You, LLC

As you may have noticed, I'm changing the name (and focus) of this blog to YOU, LLC (You, Living Life Creatively).

After my last post about the importance of creativity as an opposing force to destruction, I realized that while, yes, I am an actor and those experiences are important to me, I'm also a human being who is interested in how to live a more creative, nurturing, uplifting and fulfilled life in all areas of my life. I'd also like to share that interest with others.

Instead of focusing on just one aspect of creativity that I'm involved with - being an actor - I'm going to explore many different aspects of the creative life: writing, art, film making, teaching, cooking, being a parent, husband, partner, friend; all of those areas of our lives that can be made better by applying creativity and creative solutions to them and then seeing what happens.

I like the idea of taking a legal term, LLC (Limited Liability Company) and turning into something of a mantra YOU, LLC (You, Living Life Creatively). I like the idea of a life lived creatively with boldness, freedom and expression as a priority. I like the idea that the members of this LLC will learn new ways to think about old problems, discover old ideas that can be applied to new problems and hopefully have a lot of fun doing it. Oh yeah, I also just like IDEAS.

Thanks for reading! I'm looking forward to our journey together.

Wayne Pyle, LLC

Crunching the Numbers: IMDb Starmeter Rankings

Wayne Pyle in Philadelphia, PA

At least once a week, I like to go to my IMDb profile and check my ranking to see how much it has gone up or down that week. If the little arrow chart symbol at the front of the ranking is green, it means it has gone up, if it's red it means it's gone down. If I hover my cursor over the words SEE RANK it tells me exactly how much I've gone up or down in the last week.

As I hover over it right now while I'm writing this, it tells me that I've gone up 11,646 this week. Last week, I shot up over 106,000. In order to see the actual numbers, you have to look under IMDbPro which I subscribe to. From May 13, 2012 to May 27, 2012 I went from  being ranked 189,998 to being ranked 71,719. The lower your score, the better. Steve Carrell is currently 196. But if you go back to February 1999, when he was on The Daily Show, he was only ranked 109,267.

Some people think that the IMDb Starmeter rankings are related to the number of hits to your page, or the rankings of the films you are in, or even some mathematical formula that IMDb won't release, but no matter how it works, I just enjoy seeing how much it fluctuates depending on the amount of blogging I'm doing, how many Twitter posts I make and how much the films I've been in have been in the news.

I don't think the rankings really "mean" anything for someone at my level, but I do feel like I'm "active" in the independent film scene when my numbers hover around the 70's to 30's. People in that range seem to be working fairly often and doing interesting projects. Looking back at other actor's rankings is also interesting because you can get a sense of when they really took off and which of their projects  got them there.

In my everyday actor's life, these number don't really do much to advance my career. I'm busy right now trying to learn the lines for Shadowland's FULLY COMMITTED that I'm going to perform in June and July, preparing to do a performance for Marist's Center for Lifetime Study tomorrow morning and preparing for Half Moon Theater's 10-minute Play Reading Festival this Friday and Saturday. (Please join us!)

The feedback I'll get from these live theater events will be immediate and is part of the reason I love doing live theater. But the fluctuating numbers of IMDb's Starmeter rankings also give me a sense of satisfaction in knowing that I am part of the dynamic and fascinating world of filmmaking and that the films I've worked on are out there in the world affecting people's lives.

For other interesting takes on the IMDb Starmeter ranking system check out:

How to Boost your Starmeter Ranking by Tommy C. Kendrick

IMDb: The Basics and Starmeter by BENWHITEHAIR

Internet Movie Database on Wikipedia