Raising the Retail Bar - Thom Pinto 09/09

Two day workshop with Thom Pinto focusing on retail scripts. For some reason, I had written this class down in my calendar, scheduled the weekend appropriately and showed up to find that I was not actually, you know, in the class... Luckily, another student had scratched in the previous week, and so I quickly worked things out with Chuck and Thom so I could attend. First time I'd done that... and better than not showing up for a class you'd paid for.

That having been dealt with, we all hunkered down to the nuts and bolts of the Retail Script. This class was set up to mimic live auditions and sessions, with some other exercises thrown in to keep us loosened up. Essentially, in the first (evening) class, we received a script and read for Thom, who was playing a producer trying to cast the spot. Had some decent spots in that read, though I was briefly kicking myself for not noticing one of Thom's embedded "traps" in the script. I think what frustrated me was that I thought, "hmmmm, that's weird" and then didn't ask about it. Ya gots to trust that inner voice thing....

The next day was "Session Day." Having miraculously booked the job the night before, we were to be working with the same producer in a mock session. These were longer reads for each student, complete with reworking the copy to fit the time slot, working timing, pickups and those things which happen during an actual recording session. Ended up with a good-feeling read, and felt pretty solid and focused during the session.

Retail scripts may not get a lot of respect - they aren't necessarily "high art" and the bad ones are, well, challenges. But, they do represent a core area of work, and this was an excellent class on the path to refining that area.