Tuesday, 10 May 2016

Movie Acting Tips and Techniques | Byron Booker

It's true; auditions for film can be very intimidating. Everyone is staring at you, waiting for you to do something. And there's a gigantic camera pointed in your face.
But in reality, movie acting should be done with ease. Just stay relaxed, and practice a couple of simple tips and techniques as per Byron Booker which we'll talk about. Are you ready? Then here comes your close-up.


Relaxation

The greatest thing you can ever learn about movie acting is relaxation. Why? Because the camera picks up every little thing that you do. Every blink of the eye, nod of the head, and every sound you make.

Another reason you should stay relaxed: it helps you listen and react to your scene partner. Any film actor will tell you that he earns his living by listening and reacting to what's being said.
Staying relaxed might seem easy, but when the director is behind schedule and running out of daylight, the pressure falls on you: the actor.
Never mind all that. Stay cool and take your time. Relax.


Ignore the Camera

For the rest of your career as a film actor, the camera will be right there. (Sometimes, really close.) But you are going to ignore it. It's not there. It doesn't exist.
In fact, when the camera is rolling, only you and your scene partner exist. Everyone else disappears. The crew, the director, the producer, the camera man, everyone. They all disappear.
How do you, the actor, accomplish this? You hang on to your scene partner's eyes. The most important facial feature on film. (After all, the eye is the window to the soul.)
So when you look at your scene partner, you look them in one eye. Literally. Don't switch your focus from eye to eye. Instead, pick the eye that's closest to the camera lens.


Always Hit Your Mark

A mark is an indication on the floor of the film studio. (Usually done with black tape.) It tells an actor where to stand.
Why is this important? Because a movie camera is set to focus at a certain depth. If you're standing too far away from the lens, you're blurry. If you stand too close, again you're blurry.
In auditions for film, do your director at favor and always hit your mark.

Screen Tests

A screen test is an audition for a movie role. The director will have an actor prepare one of the more challenging scenes from the script, and then perform it while being filmed.
So what can you do to prepare?
First, do your actor's homework. Where are you? Who are you with? How do you feel about them? What do you want from them? How are you going to get it? And so on. Just because we're no longer on a stage doesn't mean we're finished with basic scene study. See the article on acting techniques to learn more.
Another great resource is YouTube. (Search: screen tests) You can find screen tests all the way back to Marilyn Monroe and James Dean. If you they did something you like, steal it.
That's right. We’re telling you to steal from the greatest screen actors of our time. Why not? They stole from their idols. Besides, it's not really stealing; it's flattery.
It's okay to steal from the best, as long as you make it your own. Let your own personality shine through on camera.


Again, Relax

I hope all this talk about screen tests didn't make you nervous. You're going to be fine. Relax.
If you can stay calm and listen to your scene partner, you'll be able to react to what they're saying. And movie acting is simply listening and reacting. That's all. But while it takes only a minute to comprehend, it's a lifetime to make perfect.
And if you're looking for a way to break into the film industry, you might become a movie extra. It's quick and easy to do.
Armed with this information, let's hope you can get out there and ace your auditions for film.


