For some of us, the image that comes to mind of an actor is not an entirely pleasant one. You might picture a self-absorbed, overly expressive narcissist who doesn’t just enter a room but swamps it with their physical, verbal and emotional self. Those people do exist in the world of acting, but in my experience, they are relatively few and far between, and they tend to drift away quite early in the journey toward becoming a good actor. Acting takes a lot of hard, quiet work, with little or no recognition, and narcissists can generally get their fuel more easily elsewhere.

So that leaves the rest of us. Happily in my experience, the most dedicated and best actors I have known are kind, humble, hardworking and thoughtful people. They can be shy, introverted and quiet. There are actors that work more from emotions, and others who work from a more intellectual approach. In short, actors come in all types, and it’s hard to pin down a specific personality type that suits the work. This means that being an actor is really for everybody who wants to give it a try. There is a place for all of us in this wonderful craft, and by giving it a go, you will naturally gravitate toward the side of the work that makes you the most happy and best reflects your abilities.

There are some qualities that do tend to show up repeatedly among the actors I have known, and here are a few of them. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and for every truth there are several exceptions, but here goes. No doubt you will see yourself in one or more of these!

1. Actors are curious. The word “why” is one of the most powerful ones in the actor’s toolkit. Above all, the actor tries to understand the reasons behind people’s actions, and the reasons why things are the way they are. This involves not only being curious about individuals, but also about broader social and historical contexts.
2. Actors can empathize. How do you play a serial killer when everything about the character’s actions is repugnant to you? Like lawyers, the actor has a job to do, and the system works best when the actor plays to win. Actors bring their powers of empathy to a character, and strive to understand the character’s world view, without judging.
3. Actors love language. Most people enjoy a well-turned phrase, great comedy, moving song lyrics and beautiful poetry. For the actor, these are stock in trade. Actors realize that ideas, words and their arrangement and meaning are the building blocks of great performances. A passionate love of language is one of the actor’s best friends.
4. Actors are playful. Actors generally like to play, with others, with ideas and with language. It takes a certain amount of daring to say you want to play for a living, which is what actors do. A spirit of fun is essential to survive the grind of hard work that comes with dedication to getting better at the craft of acting.  
5. Actors are childlike, and can be almost tragically innocent. It is this childlike willingness to be curious and vulnerable that can lead to very stirring performances. For one reason or another, many actors have been able to retain some of the best aspects of being a child, while learning the self-protective and professional habits needed to survive and succeed.
6. Actors observe others. You won’t generally see an actor who isn’t observant. They like to watch people, and keenly observe details like behavior, gait, clothing, jewelry and other things that give a clue to people’s makeup and actions. They know that the visible aspects of a character can greatly help in storytelling. 
   
7. Actors are driven. Successful actors are driven by a need to get better and learn more. It has been said that it can take 10 years to become decent at the craft of acting, and there is always something to improve, like our ability to use our voices, to memorize lines, to believably inhabit a character.
8. Actors are business minded. Actors that succeed in the long run are those who show up on time, every time. Despite the tabloid portraits of chaotic lifestyles, the average actor is hardworking, methodical, reliable and business oriented. It takes a lot of discipline to be managing the day-to-day business of being self-employed.
9. Actors can focus. Actors know how to protect their ability to do their work. There is a clear line where the fun stops and the work begins. You can see this in an audition waiting room, where someone who isn’t serious about the audition may want to chat with everybody. The successful actor politely asks for and receives the space to focus on the work at hand.
   

Every actor is a unique and complex mix of qualities, including some of the ones above and many others. There are as many different kinds of actors as there are non-actors, and you should feel very comfortable finding your own place in this wonderful mix of humanity. In fact, we are all actors already! Some of the roles we play are family member, the self we show at work, the self we show to good friends, the self we show to our parents, and so forth. A professional actor just learns how to grab control of the levers of the craft of acting and use them in a way that creates entertainment and tells a story.

I had fun building this partial list of actor attributes. What would you add to it? 

In our film “Monetized” a hassled, battle-weary filmmaker (Vivian Davidson) comedically turns the tables on her stay-at-home mom friend (Lauren Donnelly) by asking “What’s the point of having babies if you can’t make money off them?” Sure, it’s a joke, but it’s also that one thing nobody really wants to talk about. What if we artists actually CAN'T monetize our work anymore? What if there is just too much free product chasing too few disposable dollars? What if the success stories of the past - like making it big, selling that script, getting discovered by Hollywood, inking a huge distribution deal for our indie film - are just that, in the past?

