Grey Skies

Knowing what to use and when to use it is important for your success as an actor. I have had to learn this over and over again myself, both as an actor and as a coach. You can’t bring the whole kitchen sink in with you every time you go to perform or audition. Nor can you “do nothing and just be natural.” Good acting takes skill. Great acting takes skill and faith in your work. But what is the work?

I moved to Los Angeles fresh from grad school and with a master’s degree in theater. I landed a great agent, and when they started sending me out on auditions, I realized that I had no idea how to audition. You would think that they would teach auditioning in school, but they don’t. I hit the streets and took many different classes. At times it feels like I have studied with most of the teachers in L.A. I took bits and pieces from each and developed my own style.

Often the conditions under which actors are asked to perform are less than perfect, and guess what: They never will be. Use your time wisely. Often we are given a short amount of time to prepare for auditions or jobs. So we have to work quickly, and to do that we need to have confidence in our choices.

Story

What is required of you to fully play the part and help tell the story? Are you the straight man, there to set up the joke for the series regular? Are you the killer on the drama series? The red herring? The victim? The love interest? Understand how you fit into the piece as a whole. Your job is to help create the world the writer conceived. Why did the writer write the scene? Remember, it isn’t about you; it’s about the story. You are there to help tell the story.

Intention

What do you want? What is in the way of what you want? How are you going to get it? These three questions form the holy trinity of acting. When a scene seems laborious or general, it’s usually because the intention work is weak. Intentions drive the scene and keep it active. How are you going to make the other person think, feel, or do what you want? Are you going to needle, guilt, soothe? I use actions in a scene to achieve my want. It is the intention that drives the scene forward, not an “attitude” or “mood.” You can’t play a mood, but you can take an action. Having a clear intention is one of the quickest ways to fix your work and make it specific.

Tone

You might give a great audition, and still someone behind the table says, “He/she is just not the right type for our show.” This often has to do with tone. Just as you wouldn’t perform a David Mamet play the way you would a Neil Simon play, you wouldn’t audition for “Desperate Housewives” the same way you would for “CSI.” You must fit the world of the show. For “Desperate Housewives,” your choices should be bigger and more on the nose. For “CSI,” they should be more subtle, more about subtext: what you are thinking and not saying.

Genre

Know what type of show you are going in for: drama, dramedy, comedy (sitcom versus single camera). If it’s a pilot, research what the writer has already written or produced. The Internet makes this easy to do. Utilize IMDb.com and Hulu.com so that you can be well-informed about whom you are going in to meet and what kind of work they have done in the past. It also allows you to “give good room.” You can talk about the work and allow them to get a feel for who you are.

Arc

The last thing you want to do is be boring. To make your scene dynamic, you have to figure out its arc. The best way I know to do that is to work backward. If you confess your guilt at the end of the scene, start by believing that you will get away with the crime.

Beginnings

First impressions are everything. In this fast-paced, give-it-to-me-now world, our attention spans have shortened to such an extent that if you don’t capture us in the first few moments, we are on to the next thing. Think about how many auditions directors have to get through. If your first few moments are weak, they fast-forward. Audiences are fickle, and if you don’t entertain them, they push away. You don’t want to spend your whole performance trying to earn their attention back.

To command attention, have a moment before, meaning know what has happened to your character immediately before the scene begins. This gives you confidence and puts the audience or casting director at ease.

Flexibility

Flexibility is a great skill to master. You don’t want to be so married to your choices that you can’t allow for change. In film, we are often asked to shoot out of sequence or to tweak a performance as conditions change on set. The same goes for auditions. You may have planned your audition one way, but the CD is asking you to try another approach or the director has a suggestion you never saw coming. That’s when you relax, listen, and adjust. You still know who your character is, what he or she wants, and what’s in the way of that. Adjust, but don’t throw the baby out with the bath water. More than likely, you’ve been given an adjustment because someone likes what you’re doing.

