 I'm pretty sure I'm like the last person here unless somebody's staying here another night but I've just been talking to a lot of actors about their experience here and if they're represented by anybody that was here. I'm Angie Seeger. I'm with Signature Models and Talent here in Scottsdale. We are a full-service modeling and talent agency who's agonized after franchise and this is my second year seeing you. Yes! This has been amazing. Oh, there. Damn it. Okay, fine. Let's go with fine. Hi! I'm back. Yes, yes. So Southwest Actors Conference that is put on by, and Expo, excuse me, is put on by Bella Hibbs with Good Bait Casting. She is amazing and I fully support it. It's amazing. I'm so proud of all of our Signature Models and Talent actors and models that come from here because they learn so much. Yeah. And afterwards we see that they're excited and they're jazzed and they're getting their training, they're adding stuff to their resume, they're getting their portfolios all up to date. And guess what? The opportunities are happening here. I am a firm believer of Bloom where you're planted. So it's been amazing to see how people can work on their craft here. I mean, you can always go everywhere, anywhere else, but we have a lot of resources and great talent here in the Valley. It also gives you like a year of like, okay, what did I really accomplish from last year? So for me, it's like lighting another fire. Did I take enough classes? Am I working on certain things to help propel my career? Yes. The confidence is there, they're drive to do better. I know I've seen it too, but anytime you can spend any moment with your agent, it's like the best. And I've been able to talk to some of my talent, there's questions, I mean, it's just one-on-one. It's really amazing. Have you represented anybody new from meeting them at the conference? I was just going to say that I met so many independent actors that have come up to me and already even saw them. And I'm like, hey, are you represented? And if they're not, I'm like, here's my card. And I'm like, I kind of have a little bit of pull. So go ahead and put my name down and set up an open call virtual. And met some, I met some amazing people last year and I'm signing up and hoping to sign some more. I learned like that I got better at was definitely crying. It was wild how fast I got there. Even the first exercise, just like going in that gaze, that internal gaze. Yeah, the internal gaze. Yeah. Faith Hibbs-Clark. She has like an acting method, like a science-based acting method. And there was a workshop on how to cry on cue. And you guys, I heard people sobbing in the background. I feel like I learned more this year, even than last year, even though this is my second year, there was a little bit, only a little bit of like overlapping information, especially in the panels because such similar questions, like people from last year had similar questions this year to casting directors and agents, managers. But we had producers this time and we had a director. So some similar information, but it's always great to hear it from different people. For example, the casting director panel, Bella, was the only like consistent person, because there were different casting directors here last year. So it's always great to hear from different casting directors, because at the core of it, they just want you to be yourself and be happy and be good at acting, you know? It's not like they want you to have like a such a specific thing. It's like work on your craft, get as good as you can and you know, continue to grow if you can. But really it's more about like the role. You might just not be good for the role, so you just have to keep auditioning. To be honest, I wish so many more actors that I know came. I know it's the Southwest Actors Conference, but it really is for actors in general, like period, everywhere. I had such an incredible experience this year. I mean, I was volunteering, so I got a whole behind the scenes and I got to sit in a lot of the sessions. I think the main takeaway or theme this year was really like not being afraid to show up as you, like bringing yourself to the role. Yeah, like authenticity and be you. So I'm looking for what the perfect self-tape is or whatever. It's like you have to do that after like get training and then just keeping yourself. Yeah, it's important to have training and to practice your craft and network and make connections. And of course, but like none of that really matters if you're not showing up as you. I think that that's really hard for a lot of actors to do. I think a lot of actors are so concerned with, well, what do they want? What is the casting director looking for? What does the director want? And you're trying to mold into a version of yourself to book a job, but they can see when you're doing that. Like just show up as you. And that was like a reoccurring theme from a lot of the speakers. Being able to be a fly on the wall during the panels and overhearing the conversations they're having, what they agree on, what they do the same, what they have different perspectives on. It's just so good to learn a little bit more about what they do, their business, what they're looking for, what they maybe don't really care about, that you're overthinking as an actor. Everybody that went up, whether it was the talent agents, the managers, the directors, they all said very important things. And they said light to so many different perspectives. And I think a lot of actors needed to hear that because in this industry, you can become very insecure, no one's responding to you, no one's telling you how you're doing, and it can hurt your feelings. So having them go up there and kind of reassure us, like, hey, you're doing good was the biggest thing for me. Yeah, I love that. I also got that a lot of like them telling us, you're good, keep going, and you will eventually get cast. That's right. I would love to come again next year. And I'm trying to think like, what else would I want from this conference? Because I'm sure Bella's going to send out a survey again. Last year, she sent out a survey to everybody just to get information of like, what did you like? What didn't you like? What could have we improved? What do you want us to not change? The best thing about it for me was just to learn more about the industry and get everyone's in-depth perspective. And it's really helpful. I really like the mixer. Oh, you know what? The VIP mixer. The VIP mixer was in a pretty small room, so it was loud. And I wish it was in like a little bit of a bigger room because even if it felt like, oh, people are a little bit isolated because the room is bigger, like we're all willing to go up to each other because it's like a VIP mixer. We know everybody that's there is willing to talk or else they wouldn't even be in that room. They wouldn't be in a mixer if they didn't want to talk to all kinds of different people. So that being in a bigger room, I loved that there was sushi. I loved the little photo booth and drinks. So I saw you filming a bunch throughout the weekend. What else do you do other than like cover events? My passion is writing and directing. That's what I want to do in the future. And I do have some budget for a feature that I wrote. I don't know if I'm ready there, but I'm getting close because now I have a community behind me. But for a lot of my clients with Moneta Design, we write all the content for them. So they come with us with a vision of how they want their business to be seen. And so we write the stories and come up with all the creative promotion for the company. I'm an extremely extroverted person. So last year I already felt pretty comfortable to just going up and talking to whoever I wanted to talk to. But this year because I had already like met them once or seen them or this time I also went on stage. And so people were coming up to me and being like, Hey, I saw you on stage. I felt even more comfortable approaching people again, saying hi to people again, doing like more conversations and just felt a lot more chill because that's something that I think it's a natural thing to have. And I still struggle with as far as sometimes it's a little bit scary to go up to people. But once I go up to them and start talking to them, like everybody is really, really nice. And somebody that I would love to work with and I want to hire and take his classes or whatever is Brian who teaches about networking because he was saying a lot of things that I was like, Oh, yes, I do that. But if I did it like that, it would be even better. Like he talked about what you should talk about when somebody tells you, tell me about yourself. What are you doing? What have you done recently? I'm used to answering that question on a self-deb audition. But of course I'm not going to answer it the same way in a networking environment. So having him give like specifics and like don't go there and it is okay to go there. Like I was like, wait, this is really good. And it would help me as a super talkative person to like stay on the right track and be able to have a good conversation and not spend too much time because I do like to talk a lot. And I am very aware of like, okay, how about let's stop talking? Cool. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you guys. And she's amazing too. Oh, thank you. You don't have to say that. No, you are. You know what? You have great chemistry and energy and I love it. Yeah, so. Thank you so much. That's so sweet. I did. In Arizona, I do. There you go. Let me give you my card. Actually, you did give me, give me your card on Friday. We were in line together. It's like, we were in line together. It's just like, have you ever thought about getting representation in Arizona? And I was like, actually haven't. So maybe. Yes.