Advanced On-Camera Commercial Audition class 7

Assume you're given this copy: "your driving, and as your driving, your baby in your backseat, in her car seat, drops a toy and wiggles out of the seat belt restraint. You look in the rear view mirror and and you don't see your child. You panic, almost causing an accident, and you pull over as quickly as you can and discover your child happily playing on the floor of the back seat. You are enormously relieved."

The ad for a seat belt and child car seat and seat belt commercial.

The audition consists simply of acting out the sequence of events described in the copy:

1. get in the car, buckle up, check to the rear view mirror, see your baby, smile, etc.
2. start driving driving (you're immediately on the freeway), simile at the baby . . .
3. keep driving, after a few seconds, look in the rear view mirror, and you don't see the baby. REACT! Get to the side of the road as quickly as possible.
4. stop the car, turn around, and find the baby safe and sound. REACT -- you are enormously relieved.

NOTES

1. Get used to using and trusting my instincts, going with my first insights, intuitive thoughts, impulses. Don't question or doubt them. Go with them w/out thinking or worrying about them.
2. Breathe. I'm getting better at breathing during listening and dialogue, but I forgot to sometimes breathe during these wordless improvs.

Goals, when working along or with a partner.

Tell MY story with body language, and made up dialogue, if allowed. Don't worry about what others are doing -- note, pay attention to them, but to wait, rely or defer to them. Be as inventive and creative as I want: don't try to create some "realistic" "everyday" behavior. Show the story with known behaviors that everyone will recognize. There's an ART to all this -- look for, trust and practice following the instincts I have.

Jerry's agent wrote a great book, Ask an Agent: Everything Actors Need to Know about Agents, that's apparently SO good that other agents were upset because they felt she had given away too many insider trade secrets. Apparently it's going out print, so I immediately picked one up. A review will be forthcoming . . .