It’s true that the filmmaking community is wonderfully supportive of its practitioners, and I’m sure we all do what we can to support our peers, renting their latest short off their VOD channel, kicking in a few bucks to their crowdfunding campaigns and so on. But in the end, it’s a pretty small community, and we are, in effect, just passing the same ten dollars back and forth, rather than creating new economic value. As we look around and see fewer and fewer mainstream people with full time jobs, or benefit plans, or even enough work hours to make ends meet, things don’t look great for filmmakers and other artists either.

It can become a cycle of defeat to keep expecting to make money directly from our art. We can feel like failures when we fail to earn money for our craft. That can leave us too discouraged to start new projects. And let’s face it: needing and not having money is the best excuse ever for not starting. So what to do? Well, we can sit around and wait for the good old days to come back, or we can make some positive changes that let us take our power back and stop putting too much economic pressure on ourselves. Here are some ideas for us, and I encourage you to contribute your own ideas to this list!

1. We can create art for the love of it, and for love of the audience, returning to our purest motivations for doing and creating artistic things. Remember that time when someone on set said your performance made them cry, or someone said your work inspired them? That will always be the best and highest calling for art. Our creative works have the ability to change lives, to make people think, to cheer and uplift others.
2. We can control the story and make it a great one. An amazing story is the lowest cost, highest return asset we can have. A well-written, engaging story will rise above many technical constraints, and allow the actors to really shine. If we are the best person to write the story, we should do so and invest the hours to make it outstanding. As the writer-filmmaker, we can also write with a view to avoiding unnecessary expenses.
3. We can drive all costs possible out of our projects. Be creative. Shoot with a smartphone if that’s what we have. Use free locations, or fewer locations. Use natural lighting, cut the number of characters and avoid crowd scenes. Work with amazing friends who will support us, knowing that we will support them back later. Build an ensemble over time that enjoys working together and try to create opportunities for them. Support them with IMDb credits, festival screenings, references, photographs and opportunities to do good work.  Work on their projects in any capacity we can.
4. We can remove the words “I’m working for nothing” from our language and thoughts. It comes with an implied thought pattern that suggests anything that comes without a cash payment is without worth. Yes, we all need cash to survive, but we can still see our services as an exchange of value that gets us as many good things as we can negotiate. Festival screening exposure, reviews, IMDb credits, photographs, a small honorarium, connections, references, social media shout-outs and help in-kind are all examples. After producing and directing 20+ short and micro short films, I can literally trace back every single success I have had to many instances where I worked for things other than cash, as I still often do. In the end, we all work for the audience, and we all like to work.
5. We can take the financial pressure off our art by finding other ways to make money. This can be an entirely different field of work we are trained or experienced in or it can be finding ways to spread the joy of our craft by teaching others how to do it for a fee, or by working in some other part of the business like being the person who helps out at auditions. As performers, we are already entrepreneurs, so we can think about broadening our offerings, finding ways to sell the things we know how to do. The more we decouple our need for money from our need to make art, the happier we will be.
   

I would love it if we could anticipate tons of funding for new projects, but assuming that may not happen, we can still be very supportive of each other. A “like” or a share goes a long way in helping out a colleague. Pitching in to help out with a project can make the difference in its success. By using some of the ideas above, we can be making films for less money that still please audiences, which is the name of the game!

At the Stella Adler Studio in New York, where I did a lot of my acting training, words were given a position of huge importance. By the way, did you know that the word huge also means limitless? Stella Adler alumni will get this inside joke, since we were commanded to bring a dictionary to class with us every day. When working with text, we would often get challenged on the meaning of words, and it was amazing how often our understanding of a particular word was wrong, or at least off-base. We also got to learn more about the history of a word, how it evolved over time, and what it meant at the time the text was written. This process of verifying our understanding of text led to some positive enduring habits that still serve us today.

In script interpretation class, we were trained to not just consider the words of a script or play, but also the whole social, political and historical context of the work. We also worked line by line through the text, to check our understanding of each of the characters and what was going on in a scene. This was amazing, because when you begin to develop that level of relationship with the words, you can suddenly see a vastness and richness that can be built upon as a performer, in service of the audience. Unfortunately, the work of modern film and TV can make us a bit sloppy as actors, a bit content to do the minimum and just memorize lines. It's not entirely our fault, because we often only get "sides" rather than context, and frequently have little time to do more than memorize. But memorization is only entry-level performing. If all you have done is focus on your own lines, then you are likely to be too worried about getting your lines right and waiting to hear cues from your partner. That's not really being there, for your partner or for the audience.

