Actor Growth

So another thing happened yesterday where as mentioned previously the films that were created for last year’s Mighty Asian film competition was shown on cable TV, including the one I was in. You know what was really funny about this? The difference between watching something with a live audience and without can have such a contagious affect as to how you view a film.

Now generally in the theatre everyone was in some way affiliated with a short film or that the attendees knew people who were involved in it personally. As you would expect, people cheered and laughed more than usual I’d say because you tend to be more supportive. That has a trickling affect on others too. For example, if a ton of people in a room give a standing ovation everyone else feels kind of dumb if they don’t stand up too even if they didn’t like something.

So while watching every film again it just made it so much more apparent that Asian filmmakers need to take more risks into film categories that are more, dare I say, rebellious and not the norm when it comes to Asian stereotypes. Cause watching everything on TV and without the audience allowed me to view everything the same as if I was watching say a regular TV show.

It’s like you want to see the characters be super strong, you want to see the ones that are confident and can be portrayed as sexy if need be, etc. But for whatever reason most people shy away from this. Thinking about it, even for every other TV show or movie you want to have these types of characters too where you can root for them.

Although, one thing to be fair is that this competition was under a tight timeframe and it’s obvious that not everyone exactly had the budget and resources to create like a AAA title. Usually in those circumstances people opt to do a comedy too since the time and budget is so tight.

Was a very unique experience I thought seeing everything on TV. Again, technically this was my first ever TV debut where I was acting in a lead role which makes it a milestone. At the end of the show they showed a montage of the behind the scene clips which was also shown at the competition as there was a videographer visiting sets. Except for the TV show they added all these special thanks credit to it.

Interestingly enough, they showed a lot of stuff from the production I was on and they got my facial reactions for the day when all the teams submitted their films. I was kind of hyper in some of those shots. lol.

Here are some clips I recorded of the segment and I just included a small bit of the film I was in (This was actually the part that got the most reaction in the theatre):

Will this help my professional career growth in anyway? Guess only time will tell. But my main goal in entering the festival before was to try and break a stereotype that an Asian actor couldn’t play strong characters with a tough personality kind of way. I think I did do just that. In the end it was a great experience.

Special thanks to everyone that made the event possible. The people that ran the event are super supportive too and so if you are thinking of trying it I would encourage you to do so. I didn’t attend the competition this year, but maybe I will next year if a suitable project and team comes around. I’m game if there is a team that wants to try something gutsy to break stereotypes too.

This must be a new thing with student and independent films. As you know, many times as growing actors we volunteer our time to act in films for free to gain experience, contacts and some possible footage to use on our reels. However, you don’t really want to work on productions that seem very unprofessional as the result could be that the footage is completely unusable.

Recently, a lot of casting call notices I have seen have written how any actor that participates in their film would get “great experience and an IMDB credit”. These are mostly from students too. While there is nothing wrong with that, it just seems like so many people are now using that as a sort of bribery as if an IMDB credit is going to put you in a different league where you will become famous.

When I first started out I thought IMDB was like an industry operated site where big production companies would list the cast and crew. Hence, it should give you a lot of credibility. However, as I got deeper into my acting journey I realized that anyone can update and add credits for almost anything. This includes student films too.

Therefore, in terms of credibility it is more about being listed with a well known production with a good role to really give you that boost in confidence. For myself, that is why I never personally bothered too much with IMDB credits as I haven’t done anything out of the extraordinary yet where I feel it would give me a huge boost in my career. Unless you are really that famous that is when everyone is going to want to try and update your profile with everything that you have been on.

I might just add a credit just to show how simple it really is. I was also told too that even if you have a ton of credits listed on IMDB, if they were all for projects like those student film examples it can end up making you look unprofessional. Think of it like a traditional job resume too. While you may have worked for so many companies, listing just ones that you feel give you the most credibility and relevance to your professional goal is a better way to go I’d say.

While it is definitely great to work on independent films, don’t let the IMDB credit pitch be the primary factor to decide if you should do it or not as oppose to evaluating the professionalism of the team and quality of the script I’d say.

I had a fun day today helping out with that film project. It basically took about 8 hours for a 4 page script and apparently the person is going to try and edit everything by tomorrow.

The group then made a comment on how we should trying to make a film every week and so every actor will get an opportunity to continually work on something to gain experience while possibly turning it into bigger and better things.

Sounds like a great pro-active way to get one’s career going. It’s kind of an interesting dynamic too since there is a good mix of people who only want to specialize in certain fields of making a film whether it be acting or say directing.

I got an e-mail today in regards to a short film I acted in awhile back called The Seven. This was actually intended to be a two episode web release. It’s actually the first film I have ever down too where the film was going to be specifically released on the Internet.

As of now all they have is the trailer and apparently they are making two completely different cuts with one following the original script and the other is not. This was done by film students, so the expectation isn’t extremely high I guess generally speaking. One thing that was interesting is that this is the first student film I saw that used traditional movie credits in the trailer as you can see here:

I had fun working on this film though and hope to get to see the final cut as maybe I’ll even use some of it for my reel.

It seems that I received a message from a friend who was telling me that he will get in touch with me in the New Years about a mini film project that I agreed to participate in. The thing is, this has been up in the air for a couple of months already and I still haven’t received the script for it.

He is an aspiring writer/director and so this will mainly be a practice project for experience I guess you can say. I’m getting a little worried about the procrastination though as I know many times when it comes to doing your own stuff you can easily get too relaxed with no set deadlines.

This project is suppose to involve a little bit of fighting too, so I’m personally interested in seeing how it ends up.

I was reading an interesting article today from a movie producer who was talking about the financial crisis and how ultimately this means less films will receive financing. In essence, that translates to less films being published in the marketplace.

However, he points out that this can be a very good thing for people looking to break into the industry as it is a great opportunity to make something with an increase odd that more people will pay attention to it. One example he talked about was a movie like the Blair Witch project.

I’m still personally very interested in creating something simple with another actor on something like Youtube for fun to see how it goes. I haven’t really found another actor though that would be committed to doing it too while at the same time coming up with that idea that we would both be motivated in doing.

Maybe I should just start looking around the Internet as oppose to just people who are here locally in Vancouver.