Theater

In the theater, you usually don’t have to work so quickly. Let your characterization evolve as you discover the part in rehearsal with your cast and director. Working on a complete biography of your character will serve you well, particularly in the long run of a show, allowing you to keep digging deeper into the part and feel as though every performance is alive and new. Keep reinvesting in the part. If you find that four weeks into the play, a moment when you are supposed to express a certain emotion no longer works, go back to your technique. Either find a new substitution or imagine a new trigger to bring the needed emotion out.

The work never stops. But you can’t bring all of your work into your performance every moment. You play the moment for what it is and what is required to tell the story. Actors have to have faith in their technique, faith that they can depend on preparation and then be free enough to let it go and allow intuition and instinct to take over.

Aaron McPherson has trained under Larry Moss, Jeffrey Tambor, and Patsy Rodenburg (he is profiled in Moss’ book “The Intent to Live”).He studied at the American Conservatory Theater and holds a master’s degree in acting from the California Institute of the Arts. Along with coaching and directing, he continues to act in film, television, and theater. He opened Aaron McPherson Studio (www.aaronmcphersonstudio.com) in 2005.

Check out Aaron in Grey Skies

SciFiChick.com was recently able conduct a Q&A with the cast and crew of the new scifi/horror flick Grey Skies! The independent film will release this summer. Keep reading below the break for Q&A’s with Aaron McPherson(actor), Michael Carnocchia (actor and producer), Kai Blackwood (director),Stacy Jorgensen (actress and producer), Mark Reilly (writer and producer), and Barney Barnum (Star Trek Oscar Winner and FX Creature Creator).

The film follows a group of old college friends who reunite to relive their glory days by renting a beautiful cabin in the woods. As the bonding begins, a surprise arrival of mysterious antagonistic alien creatures forces the group to ban together and outwit them in order to survive.

Aaron McPherson – lead actor playing Robert:

Can you tell us briefly about your character?

He is not who he seems to be. The loyal fiancé and friend to all. He has a secret and it is up to the others to figure it out.

What drew you to the role?

Stacy Jorgensen coaches with me and I was helping prep for her role and she said “you know you should play my fiancé in this. The rest is history and I have her to thank for running through the woods in Michigan in the middle of the night at 40 below. I exaggerate. You know what, I would do it again. She is great to work with.

What about your character was most challenging to play?

Finding the flip for my character. When he goes to the other side and how. That and eating venison for a month…ask the cast.

With such a dark film, how did you lighten the mood on the set?

It was a great cast and we would go into town and cause trouble. By trouble I mean we would go to Karaoke night at like one of the two bars in Farwell where we were and show them what’s what. We had some singers and dancers in the cast. I was more of a dancer/drinker.

How did your audition for the film go?

Very relaxed. I met with Kai and Mark we talked about the script and my character. Stacy and I did a scene or two and that was that.

Were there any actual frightening moments on the set?

Dragging Michael through the woods on a cable. By the time he was done his cloths were ripped to shreds. Or when Greg told me to stop going on runs through the woods because deer season was starting and I might get shot! But the most frightening moment for me was on one morning I woke up early and wondered outside half asleep sipping my coffee and Greg (the owner of the property) said, “Hey man you want to see something cool?” And before I knew what was going on he was taking me up like 200 feet in my pajamas in this crane we had for our aerial shots. So the crane was swaying in the wind. Greg is laughing saying “let’s go higher!!! And I am standing there in my boxers trying to figure out what the just happened. That was a little jarring first thing in the AM. Thanks Greg. But I do owe him, because when I got back to LA I had an audition for NCIS to play a red neck Marine who hunts dear and gets in a bar fight and I based it on him. One of my lines was “I got an 8 point buck in the bed of my pick up… how’s that for proof?” And my personal favorite “Why don’t you come back to my place and decorate my tree, Darlin?” It was their Christmas episode. True story, any questions? Your check is in the mail Greg.

All best, Aaron