that. And so we shot. It really didn't take very long. It was really more of blocking issues than anything else. I'm really not allowed to say anything about the film. As you saw from last week, there's an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement. But I can say I'm a teacher. And so we basically, it was really more a matter of not so much delivery, but making sure that sometimes I go off camera, sometimes I go in camera, when to say certain lines, when I am being seen. And, but I don't know, we did it, I don't know, 6, 7 times, 8 times, something like that. And boom, we were done. And I'm back in my trailer filling out paperwork and I've got the rest of the day Free. Now, I'll be working the rest of the day, but not on the set. Just, you know, writing things, getting more materials for you, and things like that. So anyhow, I just wanted to share a little bit of background, kind of like the day in the life. There are a lot of other things that I can talk about, about the experience. It was really— it was a wonderful experience. I hope it's a successful film. People were really, really nice on the set, and, you know, it's I guess it's kind of like days like today that make all those long drives for auditions, all those callbacks that never happen where you don't wind up getting the job, things that don't fall out on the right date because you've got something else going on, it makes it all worthwhile. It's days like today that keep you going. So anyhow, I just wanted to share that with you. If you do have Any questions, please go to my Facebook page, facebook.com/howtomodel. Please like the page so that way as I put more information up there, it will be sent directly to you. If you have questions, please write them there because that way I can continue to build this community of people helping each other. And if you have any specific personal kind of question you would prefer not to put on Facebook, you can always get to me at Aaron A A R O N. at howtomodel.com. It was great. It was a great day. I'm really happy, a little tired, but really feeling good and look forward to talking with you again next week. See you soon, man. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.
