1 Week Modelling Course

Remember that modelling course I told you guys about in the last post? So, a few months back my agency called me and invited me to participate in one of them. They have one per week, and each day, Monday through Friday they teach you modelling abilities like posing, talking to the camera, catwalk..
That's how it went:

MODAY - The first day we had to learn how to work with our bodies. We had many different exercises and moved around a lot. If you ever took an acting class, it was very similar to many of the exercises we have in those kind of classes. It was a really fun day, and I got to meet all of the people that I would be working with for a week!

TUESDAY - Tuesday was picture day! They told us to wear simple natural looking makeup and to wear nice clothes. Each person at a time we posed for a professional photographer both sitting and standing while he gave us tips on how to make each picture better! Keep in mind that not all of the pictures have to be different and unique since from about 100 pictures they only select 12. It was definitely one of my favorite days since I'm just in love with taking pictures! Haha!

WEDNESDAY - This one was definitely one of my favorites, if not my favorite! We had to do a commercial (a bic pen commercial), one a time. Since I want to be a professional actress, you can see why that was my favorite, I just love talking to the camera! Anyway, one person at a time went into the room and filmed the commercial twice or three times to make it the best you could. I never got to watch it though :(

THURSDAY - Thursday they asked us to wear heels because we were going to learn how to walk on a catwalk. Our "coach" taught us what to do and gave us many tricks. I tripped a couple of times but in the end it was really fun because everyone didn't really know what to do so we were all learning together!

FRIDAY - Friday was supposed to be the final presentation, when we all showed what we could do with the abilities we learned during the rest of the week but they were having a pretty big casting call on the agency that day so there was no way we could do it. At least I didn't lose the trip because I ended  up doing the casting call! (no, i did not get the job. but it was fun anyway!)

This course I had was a few months back so I don't remember exactly but I'm pretty sure it was 2 hours per day, from 4 to 6 if I remember it right! It was a really great experience for me and I learned a lot of stuff I didn't know about modelling and acting! I recommend you guys do it too, if you can!

Tell me on the comments bellow if you ever had a course like this, how was it??
XOXO
-Julia

How to go to open calls and castings (modelling)

Last week I went to my agency and got some tips from the producer (or producing assistant). Here's what she said. Enjoy (:

• Never, never, never go without your photo book and photo card. Those are the model's professional material and you have to have that at all times with you.
• Don't try to draw attention to your clothes. They are looking for the model who fits what they are trying to do better, not the one who can dress better. You have to shine, not your clothes.
• Know yourself, your best qualities, how to work with your body and all that to make the pictures better. There are modelling classes out there. On my agency they are having classes that are just a week long, 5 days and you're ready (:
• Know you're measurements by heart(height, waist, the size of your clothes, everything).
• Be direct, answer all of their questions clearly and be super professional.
• Yes, you will get rejected. And again. And again. People there don't really care about your feelings so be prepared for that. And don't worry. Keep trying and you'll get there (:

Anyway, that's what she told me. Good luck to everyone (:

xoxo

-Julia 

One more site about monologues!

Like I promised, I did some more research and found a good website if you don't know how to find monologues. I looked into and this is how it works:

The monologues are separated into comedic, dramatic(remember I said that agencies usually ask for a comedic and a dramatic monologue?)classic, "for children" and "for seniors".
Once you choose your type of monologue and if you are a woman or a man you'll be able to choose from a list of monologues(with title and author).
My advice is read a few, choose the ones you like and from those, choose the one that best fits what your agency is asking for.
Hope this helps you guys.
Xoxo
-Julia

The website: http://www.monologuearchive.com/

Click here to read my previous post about monologues.

Guest Posts

Sometime ago I decided to publish guest posts here on the blog(Which are normal posts except they are written by other people (guests) and are published here). My first guest was Linda Wartenweiler, an actress that lives here in New York (follow her on twitter @lindaswizz nd read the post she wrote here).
No, guest posts doesn't mean that I'm going to stop posting. Actually, they are only gonna happen every once in a while. It's just a chance of getting to know people that work with acting and their perspective about whatever topic they might talk about(of course everything having to do with either acting or modeling).
If you are interested and have something to share please contact me by email actinginyourstyle@hotmail.com You can also send me an @ at twitter @ActingInUrStyle
-Julia

Guest Post: Linda Wartenweiler

The first guest here in the blog is Linda Wartenweiler, an actress that lives here in New York. Hope you guys enjoy what she has to say about acting and her work. (:

"Some thoughts I’d like to share with you about the wonderful world of ACTING….

To me being an actor/actress is the most wonderful job that exists! It simply does something to me, it opens doors and energies in my senses that simply wants me to fly away! Yes, this is a tough business everyone says, but hey, if this is what you really, really want to do and HAVE to do, then I believe that you can fly higher then you can imagine… One thing I believe in as well as an aspiring actress is that you have to listen to your heart, your intuition, follow some rules that are out there about the business, stay focused, positive and the most important thing: BELIEVE IN YOURSELF!! With all that together you can mix your own recipe and walk along YOUR way as everyone has it’s own one to walk. There is no such thing as 1 way, yours is unique.