One of my favorite exercises, that I have adapted for use in my own teaching, is one that Stella Adler herself used. Fellow Stella Adler alumni will recognize this as the "Gibran exercise." This work involves developing a deep understanding of a piece of text, and then freeing yourself up from its constraints. The text in question is the book "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran. This is a beautiful collection of essays that considers the important aspects of life, deep topics such as love, marriage, reason and passion, crime and punishment, joy and sorrow, and so on.  The ideas in "The Prophet" are timeless and universal, even to a non-religious type like me. I've done this exercise several times myself over the years. Here's how it works, and how it can make you a better actor.

1. Get a copy of "The Prophet" by Kahlil Gibran from your library or find a rights-cleared PDF copy online at a site like Project Gutenberg.
2. Read the entire collection of essays (it's not a lengthy book), absorb the content and let it reach you. Do your research homework on the book, the author, the period it was written, reactions to the book. Gain a wider context on the text.
3. Pick an essay that really resonates for you, conjures strong feelings, perhaps even moves you to tears. Don't over think your choice. Interestingly, I have done this exercise as a student several times over the years, and different essays will resonate for you at different life stages or in periods of change or crisis.
   
4. Read your chosen essay over and over until it becomes a part of your DNA. Reflect on it, and let its messages sink in. Use your dictionary! :)
   
5. Paraphrase your chosen essay in writing. I prefer pen or pencil and paper, so I can scratch at it, make changes and refine my paraphrasing. Remember, you are summarizing your understanding of Gibran's words at this point, not relating your own. Keep working at this until you feel you could deliver it out loud in front of people.
   
6.  Deliver your paraphrased version of your essay, "script" in hand, to a group of people (fellow acting classmates or people you trust).  Then drop your script. Seriously, DROP it!
   
7. Now speak on the topic of the essay from your own heart, without having rehearsed or prepared what you will say. Feel free to ramble on at will, and don't self-censor.
   

As an audience member, the change that happens in the unscripted rendering is often completely riveting. There is a palpable transformation from an actor doing a good job with a script, into a deeply affected and connected performer  working from the heart and soul. If you think like a cinematographer, you will want to move right in on the eyes, the lips, the silences, the breathing. So why is this? What has happened? Perhaps it is the intertwining of a well-worked text with the actor’s genuine heart and soul. And this is where you want to be for the audience! Once you have experienced this difference first-hand, you will want to work to find ways of relating very deeply to the text, but also bring your heart and soul to the words. I really hope you have the chance to work with this exercise in a class, or with people you trust. It is a great experience that will make you a better actor. Enjoy!

Whenever there are two actors having a chat, you can be certain that the subject of IMDb credits will come up. The most frequent complaint I hear from people who worked on indie or student films is that they never got the IMDb credits they were promised. In fact, the films themselves never even ended up on IMDb. Why is this? Why don't producers get IMDb title pages for their projects, when it only requires a half-hour or so of focused effort, some tenacity and some patience? Having an IMDb title page for your film is the gold standard of recognition and legitimacy around the world. By getting a title page, people everywhere can find out about your film, who worked on it, and all kinds of other helpful information that helps market the film, even while you sleep. More importantly, it lets you bestow well-deserved IMDb credits on the people who helped you as cast and crew. If you want to be a professional, you need to understand how the IMDb title page process works, and how to use it effectively. You don't have to spend a penny if you don't want to. Here's how:

1. Google is your friend. Search for "how to get an IMDb title page for your film" or similar search term. This will lead you to the IMDb page called "Submitting a new title to IMDb" or something similar. On this page is a link called "New Title Form" which is for completed or in-production films. Click on this link. Remember that sites like IMDb evolve constantly, and you may need to dig around to find these links - use Google.
   
2. Start filling out the required information on the New Title Form. You will soon realize that there is an advantage to having an original title for your film. There's nothing technically wrong with being "Scary Movie (VII)" but there is nothing right about it either. Confusing your audience does not help you or the marketing of your film. Next time, search IMDb before you pick a name for your film, and be unique.
3. Fill out all the information asked for on the New Title Form to the best of your abilities. There is a lot of information, and it takes a while to get the formatting right. Also, you need to be a senior person attached to the film (like producer, director, lead actor) and you need to be a known quantity to IMDb through having your own IMDb name page already. 
   
