Opportunities starting to come

I am a bad man aren't I?! No blog post for over 3 weeks! No excuse and my apologies. Makes it hard to try and think back at what I have been up to in that time. But will try my best thats for sure. The main thing to be honest is that I am now living in London, have my total independence back and at feels so good. A huge weight lifted off my shoulders and so much more time on my hands instead of suffering the Essex to London commute. The place is so nice and quiet and already I am feeling very settled. Still needs a woman's touch to decorate my room a bit more, but I like it.

MERCEDES SHOOT

Out of the blue on a Sunday evening I received a phone call from my agent asking if I was available for a shoot on the Monday morning! Last minute or what, but as soon as she said it was for Mercedes it was a no brainer. YES. Even though I was working until 2am that night, I really didn't care, works work after all. The reason why it was last minute was because another model had worked for a car company before (thanks Freddie), but whether I come in as a back up or not I really don't care one bit. I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm better than that one bit. But last minute shoots do come up very regularly and you just have to ready for it. Modeling work is not free flowing enough to pick and choose.

The morning of the shoot was quite interesting (well I think so anyway ha ha). I was worried about train times as the job was at Silverstone and there was literally an hourly train to the nearest station. Dummy here got on the later one, big mistake! I thought it would be ok and maybe I would be 20 minutes late, but the train had other ideas and fancied giving me and other passengers a bit of a stressful start to our Monday morning. We went to pull away from the platform and the power cut out completely! This happened about 7 times throughout the journey causing me to panic and stress about being late. Constantly on the phone to my agent and the client saying sorry every other word ha. What was in a way worse was the lovely girl model on the job with me was early! She clearly was going to be the favorite I thought! ha.

Fortunately, an hour late (not a good moment, as I'm always early for everything) I arrived in the pouring rain, which happened to be my savior, who would of thought that I would ever be thankful for rain. The reason being, the rain delayed the shoot so I was off the hook. The client was absolutely brilliant though and instantly struck up a good relationship, full of lots of banter, most of the time being on the receiving end of it but not that I was concerned one bit.

So a 8:45am call time and I didn't start shooting until 3pm! A lot of sitting around, a lot of chatting away and getting to know everyone on the shoot. Then it was my turn. I was driving a Mercedes 4by4 on the off road track at Silverstone! (I couldn't believe I was actually getting paid for this!) I literally had to drive up and down a hill into a big pool of water to get the splash as I drove past. I repeated this about 20 times and that was me done for the day! Not all shoots are like this I must stress but that was pretty cool!

NEW IPHONE APP SHOOT

Its always good when someone gets in contact out of the blue about some random bits of work. If it's when I'm free then I never have any problems doing little things because you never know what they will lead too. This one was through a friend of mine and just short videos of hanging out with my pretend girlfriend enjoying the new app. Simple and just a few hours work and it was all over. Shot all around the heart of East London, Shoreditch, Brick Lane etc and on a Saturday morning too where it didn't clash with anything. Job done.

CASTINGS

There has been a recent pick of castings big time at the moment. It had gone very very cold a few weeks back but the last couple of weeks have picked up a lot. These castings aren't just small ones either, they are for some big jobs for companies such as Diet Coke, Adidas and more. Whether I got any of them is another story, but it always feels good to get out and about and that age old cliche of "every no is a step closer to a yes" certainly will ring true. Each casting is often a new experience, especially the commercials where it always requires some acting involved too.

The Diet Coke one especially, as I was up to be the new Diet Coke Man!!! ("Its 11:30, Diet Coke Break) ha. I had to act as a tree surgeon and basically ends up with a can exploding , my shirt coming off and girls taking pictures! Very Diet Coke advert like indeed ha ha. It was a fun experience, probably not necessarily right for me though but hey.

ACTING

Something that so many times people have spoke to me about, encouraged me to do and I always turned a blind eye too. But with the more commercial castings coming up the more eager I am to get involved in it all. But out of the blue last week I received a phone call for an audition in a TV show. I was like, wow!!!! 2 scripts to learn, which showed very different emotions that obviously helped show your versatility as an actor. The scripts were great though.

First Script:
I had just walked out of a club with a girl who was all over me in there (very unrealistic I know) and when we got outside she suddenly got scared and changed her mind (much more realistic ha ha). My character then flips out and gets angry at the girl for doing so. Perfect script for me! And I really went for it in the audition too, leading to the casting girl to tell me that she wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of me after a night out (considering I'm a softie I thought that was a good thing ha).

Second Script:
I walked up to a friend of mine and basically after some small chit chat let it out that I may have found my dad. Completely different emotions needed, intense, softer and the main thing was I remembered all the lines! ha

The audition was a success certainly, I received great feedback immediately and now its a case of crossing the fingers and hoping that in 2 weeks I get a phone call to move on to the next stage. It's quite a drawn out process apparently, but one that could change so much for me if I am successful, so time will tell I guess. But I have to say I really enjoyed it, enjoyed the casting, enjoyed getting myself into the character and was proud of myself for how well I did too. I don't often say that about myself but there you go.


ROMANCE

I always keep this bit brief, most of the time because there isn't much to shout about to be honest. But after going through tough times of late (as seen in previous posts) I found myself basically not being myself one bit. I lost all my cool, my calmness and turned into this guy that was so desperate to settle down with someone. I got my priorities completely messed up and instead of concentrating on work and letting any romance happen naturally, I found myself trying to force the issue. It was a massive mistake.

Unfortunately someone who I have known for a long while and considered a really good friend was the recipient of me in this horrible time I was having. I just messed it all up and became so unattractive because of how needy I was, something which isn't me one bit. I am an emotional guy, thats not something I will ever hide. Some may see that as a negative, others may see it as a positive. It means that I care a lot about someone I like and would do anything for them too, but the state I was in at that point meant I was just on edge completely and lost my cool so much.

But hey, thats life right, and you live and learn by experiences you have and make sure that you don't make the same mistakes again in the future. Unfortunately I certainly learnt the hard way, however, I feel so good now and can look back and realise how stupid I was. I don't need the distractions of a relationship right now, I certainly don't need to go out chasing for one, as my priorities need to be work. End of. But I have come out of it eventually feeling good about myself and feeling like I'm back to my old self with my priorities fully in order!

FAMILY

I don't often put about my family on here, so will keep it brief. Its come to that time in life where my parents are setting up to retire and move away. Something that was always going to happen at some point, but something I probably didn't expect so soon. It means its time for me to concentrate on the important things in life and putting my family first by looking out more for my sister and niece. It's also time my life gets sorted a bit more as I won't have that base to rely on anymore either, so I need to pull my finger out, which to be honest is pretty good timing as I'm in that mood anyway. Sad for my boys too, as means no more Legendary bar Greeno nights! Now those who have been to one of them know exactly what I mean! Many punters have graced bar Greeno on those weekends when my parents head out of town, shhhhhhh they don't know yet. But seriously means I could be looking to buy a place at some point next year, which is very grown up, far too grown up for me, but would be nice! So 2013 will be a knuckling down saving year that is for certain!!!!


Well...this could be my longest post ever! First of all thank you for taking the time to read this far!!! That takes some doing and I greatly appreciate it. Any comments questions feel free to ask away.

Hope you are all well

James

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