Drawn By Pain

This is a great indie webisode that uses an animation/real action combo that is just stunning, especially considering 2 people put the whole production together!  Really cool project.

 I wrote this article for Web Video Report, a site about new media and web videos.  If you’re looking to market your short/webisode, here are my tips!

How to: Getting Video Noticed, Guerilla Style : How-To : Web Video Report

I’ve been wrapped up on a TV/Movie watching kick for the last few days. I wildly set my Tivo to record every show I haven’t watched in the last 6 months to catch up on where a bunch of series were headed, because if I get a last-minute audition for Ghost Whisperer or something, it’s good to know that the ghosts don’t look pretty when they talk to the main character, and the tone is different from the similarly-themed Medium. And it has a lot of excellent hair and skin

With half the shows recorded, I ended up fast forwarding to the end, because it’s really hard to just jump into an episode when I don’t know where the characters are coming from. It was refreshing to catch something like Law and Order, because it’s a nice tidy story that I can immediately leap into, unlike Grey’s Anatomy where the lineage of “who’s slept with whom” is critical to understanding why one person is tiffy with another I did start to get into Bones, and the new Flash Gordon is so cheesy I can’t help like it. A little bit. Oh, and Weeds is GREAT. That went on the list of “Shows I want to watch without thinking like an actor”.

The best thing I’ve seen in my spree movie-wise is the Russian movie called “Nightwatch.” I think visually, it was the most interesting film I’ve seen in a long time. Most films seem like the director storyboarded all the cool shots in the beginning 15 minutes, and then after that, it turns into standard cinematography. This movie, even if you were like “What the hell is going on in this scene”, had breathtaking visuals that kept you wondering “how they did that?!” I was thrilled to see that the director has a big Hollywood film coming out called “The Wanted” with Angelina Jolie. Can’t wait to see if he retains his flair in English!

Lastly, I’ve watched like 6 Westerns. The best part of being a actor for me, is the part where I get to immerse myself in cultures/research that I’m not familiar with. Boy, do I have my hands full with this one I don’t want to be specific as of yet, but I am currently working on a role that has both Western and Religious themes, two of the areas which I most avoid in my daily travels. When I was a kid I ate up movies, but I tended to avoid Westerns and Military pics. I’ve rounded up a lot of DVD’s and am plowing through them, crash course in the genre. I’m starting to enjoy them! They have a set of cliches that become a little predictable, but the characters are interesting, and I try to ignore the total political incorrectness of vilifying American Indians and mowing them down like they’re James Bond henchman. If anyone could recommend any specifically with strong women characters, or religious themes I would love to add titles to my growing collection of research!

Ok, so “The Guild” has been out all weekend and I would say it’s getting generally good feedback. I’m going to ignore that right now. Because OBVIOUSLY I have to fixate on the negative comments of people. Here are some of my favorites.

“…film is not your milieu.”

“She didn’t do it for me. Had that Helen Hunt look about her.”

“wasn’t really funny but the girl was decent *or to put it in words the OT can comprehend* “I’d pee in her butt”.

What a pick-up line. Anyway, what does this mean to me? For one thing, it makes me feel bad about about my Transformers bashing before. In short, the whole experience has made me appreciate the effort of film making, and the stinging critique of our consumer culture. Yes, I’m going to use big words now.

Most of us have no appreciation for what goes into the things we consume every day. I certainly don’t. I’m sure if I studied the plastic cup, I’d be more reverential when I sipped out of it. Hell, one of my favorite movies on YouTube is this one on how aluminum foil is made. Fascinating. Anyway, our society is so sophisticated, we have become authorities on everything, or so we think. There’s no face to face with the actual makers of the products we consume, and therefore feel carte blanche to poop on things when we don’t like them. When the author of Acacia commented in my thread here on his book, I near had a heart attack, and I went back to scan my entry to see if it was insulting. Before, I could have given a hoot, he wasn’t a person to me, the book was there for me to consume and judge, end of story. Thank goodness I loved it

It might not be that articulate, but I guess I’m trying to say sorry for bashing your movie Mr. Bay. It may not be my favorite thing, but I feel I’ve experienced a tiny minuscule fraction of what you went through to make your movie, and although I didn’t love how your movie portrayed women, the movie was good fun, and to dismiss probably years of your life’s effort with a snarky blog entry probably didn’t give you the consideration you deserve. And I did like the robots smashing things.

There. I hope that cleanses my karma and someone doesn’t try to actually pee in my butt. :O