4. Understand that IMDb is just trying to make sure you have a real film in your hands that they can verify the existence of. With that in mind, the key pieces of information are the title, country of filming, budget, key people attached to the project, production status, external weblinks (Facebook page and external website for the film) and a link that leads to a viewable copy of the film. The more info you can provide, the smoother the process goes.
5. Be prepared to be patient and tenacious. The form asks for more and more information, and you can periodically check how you are doing by clicking the button to check your submission. It almost always gets turned back (until you get really good at the process anyway) with warnings and errors. Check each of these, and make the necessary changes and additions. In the end, you will get green-lit and invited to hit the submit button.
   
6. Once you have successfully submitted your page, be prepared to wait. It's quite cool how your new title page comes into being. Keep searching for your title, and sometime over the next several days, it will appear! At first it will be bare bones, but will fill in with more details over time.
   
7. Once your page is fully there, you can make changes and additions, by clicking the edit links scattered throughout different sections of the page. Forgot a crew or cast member? No problem, just follow the edit process to add or change people. For people who didn't have an IMDb page already, you just created one for them! Be sure to let them know so they can take ownership of it and promote it and your film.
8. I recommend you pay the fee to add a poster graphic to your page (~$35 at time of writing this). It makes the page look great and helps market your film. Click on the "add a poster" link on your title page. Finally,  share the page with everybody you know, including cast and crew, and encourage them to share it widely.
9. Congratulations! You just became a more professional filmmaker. Actors? You should know how to do this too, and don't be afraid to offer your skills to a film crew you have worked with - it beats waiting and being disappointed when your credits don't appear.
10. BONUS SHORTCUT: If you have a bit more money to spend, you can also upload your films and project data to Withoutabox, which is affiliated with IMDb. This lets you submit to festivals that are "IMDb qualifying" and you will get a title page as part of the process when you submit to certain festivals. Keep in mind that festival submission fees are often $25 and up (way up).

Well done! You now have an essential skill that lets you be a more professional filmmaker. People will want to work with you again. Being IMDb-savvy lets you give people the credits they deserve and need for their careers, and also helps market you and your film to the world.  Have fun with it! :)

Born of a time of growing divide between the rich and the poor, the upwardly and downwardly mobile, and fueled by hopelessness and rage, punk rock gave music back to everybody. Also known as D.I.Y. for "do it yourself," punk was less of an organized movement and more of a coincidence of individual free spirits rebelling against the status quo. By picking up the nearest instrument and bashing away at it, whether it was tuned or not, whether you could even play it or not and shouting messages over the roar, punk music provided the perfect antidote to disco and corporate rock. All of a sudden, anyone could and should be in a band, and a new and accessible sense of artistic freedom was launched.

Of course, there was nothing totally new about this phenomenon. We could look at many other times when the old wave was disrupted by a new one throughout history. Gustave Courbet and the avant-garde school of realism in painting, Dada, surrealism, and many other art and social movements were reactions to times of social change and upheaval.

So are micro short filmmakers the new punks? Let's consider the similarities.

• DIY is the rule.  Micro short filmmakers know they can make a film with whatever they have on hand. A phone, an old digital camera, a friend's DSLR. No actors? Use sock puppets, or a narrative grafted onto found footage. A lack of knowledge, fancy schooling or gear didn't stop punk musicians from getting their message out there either.
• Self -reliance rules the day. Few punk musicians could rely on the backing of a record label, sound engineers or recording studios. Similarly, micro short filmmakers learn to do things themselves, editing rough using free software, recording sound on a phone, hacking something together that gets a message across.
• We embrace imperfection, placing the emphasis on message and reach. Passion has to rule the day. The message is the urgent thing, and nobody gains if it isn't shared. You can always make the next one better. And you will, because you learn each time you finish something and share it.
• Speed and brevity are of the essence. Fast to create, fast to finish, fast to watch. A "set" of micro shorts can be exhibited in less time than a blistering Ramones set lasted at CBGB!

In this and other blog posts, we have considered things like punk, animism, outsider art, folk art, graffiti, swipescaping and other possible inputs to a micro short filmmaking aesthetic. In the end, it is for each micro short filmmaker to determine their own original definition and practice of the art form. We live in artistically fluid times for filmmaking, and that is a beautiful thing. You don't need to go to film school (not that there's anything wrong with that) or copy from the old masters. Originate, follow your own instincts and have fun defining your own micro short filmmaking style!