News
March 2013
Screenings and Distribution
Human Supply
Released on March 18th, the first part of episode 1 of the web series Human Supply (The trailer came out on the 1st). Kudos to the production team and producers by Allen Hu and Trevor Stott; I am so pleased with the quality of the filming and editing. I am also tickled they went with my character to be featured in the series lead off. By month end it had gotten over 85,000 views.
The series takes place in a world where people are kept alive as food for the wealthy, who are effectively rich zombies.
A neat strategy of the production plan is to use audience feedback to kill off characters; every episode will end with a cliffhanger and fan survey to drive the story line.
Hopefully my role as the nefarious Dr. Straussmeier will be hardier than a double-tap to the head.
The Bachelorette Project - Short
IMDb credit #18: The Bachelorette Project got selected into the Boulder Dam Short Film Festival. I have some bits in it playing the more subdued humor in an otherwise wild comedy, in the spirit of Bridesmaids meets Wedding Crashers. I expect it to be online at some point this year as part of a crowd-sourcing campaign to make a feature from the concept.
Production
Morningside Monster - Feature
Back on set this month for an effects-heavy scene in Morningside Monster, directed by Chris Ethridge and starring Nicholas Brendan and Robert Pralgo. We shot some monster villainy, with gruesome sloppy-latex-eviscera treatments by FX artists Wes, Cynthia Michel and Tracie Dailey.
Preserving Christmas - Short
Steven Gallagher's 15-page script for Preserving Christmas had principal photography this month, at locations in Byron and Macon. I was on set for a weekend playing a vengeful mortician who's a bit like Dexter with a sling-blade and embalming fluid. So, yep, it’s horror and, yep, I'm a bad guy.
I loved the night and evening shooting schedule (getting to bed at 5:30 AM Sunday!) because it gave me the chance to visit the nearby Andersonville National Historic Site and the Ocmulgee National Monument. I hiked over 4 miles each day.
Post Production
Upyri - Web Series
I had a few hours in the studio this month recording a new VO intro for the Upyri web series. Episode 2 will be online in April. Until then, you can click below for some excerpts from Episode 1. I love how they intercut comics for transitions; it reminds me of the motion graphics on the TV show The Wild Wild West Seven more episodes are planned for release this year.
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Events
Actor Spotlight Interview
Very cool: I got profiled on the Get Connected Actor Spotlight this month. The series has dozens of interviews, mostly of Atlanta talent.
Get Connected at the Porter Sanford Center
The March 28th Get Connected event is at a new location: the Porter Sanford Center. Free parking and a real stadium-style theatre to watch the movie screenings. I'll be there to support a screening of Upyri Episode 2.
Atlanta Film Festival - Table Reads
Grew my urban vocabulary a bit today with 'hoopty', a word I stumbled over at an Atlanta Film Festival table read. Whoops. It was in Moon Molson's MEADOWLANDZ screen play and I was narrating the action. It's a wonderfully high-energy script and a great bunch of actors were reading (including Cameron Miller who is also in the Upyri web series with me).
The Blank Page Screenwriters Workshop
If you're a film writer, Brent Brooks's The Blank Page Screenwriters Workshop, hosted by Stephen Sherwood, is a place to get great feedback on your story. If you're an actor, it's a fun way to get some cold reading experience and strut your chops. One of the screenplays getting read this month is Justin Craig's new adaption of the Mr Snuggles I was in last year. Justin's feature-length treatment adds a couple story lines as well as some back story to the psychotic lead. I'll be there lending my voice again for Snuggles and his partner in vicious crime, March 5th and 19th, at the Red Door Playhouse in downtown Roswell, doors open at 7:30 PM.
Inspiration
Journey to Heroism or Villainy
What makes someone a hero or a villain? Watch this TED talk by Philip Zimbardo. His real-world studies show that often villainy is "the barrel making the apples bad" not one apple rotting the rest. Meanwhile, a hero is the one who sees evil (e.g, sees the barrel has gone bad) and then acts against it, rather than stand by and rot with the lot. A hero must challenge evil and, ideally, prevail. It made me think of The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell. Campbell's monomyth stages do cover challenges, but don't highlight evil as the critical challenge. According to Zimbardo, the Ordinary Person will have journey to heroism, or to villainy, depending on how they respond when exposed to an evil that is tolerated by the group. I put these and some of his other ideas into this infographic; I will start looking for these in screenplays heros and villains.
What I really, really want
I so often get cast to play the villain that I have a new movie goal: I want, desperately, to play a sympathetic character in a romantic tear-jerker. Maybe I could be the guy working to keep his family together, or a good-hearted mentor, or just a solid guy in an officer bromance. Please, give me a good guy in a good relationship; that's all I'm asking.
Oh, and, ideally, I'd like it to be science fiction
...with robots
...and on a spaceship.
So, basically, I want to be on
Battlestar Galactica Blood & Chrome
I would be perfectly willing to compromise by being in any of these sci-fi shorts
Minimalist Sandbox Desk
I love the idea of digging toes into sand while working at a desk (time for me to visit The Home Depot for supplies). A nice post on the joys of bare-footing it is at
zenhabits.net/barefoot-philosophy.
I also like the Minimalism desktop (the real one) being devoid of distractions.
Stray sand might be an hassle. One might dedicate a Roomba to the task but that would be antithetical to the minimalism (although I'd grant exception for a vaccume wearing a Hawaiian or tie-dye shirt). Maybe I could encircle the sandbox with hemp rope, or rope carpet, for wiping feet on egress; that would also reinforce the haptic experience. Or maybe substitute smooth rivers stones (agate?) for the sand. Hmm...