Thursday, 21 April 2016

Byron Booker Mastering Failure

My name is Stuart Byron Booker and I have failed many times in life. This is the begging of a book about many of the the lessons I’ve learned over the years. I must admit there isn’t a great sense of virtue that I have in writing this book. There isn’t some grand idea or optimism that anyone will even care to read it. Unlike most ventures I set out on I don’t have any expectations, predictions, projections or hopes attached to it.
All my life I was taught that having a goal and setting a date to it is the only way to go about achieving anything. I’ve always believed that success requires hard work, laser focus and lots of patience. This may very well be the only thing that I have every set out to do with absolutely no expectations attached to it.
This is a book about one of the most consistent things I have had over my 20 plus years as an entrepreneur, FAILURE. I can honestly say that I have always had the goal of writing a book but only after I achieved very great success. In my mind this success would have to be very grand. My hero’s growing up were the business titans of my day like Steve jobs, Bob Johnson, Oprah Winfrey and Warren Buffet. I set my mark to reach the status the legends of modern time including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein and George Washington Carver.
I not only wanted to change the world but I wanted to change the course of human history. I fondly remember stories that my old basketball coach ,Coach Ingram, would tell about me always pretending that every game I played in was a NBA championship game. I don’t know where all this misguided ambition came from but it was most certainly in my DNA from conception.
Needless to say that after 40 years on this earth I have achieved a very far cry from the grand ideas I had of becoming a figure that would stand throughout the rest of human history. I guess my sole purpose in writing this book now is no matter what happens from here on out I want it to be known that I ventured and I leaned in this life. I hope that my having taken up all 5’ 10” of space wasn’t in vain because someone after me was able to gain from the one thing I’ve done more that anyone I have ever personally know and that’s failing.
My father died at the ripe old age of 54 and just about all my uncles were about that same age when they died. I know tomorrow isn’t promised and my mortality is ever before me.
Truth be known, I do have selfish motives behind writing this book. I have never been one that seeks professional therapy although I personally believe that practice is not only helpful to many but also necessary in this broken world that we live in. I,  like so many others have many hardships and scars from my past and present. Music and songwriting has served as excellent antidotes for me in the past as a means of coping through times of difficulty.
Writing Mastering Failure is my personal therapy session on an entirely different scale. In writing this piece I hope to be even more transparent and candid than ever.
FAILURE IS A GOOD THING
Body builders know that failure is a good thing. They understand that you can’t grow without consistently breaking down their muscles. What makes a professional body builder different from the rest of us is that they have mastered the ability to recover and then continue to bring their muscles to failure at even greater heights over and over again.
Mastering the ability to recover fast after failure and then having the courage to continue on knowing that its impossible to grow further without failing again makes a champion.
So how do we learn to cope and take control of our negative thoughts that are inevitable to creep up after we have suffered some form of defeat? Life is some time gracious and gives us gifts of relief that allows us to get through these periods.
Growing up I lived with an abusive father that would often beat my mother severely. My mother would from time to time escape in the night to avoid being beaten and often need time to heal both physically and emotionally.
If my mother wasn’t able to find a safe zone in a hotel room, my grandparent’s house or my Aunt Kathy’s, she would have never made it through the night. These were temporary moments of grace. It wouldn’t be too long until Gary, my stepfather, would find us. I remember one time my mother had reached her end and she spoke of ending it all by taking her life. The truth is I thought about ending my life all the time as well. Even in times of brutal mental and physical abuse perpetrated on my mom, brother Noble and I, I believe there was an invisible hand that protecting us.
We had our faith in God, our family support system and friends that helped us cope recover and make it to the next moment of failure. The traumatic experiences of my childhood have followed me throughout my life. In my adult years I have experienced many more times of failure as well.
There are times I have said “God can I get a break from these trials even for a season so that I can recover”. Now I have learned that failure is apart of the life of a champion. If you have experiences great challenges and even great failure its because you have the ability to be a champion. There is a scripture in the bible that say’s “God will never put more on you than you can handle”. It takes a lot of faith to believe that when all hell is breaking loose.
I think its ok to say God I can’t take this anymore, can You please take this away from me? Even Jesus said this in his own words. Trusting that scripture to be true, Jesus went forward even unto death knowing he would rise again even stronger.
Failure on some level is the best possible tool to refine us as long as we don’t allow it to define us. Rising above failure and becoming stronger is how we should be defined.
The great Mohamed Ali could never have been considered the greatest without haven’t lost three time in order to regain the belt as many times as he did. Many people know that Babe Ruth hit more home runs in his heyday than any single player but most don’t know that he also had the most strikeouts.
I can certainly relate to striking out. Many times in my life my home runs turn out to be strikeouts at the some time. In 2008 I gave myself a 90-day goal to secure a co-publishing deal for a talented writer named Rob Allen. I had been working with Rob for several years. Ninety days to the day I, along with his attorney, was able to secure the biggest single publishing deal of 2008. It wasn’t long after that I would go through a very difficult breaking of that business relationship and experience some pretty harsh failures.
That experience was very embarrassing as it involved some pretty famous artists that I hated to lose face with. After that experience I had to start over from scratch. I didn’t want to be defined by the fall out of the business relationship but rather the building of another one that would be even greater. I was very upset at the thought that I was hurt trying to help one artist. I decided to double down on that experience I guess. In 2009 I formed the Recording Artists Guild and have helped thousands of artists since then.
Trying to avoid failure would be like a baby not attempting to crawl. I think subconsciously we often don’t go after our goals because of the fear of failure. When we are young we are fearless, then we learn that the unknown means that there is eventually pain.
Remember that scene from 8 mile? The most profound scene of the Eminem biopic was when he was going into a rap battle at the height of the drama. He did the one thing that I think we should all do at some point in our lives and that run towards our weakness. What I mean by running toward weakness means facing head on the painful parts of ourselves, past and present. By facing the music, pun intended, we take the power that it has over us and are then able to master it.
In some way that is what I am attempting to do with my writing. I’m attempting to take the power away from my failures.
In Dec of 2013 one of the most devastating things happen to me, I had a bad reputation. The truth is that I didn’t have a bad rep to the people that meant the most to me in my life. In fact in the community I lived and worked I still had a pretty good reputation but for the first time ever I had a bad name online.
Someone posted an anonymous complaint about my company and me on a slander website. This person obviously knew some private things about my company and I but made the post as a disgruntled customer. This person called me a womanizer, crook, incompetent fraud, and that’s the short list. The point is it was very hurtful and I had no way to defend myself against this anonymous stranger.   Over the course of the next year this post rose to the top of all the search engines. Out of the blue I would get calls from friends of mine asking me “is it true, are you a scam artist?” Every time someone would ask me I would get angry and feel ashamed about it.
I wasn’t until I got a threatening call and letter from a business competitor named Jay Warsinske, who owns Indie Power and IES, fifteen months after the incident that it all came together. The letter that was written to me was in the same BOLD text them little TEXT style as the slanderous post.
Suddenly I recalled that when the post was written an employee that worked for me also worked for him at the same time. Many of the details about my personal life as well as my business that I told this employee was in this post, but I didn’t put 2 & 2 together until I got that letter.
I did feel a sense of relief finally knowing who did it but the fact remained that this fake post was still at the top of Google. I think for the first time in my life I had to be defensive minded. It dawned on me that this thing would never go away unless I attacked it with every fiber of my being. Through lots of research I found out that the best way to push negative things down was to have more positive things out there. In the age of cyber bulling the best way to tell your side of the story about you is to tell it each and every way you can.
To make a long story short in 2015 I complied evidence against Jay Warsinske that proved he was the one behind the fake post against RAG and me. Jay was found guilt of fraud, slander and defamation against me in the California courts. I am now submitting that judgment to Google and other search engines so they will take it down.
My name is Stuart Byron Booker. This is me telling my truth, and facing my blemishes head on. This is me facing my pain and mastering failure.

