Tonight I Died

Tonight I died. No, I'm not speaking in some sort metaphor. I'm not speaking existentially. Rather, tonight was the night that my character in The Valley Of Fear, Jaybird, died. Killed. Eviscerated. Disembowled, if you prefer.

How this works:
1. Take my my shirt and cut it into tatters.
2. Put a rubber "disembowled" chest over my T-shirt.
3. Put fake blood on the fake chest.
4. Put strips of fake "flesh" on top of the blood.
5. More blood on top.
6. Cover this mess with the remains of my shirt, jacket, etc.
7. Position the guy with the fake monster claws over my body.
8. Start rolling.
9. Have me scream and thrash around. A lot.
10. Cut.
11. Get as much of the bloody rubber bits off of me as possible.
12. Hustle me off to a warm shower.

What did you do this weekend?

The stack

Tomorow I'm tentatively scheduled to have a reading of Swimming the River aka The Arrival. I did some last-minute editing tonight, and then printed out copies for all the cast members.


That stack consists of six full copies (four for actors, one for a the guy doing offstage voices and sound effects, one spare), plus an abbreviated copy for one character that whose only appearance in Act I is a half-page cameo.

105 pages per full copy. 680 pages in total.

And then there are the props...

A nice day (finally!).

After several days of cold and wet, we finally had a sunny and mild day in the Bay Area, so I decide to do some panoramic picture taking with my new lens. Above is a ver (too) long panorama I put together this evening; hopefully I'll have some more panoramas processed in a few days.

While I was taking pictures, a Coast Guard helicopter started to fly around the bridge. I have no idea why, but at least I got this shot:

My Fabulous Friday Night

No filming this week. It was cancelled because of the threat of rain (we can't film outside if it's raining). Since I didn't need to drive to the Sierra foothills at 8:00 am, I could sleep in. Which means I could go up to San Francisco for the first time in a month if I wanted. But after giving it some thought,

I decided not to.

So instead, I decided to stay in and assemble my new kitchen cart:


The cart had to be pre-certified by my cat Meiling.

I read the instructions.
I get everything unpacked.

Started assembling...

Holy crap! Jamie Bamber!

So I take a break, watch a little Battlestar Galactica, and then continue to assemble.

But apparently the Pegasus was staffed by Steven Underhill.

At this point, I realized that I need to soak these rods in Goo Gone to get the stickers off. They need to soak for a while, say to the end of BSG.

After BSG was done and the rods were de-gooed, I continued.

At the end of the evening, I had one big mess, one mostly-finished drawer (the kit was missing two wood screws)...

And one finished cart (minus the aforementioned drawer).

Where's George?

This past weekend I was paid for my work on The Valley Of Fear:

That's it! I'll get a percentage of profit on the film, if it ever makes a profit, but my up-front salary is $1.

This is the first time I've been paid for acting in a film. Rather than save the above dollar as a memento, I've decided to do something I haven't done in a while: enter it in the Where's George? database.

The theory behind Where's George is that when someone gets a U.S. note, they enter its serial number into the Where's George database, and then write or stamp the website address on the bill. The theory is that when someone else gets it, they'll go to the website, enter the serial number, and you (and W.G.) will know how the bill has moved through the state (or country).

I was very much into this for about six months in 2002 (I even got a rubber stamp with "www.wheresgeorge.com"), but once the novelty wore off, it became a chore to mark all my money and enter it into the database. If I find a bill with the Where's George website address, I'll enter it, but generally I don't mark unmarked bills.

In this case, however, I'm making an exception.

Valley of Fear - Second Weekend (SPOILERS)

I guess I should preface this by stating that there are SPOILERS for the movie in this posting. After talking with people this weekend, it seems that the odds are very good that you will be able to purchase this film on DVD at some point. (whether we get a theatre release is another question entirely). Since people reading this blog might actually not want to know what happens, I will put spoiler notices where appropriate in this and future postings.

This was the second weekend of shooting for The Valley Of Fear (for me). Unlike last weekend, there was no shooting on Sunday, so I managed to leave by 9:30am.

There were two batches of scenes last night:
1. A series of scenes involving campers making s'mores.
2. The murder of one of the s'more-making campers by my character, Jaybird. Jaybird hates s'mores and the people who make them.

In my scenes, I find the campers eating s'mores, go berserk, and kill one of them with an ax. So there was a lot of over-the-top acting, which included me chasing people with an ax. At one point, there's a scene of just the ax: it's clean, it's descends, and then it comes back up covered in blood. That involved me, kneeling, with a bucket of fake blood in front of me; we got to shoot that scene only once (fortunately it went off perfectly)

Fake blood travels pretty far when it's on the end of an ax one is swinging. My jeans are soaking in stain-remover as I speak.

BTW, the ax was a fake, and an extremely fragile one at that. I fussed over the thing all night, not wanting it to get damaged.

We filmed until about 1:00 in the morning (an hour earlier than last week).

Next weekend I film all day on Saturday, and then that's it until April.