There are many people out there who decide to focus on an acting career because of the $$... Well, I believe that these are for sure the wrong motives, but it doesn’t mean that success wouldn’t come their way. “Success”, how do we define you anyways?! For some people success is the fact to be cast in an Off-Off Broadway play for the hell of it, others are happy to follow a background acting career or to be able to make a living out of any acting gigs without a day job (anymore) and others define success by becoming an A-list actor/actress. So you need to find out for yourself what kind of artist and person you are. What are your motives and talents to follow an acting career and if there’s a fire burning inside of you about it or not. To me the fire is very, very essential and one of THE key ingredients if you want to go beyond background work and/or to be “successful” in your doings, as this is what keeps you alive and drives you forward!

Now you will ask yourself what did I achieve so far and who I am…. Well, 5 years ago I moved from Switzerland to NY to follow my childhood “triple” dream: “Acting-NYC-AmericanEnglish”. At first NYC and the acting world was a huge jungle for me, coming from “innocent” Switzerland as a banker… but now that I’ve done my basic studies, worked on several projects on sets and on stages, learned my lessons, talked to many, many artists & industry people, know what kind of actress I am, what jobs I will book and what qualities I bring to my craft, I am positive that I’m more than ready for what comes next on “my” way!! Yes, I do have my own goal, dreams und success vision and my fire is burning and growing more and more these days…. ;)

These were some of my many, many thoughts and opinions I have about this topic… Thank you for reading and I hope that I was able to light some fire in you or to bring back your motivation if you should have lost it…!

Break legs out there and never forget: “Don’t dream your life, live your dream!”

-Linda Wartenweiler

 Personally, I agree completly with Linda and wish her good luck on everything she does.

"Never give up on your dream no matter how hard it is to get there. You can do it if you try hard. If that's what makes you happy than that's what you should be doing."


Follow Linda on twitter @lindaswizz : twitter.com/#!/lindaswizz
Subscribe to her youtube page : http://www.youtube.com/user/lindaswizz?feature=mhee#p/u
Her imdb page : http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3259919/

PS. Yesterday the agency called me (: . They asked me for my age and birthdate and I told them I was 13. They told me they had a work available for me but I had to be 17 or older but that they are already looking for more stuff and that they'll contact me. Even though I couldn't do it, I got 2000x more excited than I already was hahhaa. I'll let you guys know when they book me for something! :D

Tips : How to Memorize Lines

I guess many people think it's really easy to memorize stuff. I memorize stuff REALLY easily myself, I can just watch a movie or a show that I really like and then I memorize some scenes instantly and if I watch it twice I can just memorize at least half of the whole movie. I don't know why or how I do that, I just do it, I don't really have any tricks to that or anything similar, but if I like the movie/show it gets stuck in my head and I memorize it really fast. #fact
So when I have to memorize a monologue or my lines to whatever I'm gonna do, that comes really easily to me. Songs do too, but that's not the point. :p
Anyway, I know many people can memorize that kind of stuff really easily and they don't have any special tricks but I know also that there are a lot of different people out there  there are a lot of people that can't and if you are one of those people, this may help you:

• This is very personal so if something doesn't work for you it may work for me and if it doesn't work for me it can still work for you (:

Tips:

1. If it's a monologue one of the best ways to memorize is to sit down (or you can do it standing if you prefer or walking around) and read it, again and again and again and again. And when your done reading it, read it again. And when you feel like you memorized it try to say it out loud without reading it. If you can, try it again and again and keep practicing.
2. You can ask a person to hold the paper or the book where the monologue is written and you can say it out loud to him/her and ask them to tell you whatever you said wrong.You can also ask them to tell you how they liked you acting and what they think of it (:
3. Record you saying that or even videotape it(videotaping works out better for me because you can see you expressions but recording works out fine too) and either listen to it over and over again or just once and see if it's good, and record it again untill you think you got it right.
4. You can record it and even when you know you got it wrong listen to it to see how well you did and how you could improve it. And once you think it's good, just keep listening to it and repeating it I guess.
5. This does not work for me but it may work for you so.. actually I think this is really weird but some people say it helps to write your line because by writing them over and over again you will end up memorizing it. For me, that'd only make my hands hurt but you can try it out.
6. For scripts I think the best way to memorize your lines is to practice with someone else. The person(or the people) could be the other person(or people) in the scene, who you're talking to for example and then you can practice the scene.
7. A great way to find your lines faster is to highlight them so that they stand out.

A really good way to practice either a monologue or a script is to practice in front of a mirror, so that you can see yourself doing it, but I still like the videotape idea better because at the mirror you can only see yourself if your looking strainght at the mirror and when your videotaping it you can look around and then you can watch yourself later..

And before anybody says anything this tips are not MINE, I didn't invent them. I thought of some of them by myself but it's not like I created them, I know a lot of people do that too.. and as for the others I did research, I watch videos about this stuff on youtube and I read blogs about it as well, I'm also in acting classes and obviously I learn stuff like that in there too. It's not like they're mine or whatever. Actually I never even tried most of them. :)

Hope this helped you guys
-Julia

Monologues dot com

Yes, I've been doing some research and like I said in the previous post click here to read it I'm going to post some monologues in here and some sites where you can find them.
Like I was saying, I've been doing some research and I found this site about monologues (well, actually it's a blog) and I couldn't look in it as much as I should've but I found some monologues that seem good and that you guys might like. Link for the site below.

That's it guys, I hope this helps. Later on I promise I'm going to do some more research and try and find some more monologues for you guys. Of course you can search by yourself in the Internet or in books that you like.
I didn't put as much time in this research bout monologues yet but I'm going to.
Xoxo
-Julia

Link to the site: http://www.monologueblogger.com/