For my first two winters in Korea, I barely had enough money to eat. I had to borrow money quite frequently from friends in order to get through the cold months when there is less filming. It was about that time that I decided to diversify. This was not out of necessity so much as I had already been writing and recording my podcast just as a hobby in the past. Given that acting too was just a hobby prior to coming to Korea, it was only natural to find a way to get paid for doing my other hobbies.

My hobbies are all mostly creative in nature. But one man’s hobby is another man’s profession. It also makes perfect sense that if you spend so much of your free time working on something as a hobby, you’re going to get pretty good at it. If you’re good at it and passionate about it then that’s already half of the battle towards making some money from it.

So this year, as always, there seems to be far less paid acting work coming my way in winter, but I have been spending much more time creating a voice demo and pushing it out to different voice recording studios, doing auditions etc. The result is a lot more voice work this month, which covers for the lack of filming work available. I have more time to write and work on lots of other projects too, which, even if they don’t come to anything all amount to progress.

Key things to note if you are planning to turn your hobby into a career:

• It should be something that you devote most of your mental energy towards. Half arsed never gained anything.
• You need to put yourself out there. Especially in any creative pursuit, the key is to meet like-minded people. Join writer’s circles, go to acting classes etc. The key to success these days seems to be that inescapable word ‘networking’. It’s totally true. You might feel as though you are being given more help and favours than you are able to give initially, but once you are more established and already have a good network, then you can repay those favours by helping others who are passionate and dedicated and trying to find a way in.
• Practice all the time. Success is most often a bye-product of hard work and dedication. To get good, and to get noticed, you have to just go for it. Over-coming the natural nerves is also necessary to progress. Learn to accept failure and move on gracefully to the next opportunity.  To feel reassured as an actor, all I normally do is take a look at IMDB and I quickly realise that every year there are some 10,000 filming projects being made around the world. That’s a lot of roles for actors to fill. Play music live, do open-mic stand up as often as you can, make short films, audition for anything you can, write…
• Never stop learning. Only an idiot ever feels they have learned all they need to know. A wise man knows that there is always more information that he can fathom that he does not yet know

Have fun ^^

I finally put together my first demo reel:

This is a short compilation of my work from 2011. I only included 3 titles, and discarded many, many other clips in order to make it short, concise and less self-indulgent. Any comments and feedback are much appreciated.

Thanks

Paul

Whilst many are wasting time and money proclaiming another false rapture, to which they have no evidence save for a highly dubious line in Thessalonians 4:14 (or any other vague line in the Bible for that matter), it’s time for all aspiring actors to plan their year ahead. This should be done with a view to entering 2013 having advanced or gained something tangible from 2012.

Psychologically, many see a new year as chance to start a fresh. Certainly the western mentality is very geared towards this view, and we constantly talk about needing to have a good start to the year. I’ve had a mixed start so far (by that I mean some good things and some not so good), but I don’t really care. Time passes in the same fashion, and I’ve had a mixed weed just like I have had numerous weeks in my life with mixed outcomes. Just like I will have all bad and all good weeks in the future.

The key for me is to be generally in a place where I’m in a constant state of improvement.

Every new year I don’t make a resolution, I make a list. A rational list. Things that I want to achieve, that I know I can achieve during the course of one year. I’ve really found this helps me. It gives me a list of attainable goals to work at through the year. I also include points in my list of things to do regularly, like practice auditioning and cold reading techniques.

Among last year’s list for me were: ‘pay off my debt’ and ‘work at least 7 hours a day on something’ (something being either a shoot or personal projects.) I nailed both of these and am now in a stronger position to move forwards. This year points will focus more on getting ready for my next stage, which will be moving back to the UK, so a lot of my list has this in mind.

If you want believe in starting the year the right way (and even if you don’t believe in that), maybe consider also making a list to define the things you want to achieve this year. Good luck.

Hey folks.

