The TradeVine – Entertainment Trade Article Highlights June 30th
Welcome to the TradeVine whose purpose is to encourage the entertainment industry to read their trades: Variety, Backstage, Hollywood Reporter, etc. Enjoy learning about your industry.
Each Friday, The TradeVine seeks out a few of the informative trade articles you may have missed. Please visit the trade, itself, for the entire article.
Backstage – The #1 Thing You Should Know Before Auditioning for TV, by Michelle Danner
I was once coaching a very talented young actor who, along with his agent and managers, felt he was so right for a part that he put too much pressure on himself during up to the audition and ended up disappointed in his performance
It was clear he wasn’t happy with his audition, so I asked him to show me exactly what he’d done in the room. As soon as he started, I saw the problem. Sure, may have been “right” for the role, but he had the show’s tone totally wrong. The way he was playing the audition was for a straight drama, but the show actually had a lot of quirky humor and style to it.You can be the best actor in the world and bring truth to the scene you’re performing in an audition, but if you don’t understand the material you’re playing and if you don’t enter the specific world the story is set in, you’ll be at a loss and do yourself a disservice.
You can be the best actor in the world and bring truth to the scene you’re performing in an audition, but if you don’t understand the material you’re playing and if you don’t enter the specific world the story is set in, you’ll be at a loss and do yourself a disservice.
The most important thing you should suss out is knowing what you’re dealing with in terms of the style and tone of the project. If you’re auditioning for a hospital show, for example, there are obvious differences between “Grey’s Anatomy,” “Scrubs,” “ER,” and “Code Black,” which means you’re going to interpret each one differently.
“Grey’s Anatomy” deals with high stakes, life or death scenarios like unusual or unrecognizable medical conditions that often parallels the real life drama of the characters lives. Episodes are often punctuated with characters dealing with their flaws and own vulnerabilities as we see their personal dramas enfold. Amidst all this, there is humor and quirkiness. “ER,” on the other hand, is a straight, heightened drama that doesn’t have the same lightness.
If you’re reading for a courtroom drama, “How To Get Away With Murder” is different than “The Good Wife,” which is different from “Suits.” Read Entire Artice Here
The Hollywood Reporter – Academy Invites Record 774 New Members: 39 Percent Female and 30 Percent People of Color, by Gregg Kilday
The list reflects the Oscar-granting organization’s ongoing efforts to diversify its membership.
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has issued 774 invitations to new members, the Oscar-granting body announced Wednesday.
That number is more than the record 683 invitations that were issued in 2016 and well above the 322 invites that went out in 2015 as the Academy has made a concerted effort to diversify its membership ranks by bringing in more women, people of color and filmmakers from around the world.
The invitees to the acting branch alone — which numbered a whopping 105 — reflect the diversity the Academy has been pursuing. They include Avengers headliners like Chris Evans and Chris Hemsworth; Star Wars stalwarts like Adam Driver, Riz Ahmed, Domhnall Gleeson and Warwick David; box-office stars like Dwayne Johnson, Kristen Stewart and the newly crowned Wonder Woman Gal Gadot; Guardians of the Galaxy’s Chris Pratt; comic performers like Leslie Jones, Keegan-Michael Key and Wanda Sykes; recent Oscar nominees like Viggo Mortensen, Naomie Harris and Ruth Negga; and even veteran show-biz legend Betty White, who, at the age of 95, is the oldest of the new invitees. The youngest invitee is Elle Fanning, at the age of 19. Read Entire Artice Here
Variety – Film Review: ‘Spider-Man: Homecoming’ by Owen Gleiberman
Tom Holland plays Peter Parker as Marvel’s first YA superhero. That’s the novelty, and limitation, of this mildly diverting reboot.
Midway through “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” there’s a sequence that revs the picture up in that buzzy spectacular “Hey, I’m watching a Marvel movie!” way. Peter Parker (Tom Holland), a 15-year-old high school sophomore from Queens, is in Washington, D.C., along with a team of his fellow student brainiacs, to attend the finals of the Academic Decathlon. They’re up in the Washington Monument when a volatile alien weapon explodes, causing a crack along the top of the building’s pointy pillar and trapping the students inside the elevator.
It’s up to Peter to save them, though as Spider-Man he’s still figuring out what the heck he’s doing. In his red-and-blue spandex costume, now layered with computer intelligence and a Siri voice, he shimmies up the monument, a vertical crawl shot at dizzying angles (as in, straight down). He blasts some sticky web here and there and tries to kick his way through a small window (nope, the glass is too hard). But it’s a sticky situation. For a few dicey moments, you’re up there with him, doing just what you’re supposed to be doing at a movie like this one. You forget yourself. You escape. Read Entire Artice Here
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