Narnia War!

I bet you didn't know there was an East Coast/West Coast Narnia War, did you?

Why film acting is better than stage acting

The second play I ever performed in was called Tender Lies. The author learned of this technique of having a character "cover" scene changes by giving a monologue. Unfortunately, what she didn't realize is that you shouldn't give these monologues to your main character. So in addition to a full line load, I had a number of monologues to recite, averaging about 1.5 pages each (one was over two pages!).

In The Valley of Fear, I'm probably as close as they come to a main character. This weekend I go up for my second night of filming. Here is my entire line load:

1. What you are doing?
   
2. S'mores? S'mores? You're making s'mores? What would Flinty say?
   
3. No s'mores! No marshmallows. No graham crackers! No fucking s'mores!
   

(Trust me, it makes sense in context).

And if I mess up, we just do another take.

Pickup

I was at the UPS central office in Santa Clara this evening, picking up a new lens for my camera (new job = more money = one or two toys that must be signed for in person). When you get there, you need to sign in, something I didn't clue in on until the rather handsome, well-dressed, in-shape, thirty-something man next to me pointed it out.

"Where?", I asked, noting that it came out more brusquely than I intended.

"Over on the table," he replied.

"Thanks, man." (the "man" added so as to counter the previous brusqueness).

So I go, sign in, and return. I catch him glimpsing at me out of the corner of his eye. I glimpse back. I note that he wears no wedding ring.

Nothing happens.

Eventually he gets his package and is gone.

Five minutes later, I have my toy and am on my way home.

First weekend done

I'm back from my first weekend of filming of The Valley of Fear. I carpooled up on Saturday, arriving at CW's house in O'Neals, CA at about noon. We all had lunch, tried on costumes, had some rehearsals, and then had an early dinner before shooting started at 5:30. I was in only two scenes, and they didn't get to filming them until 11:00 or so. So other than my scenes, and an hour spent watching the filming of other scenes, I spent most of the evening inside.

Filming didn't stop until 2:00am.

Today I had no scenes, but one of the people I carpooled with had scenes to film in the afternoon, so I stayed until about 4:00. I spent the afternoon hanging out, editing The Arrival, and playing with several the various dogs in attendence at the shoot.

It was a lot of fun. In fact, it was probably one of the best weekends I've had in a long time. I spent it hanging out with people I like, accomplishing something significant. Four years ago, when I got back into acting (by taking an introductory acting class at Foothill College), one of the reasons I did was that I had many fond memories of acting in student films in college. I loved working with my friends on creating something that both we and other people would later enjoy so much.

It's good to feel that way again.

50 Things

I guess the "50 Things About Me" meme is a pretty common one amongst bloggers, so here you go:

1. My family and I moved to California when I was 3.
   
2. I have not lived more than 40 miles from downtown San Jose since then.
   
3. Thus most people consider me to be a California native.
   
4. I don't.
   
5. I'm very literal.
   
6. This makes me good with computers.
   
7. It doesn't make me particularly good with people.
   
8. I am a synesthetic.
   
9. I associate colors and textures with letters.
   
10. I visualize abstract concepts, including time.
    
11. I've always been able to see music.
    
12. I've never done LSD.
    
13. I have never intentionally consumed an illegal drug.
    
14. That incident with the pot cookies was an accident.
    
15. I like cookies. Even ones that taste a little funny.
    
16. I have never smoked a cigarette.
    
17. I have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards alcohol.
    
18. If I was told I could never have another drink again, I wouldn't care.
    
19. I bought a bottle of hard alcohol for my own personal consumption in for the first time in my life in October, 2005.
    
20. I am 34 years old.
    
21. It was Stoli vodka.
    
22. It took me 3 months to finish it.
    
23. I haven't bought another.
    
24. hat doesn't mean I won't.
    
25. I don't drink coffee.
    
26. I really like caffeine.
    
27. I drink a lot of diet soda.
    
28. Tea.
    
29. Earl Gray.
    
30. Hot.
    
31. With milk.
    
32. I'm 6'5"
    
33. I'm pretty sure people are intimidated by me.
    
34. I'm shy.
    
35. I don't come across as gay.
    
36. The last four items makes it hard to get dates.
    
37. I was once told by a gay man that he would never approach me, even in gay bar, for fear that I would bash him.
    
38. I have found the prevalence of homosexuality in theatre to be overrated.
    
39. In sixth grade, my class put on a production of Taming of the Shrew. Really.
    
40. I was the only kid in class not to get a role.
    
41. I've acted in seven stage plays since 2003.
    
42. I was fat as a kid.
    
43. I still gain weight very easily.
    
44. I didn't consume Nutrasweet for a year, as I heard it can impede weight loss.
    
45. It made no difference.
    
46. I have one gray hair in each sideburn.
    
47. I go to church a couple of times a month.
    
48. I have studied Mandarin Chinese.
    
49. I have forgotten almost all of it.
    
50. I've had Internet e-mail since 1988.