Thank you for everybody’s support during the last year. It is a tremendous boost to me to hear everybody’s comments on my work, whether in praise or constructive criticism. Please keep it coming.

I hope you enjoyed indulging on Christmas day this year. It is the only day of the year where we don’t have to use the term over-indulgence and food in the same sentence. As I’m in Korea, land of no turkeys at all (but lots of Turkish people, it’s just that kebab doesn’t really say Christmas to me), I went to an all you can eat steak restaurant.

Have a serious case of the meat sweats now. It was amazing.

All the best to all of you.

Much love,

Paul

Being creative professionally is a curious business in that we often are inspired to create by the greats who went before us. As an actor I idolize a lot of great actors like Al Pacino, Daniel Day Lewis and Johnny Depp among others. My comedian friends idolize people like Lenny Bruce and George Carlin. As a writer I’m inspired by Bukowski and Kerouac. My principal inspiration is Ricky Gervais

There are a number of reasons why I idolize certain people like Gervais, foremost of all is for what they have achieved, either in terms of a career over a number of decades, or the way they handled their career.

A friend of mine who is a director mentioned that he, like many, started out being disappointed by his directorial efforts. Why? Because he knew he had good taste. He tried to produce something that fell in line with such good taste, and was disappointed to find that the final product came nowhere close to work of people he admired and tried to emulate. At the this point realised a key thing that many who don’t make it may never realise: that you must find your own way, work hard to discover and develop your own individual style, rather than copy somebody else’s, and finally be aware that it took many years of dedication and learning for our idols to reach that zenith where their work is so good that it is idolised.

Why Ricky Gervais? I idolise him for a number of reasons. In this way I can learn something from him to use in my own acting career, without ever making the mistake of trying to copy or mimic him. Notably:

1 – He works very hard

2 – He has developed a very unique personal style (this has subsequently been copied, often badly). There is a certain Gervaisian way of making a ridiculous comment, often laced with undertones of arrogance and ignorance (especially with David Brent), then leaving off that sentence with an open ‘so…’, that is ridiculously funny. Also the way he engages with the camera is brilliant. I don’t even remember the names of anyone who has tried to imitate that style. Gervais owns it and he rightfully is known for it.

3 – He is very smart when it comes to the business side of his career. He kept the rights to his t.v. shows like ‘The Office’ and has not sold out. He now has carte blanche to make whatever he wants, which is something that perhaps only 1% of professional actors and comedians have the chance to do.

4 – He takes big risks that are well calculated. When hosting the Golden Globes, Gervais did something that had never been done before: he insulted some of the most powerful people in the movie industry at their own party. He knew that the 200 million people watching would be entertained, and that the Hollywood big-wigs, motivated by figures (either viewers or those with the $ sign in front) would have no choice but to keep him. On top of that, he also knew that most people would not take offence, and those that did would be at risk of tarnishing their own image. A very smart move indeed.

5 - He explores new avenues and mostly keeps his work fresh. Gervais was one of the first people to crank out a regular podcast. Now everyone is doing it. He has a lot of unique and original ideas, often reinventing or reworking a genre. Although lately ‘Life’s Too Short’ has been seen as a little generic (even though when people brand it as generic, it’s generic only in the genre that Gervais himself created, so…)

6 – He has loyal fans. Gervais knows the value of good fans. He has regularly written a blog on his website, has a good Youtube page, Plumplard, now tweets regularly and essentially gives a lot of content and attention to his fans. As such he has legions of loyal fans who unite to collectively take down anybody who is overly critical of what Gervais does or says.

These are all valuable lessons to learn when attempting to establish a career.

The moral is this: have an idea of a benchmark. Have idols and people who inspire you. Don’t copy, mimic or imitate them. Remember that they are revered because they worked hard (we only know them once they have made it in most cases, and many don’t appreciate how long they worked to make it in the first place), because they developed their own unique voice and because they were smart in a way to carve out their career this way.