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September 19, 2007

Big ol' update!

GAME SHOW

I recorded a game-show appearance early last week! I don't know if I'm cleared to hawk it by name just yet, and I definitely can't report how I fared on the show, but I'll definitely let folks know the air-date when it comes up. If nothing else, it'll give you guys the all-too-rare opportunity to see me wearing a button-down shirt and a tie. This was my second time on a game show, after an appearance on "Win Ben Stein's Money" back when I was 21. I didn't win, but Ben Stein telling you you're smart certainly has a way of soothing one's second-place scrapes.

WRITING WORK

I've been adapting anime scripts for two shows lately. I'm not cleared to mention either one of them yet (what's new, right?), but they're very distinct from one another and we're only a few episodes away from the proverbial finish line in both cases--at least with regards to the scripts.

VOICEOVER WORK

A lot of the most recent stuff I've done is still shrouded in necessary secrecy (story of my life; see previous parenthetical), but I can finally announce my involvement with a few video games, now that they've hit the shelves:

I'm voicing the villainous Widdershin in "Tales of the World: Radiant Mythology" (for PSP), the womanizing Ewan Kleines in "Atelier Iris 3: Grand Phantasm" (for PS2), the vengence-fueled Greg Russelberg in "Wild Arms 5" (for PS2), and--perhaps most exciting of all--Frederic Chopin (yeah, that Frederic Chopin) in "Eternal Sonata" (for Xbox 360):

This (and BioShock, and Dead Rising) reallllly make me want to buy an Xbox 360, especially with their recent price-drop...!

THEATER

I'm working as a production assistant on Sight Unseen Theatre Group's "The Count of Monte Cristo," which opens this Friday at the beautiful Edgemar Center for the Arts in Santa Monica.

SHORT FILM

I took a pre-dawn drive into the sandy hills of Idyllwild last Saturday with six other brave souls for the purpose of shooting a short film! Aside from a small handful of student projects I worked on back during my first stint in L.A. in my early 20s, this was my first time doing anything on-camera--and it was an experience!

The script evolved over time, starting as a ten-page, one-act play I wrote as a lark late one evening, evolving into a short film script, and metamorphisizing further when a former professor of mine said, "Hey, let's shoot this thing!" There were three or four subsequent drafts, each with a markedly different ending. It centers on two would-be bank robbers and how quickly the axiom "honor among thieves" goes out the window when their luck goes south. Suffice it to say that shooting it required prop guns, fake blood, fake smoke, shell casings, a last-minute trip to the massive St. Vincent de Paul thrift warehouse in search of gaudy shirts, and every bit of daylight we could squeeze out of last Saturday.

Working on the film was great fun, but it did give me a new appreciation of how streamlined and straightforward a process my voiceover gigs are. I walk into a climate-/sound-controlled room, the copy's all right there, and we knock out dialogue until we're out of time or we're done. Shooting the film on Saturday, there were so many more variables to keep in mind: Was I holding the gun in my right or left hand in that one scene we shot three hours ago (because we're grabbing that scene on the fly right now from another angle and I need to maintain continuity)? It's too windy up on this rock to use the boom mic. Well, damn...it's too windy up on this rock to use the body-mics, either--so we'll wait until the wind dies down and try knocking out a take before it starts up again. Okay, there's gonna be fake blood all over the place after this shot, so we really have to get it on the first take (although, to be fair, we did squeeze a second take out of that moment, thanks to some creative blocking by the cameraman. Wait...I have to walk and talk at the same time? You're kidding, right? Okay, we got the basic two-shot of that ten-second exchange from here...now we have to get it from over here, over here, up there, down below, and way back there. I'm exaggerating, of course, and our cameraman and sound guys were great so I'm certainly not talking smack, but it was a totally new experience for me--and this was a movie with only two characters! If we'd had three or four...!

And, paramount among the variables and our concerns--the sun. We got to our location at 6:30, started shooting shortly thereafter, and chased the light all day long. We got it all shot in a single day, but just by the skin of our teeth. We did have a chance to reshoot some of the film's final moments at the end of the day, which was something of an unexpected luxury, but we were still standing there watching as places the other actor and I could stand for the last scene melted into the shadows. As someone suggested only partly in jest as we trudged back to the cars at the end of the day, we should scrap the film's intended name in favor of "Daylight's Burning"--our mantra throughout the day.

Posted by patrick at September 19, 2007 08:35 AM

Comments

Posted by: WE PAT at September 19, 2007 02:08 PM

Posted by: Cameron M. at September 19, 2007 09:05 PM

Posted by: Rich at September 20, 2007 09:45 AM

Posted by: Jake at September 27, 2007 03:13 PM

Posted by: James at November 7, 2007 12:09 PM

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