Saturday, 30 January 2016

Byron Booker- Tips for Making a Short Video



These days producing videos has become a very popular and cut-throat business. Most of the people have no notion of creating a video in a professional manner. Byron Booker a media production professional mentioned somewhere that in a creative and professional video there is need of mastered skills, innovative expertise, inventive style and a lot of experience in the field. So here is an attempt to share some tips on how to produce a short video. These tips can guide you realize methods to focus while thinking of your primary needs, and the demands of target audience. 

Story or theme of your video: It is obvious to a professional but for a starter it is must to know adequately that what you are hoping to accomplish from your video project. There are many things that to be observed while making video; like your ideas, audiences, your message, inspiration through video and the most important the entertainment value of video. You have to entertain your audiences so that they remember you and your video for a long term success in the field. 

Byron Booker

Visual environment of the video: The place where your video is recorded has also effects on the viewers. The interesting environments in the video bring life to the video. The viewers always want to see some new place or atmosphere in the video. So try something unique and fascinating to catch up more audiences. Byron Booker also tries to use such type of locations in his videos to get optimum attention.

Byron Booker

Style of the video: Audiences make the initial and the quickest opinion about something primarily based on what they see. So the outfits and costumes exhibited in the video are very important; so as the persons performing in the video are important. The voices of Performers actually and after record and edit are also vital for video. How clearly audiences can hear to the music or sounds of video are crucial while creating a video. Poor sound means bad creation and audience dissatisfaction.

Byron Booker


Better cameras: Nowadays cameras and technologies upgrade frequently. So try to buy a camera in your budget; that gives you better image quality. Byron Booker recommended having the best and major features like optical zoom, electronic lens, aperture and sound inputs edit etc in the camera you are buying; if you want to get best value from your money.  Stable pictures with clean pans and tilts add professional look to your video. You have to try your best for good structure, look of subject areas, size of shot, lighting of subject matters, backgrounds and all round sensation and quality.

Byron Booker

Lighting effects: It is also important to make sure that your video doesn't appear dumb to the viewers. While shooting in an open place do keep in mind the sunlight and while shooting in a closed place like a room; properly invest in the lighting. Lights bring the sparkle to the image quality and your video. So do not make compromise with it.
Byron Booker

 Editing: Editing your video is a whole different Thing. It relies upon on your computer, software and your creativity. You have to use the best software like Final cut pro etc. for final assembling of shots in the video. Try different shots and angles to make the video perfect and satisfactory.  

Byron Booker
 
A professional in the field Byron Booker suggested that if you had conveyed the message you want to; through the video is the sign of good production. Byron Booker also said that there is a lot to learn while making videos. You have to start from basics and analyze arts, theatres and the industry to be a professional in the field and make good videos. You can become fairly expert with more and more practice. Remember it’s always about your audience and how you inspire or motivate them.