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.

Looks like there is another year for that Asian movie making competition here in Vancouver. As you may all remember from last year, I entered it in the last minute with some people and I ended up having to work virtually every department even though all I wanted to do was act in it. I was asked if I was going to enter the competition this year again.

Currently my stance is that I would only want to participate as an actor. While I can work in other departments, they aren’t my main passion and so I think other people would have more fun doing it. So, as of now it’s just a matter of if there is a team or project that think I would be a great fit for their film.

So, a traditional going in for an audition type of deal. It would be fun to participate in it again though if I end up working with a team in the competition.

Well, the Mighty Asian Moviemaking Marathon is of course over. However, there is apparently a lot of rumblings about one of the winning entries. The reason for the controversy from what I understand is that this competition was originally designed as a way to help promote Asians involved in the film industry.

Now one of the stipulations to the entry is that one principal actor must be of an Asian decent. For one of the films that won, the two lead roles were Caucasian actors and the person who was Asian played an almost non existent role in the film. Essential, to many it was like the person was thrown in just to satisfy the requirement.

I know one team who was competing did a movie in a similar genre as that one and they were definitely outraged over that apparently as they were definitely there to win it. For my team, with all of our obstacles we were more happy with the fact that we made a film still despite all odds.

In my personal opinion though, I thought there were many films that were a lot better than the one in question of this controversy. The story wasn’t that compelling and it was a pretty standard film. Guess it is just me maybe, but I was more impressed with some of the films that obviously did not have the best budget or resources as it seemed like they took more risk.

Wonder how all this will affect the event for the future.

Holy moly. Well, this is it as today we officially submitted our entry. The film turned out fairly decent I thought considering all of the challenges that we went through. For the editing I actually stayed up well over 30 hours straight trying to do the best I could as the rest of my teammates were in school.

I think the music was really nice though. Time for me to get some nice deserved rest.

Okay, this editing is like non stop so far. It seems at this point it is mostly a sound issue as we are trying to fix up audio problems and using the appropriate music and sound effects. Back to work as this is due tomorrow.

Wow, this editing is going to be more challenging than I thought. I guess this is an example on how it is hard to be the actor and director in a film, especially with a time crunch. A lot of the footage had some framing that was definitely not what I envisioned or hoped it would be.

Therefore, we are actually spending a lot of time just piecing together footage that we have and trying are best to make sense of them.