Actor Growth

If I am reading this correctly, apparently next month the short film that I acted and co-created for that Asian film marathon last year will be shown on TV. Basically, every entry from that year will be shown too.

For those that who are fairly newer to reading my blog and may have missed all of this, back in 2008 I entered this film festival competition for fun with a group of people. Essentially, the festival’s goal is to promote up and coming Asian talent. Basically, I was interested in doing the acting mainly and another person was inspiring to be a director. Long story short, it was such a chaos as the person didn’t follow through and was so disorganized. Did not want to create story boards, no rehearsal with the actors, etc.

Eventually, he dropped out and took his crew with him near the very last minute. Yet, in a struck of fate, and I mean in almost like a movie type of fashion, all these people started to come out of nowhere that were able to offer support which resulted in us being able to finish the film. If you are interested in reading it, I started blogging about it in about September 2008.

I still remember that time having to be the lead actor while being involved with the writing, directing, casting and editing all at the same time. Thinking back again, it was just amazing that we were able to even finish the whole thing with a one day shoot too. While the film wasn’t exactly like a triple A title due to all the setbacks, it was a really great experience and I met a lot of great people.

One interesting note, I actually had a hard decision to make creatively. Basically, one of the difficulties in editing the film was that the camera guy accidentally taped over footages as we shot the film. Basically, he re-winded the footage to preview it and as we taped the next scene he taped over the previous footage. Therefore, in the final cut there were some very messed up moments such as me running away except there was supposed to be two other people chasing me. Basically, the only footage that was left was a pre-test clip of me running through the area alone.

The thing is I could have decided to simply just cut the entire scene out of the movie. However, that meant cutting out the actors that volunteered their time to work on the film too. I know as an actor personally I wouldn’t have been too happy about that and so I opted to try and make it work. Of course, in a professional setting the decision to axe certain scenes to make sense of the movie as a whole probably would be the priority.

As for reactions for people that see it on TV the first time, I think it is going to be just like the theatre reactions. Basically, people that have no idea what we went through to make this film will probably be very critical of it. People that do know will tend to appreciate more.

Example, it’s like watching a film in one of those 24 hour competitions vs one’s that had like a whole month. I remember even one guy told me he was shocked to learn that we shot the whole thing in one day and that changed his whole perspective of the film. Kind of funny how that can factor in to people’s views about movies when you think about it huh?

I remembered that we did get the loudest roar in the theatre out of all the films for one particular scene. Let’s just say, my character had some colorful words to say about the antagonist. lol. Interesting experience overall. You know, when I think about it I think this film will give me a first of many things in my acting career funny enough. Basically, it was the first time I saw myself in a movie theatre screen for a film. With this, it’s the first time I will have appeared on TV as a lead role.

Today I got a script as I will be acting in another short tomorrow. It seems to be revolved around a poker game and it looks like there is going to be fake blood involved. Just from watching independent films I am always worried whether things like this will come out authentic or not.

I was just thinking too that this is the most violent short film that I am going to participate in. It’s going to be an interesting experience though and I look forward to seeing how it turns out.

Well this was an interesting day. Initially a friend asked me if I wanted to help out for his friend’s production as they were looking for some extra body help and I agreed. Wouldn’t you know it, on my way to their shooting location they tell everyone that it was cancelled due to the weather.

So, I headed back home. Just a few hours later another friends phoned me and asked if I wanted to get together to make another short film and that he was going to round up as many people from our last group. Sure enough I agreed and today we went to shoot it.

The plot was pretty straight forward as it was about two high school kids and a guy trying to do things to protect a girl from “players” where his motivation was that he really liked the girl himself but is too shy to ask her out, so to speak. I was playing that shy guy….

The shoot went well. It was cold outside due to the rain and I must say these are some dedicated artists for wanting to create all this. Especially the person who wrote the script and took the initiative to organize the whole thing at the last minute. It’s almost like a bunch of people that just call each other up to say play basketball except in our cases it’s creating short films. Kudos to everyone.

So tomorrow will be the quick audition where I chose one scene out of the four scripts I received. I memorized the lines and have a pretty good grasp of the direction that I want to go with. Suppose the only thing strange that could happen is if they give me a different direction to go with.

It’s usually just the decision of clothing that is the main question as you don’t want to dress for the part too much and at the same time go in with something that is way off for the character. Time to rest though since it is an early one.

So tomorrow I have an audition booked for a short film project and because of my time schedule I was booked in the late evening. The thing is, right before this I have a martial arts class. I was even joking with the production people that I hope they are willing to audition an actor that is battered, bruised and sweaty.

People always say that you should prepare yourself for an audition and give yourself say 15 minutes ahead of time, but in this case I’m probably going to be a little tired and will simply have to just be myself and see how it goes.

Today I did some voice dubbing for a short film I acted in awhile back as the sound apparently was very bad and so all the actors need to do voiceovers for it. It was interesting I must say and I don’t think I did as well as I hoped for.

The difficult thing about it is that you have two things crossing your mind when normally there is only one. Not only do you have to mimic the same emotion as before, but the length and timing of your voice needs to match your lips on the film.

Be interesting to see how this turns out.