So here’s a short film I shot a couple of weeks ago at the Pasadena Arts Center College of Design. I’ve never had to handle a scene like this on-camera before; it’s really helping me grow and learn. Couple of notes:
-It was shot in classroom on campus, written/directed by Zak Marx under the supervision of Prof. Richard Pearce (who directed the feature films “Leap of Faith” and “A Family Thing”, among others).
-We only had 40 minutes to shoot it all! We were on three cameras, performed the entire scene once in masters, and then the cameras started shifting for close-ups. My stage background (and a couple of good rehearsals) really helped keeping all that text (and where I was in the scene) at the ready under such intense time pressure!
-My scene partner, P.J. King, is the narrator of the TV show “Bar Rescue”.
There are a couple of technical things I’m noticing – a continuity goof with my arm position, my dialogue volume, this weird phantom hair by my head that keeps catching the light; but given the circumstances and resources I’m really impressed by the polish of what Zak produced; and very proud of my work, especially near the end of the scene. I should give a shout-out to my Shakespeare O.C. colleague John Walcutt, who let me visit his camera acting class and gave me a little trick that was of great use here.
Now, I think if I can get one more on-camera piece to go with this and my bit in “Squaresville”, I can finally cut together an acting reel:
Notes for my self: I feel like my full body wasn’t engaged in the character in the first half – I was probably up in my head, looking for my bearings. Once I get up from the table, have that close-up moment, and come back, I feel like my work gets much stronger. Vocal projection is an issue – part of it is that we were all on boom instead of body mics, so since “Mr. G” is the more talkative and dynamic, he probably got more of the mic love. But I could still engage my voice more, especially since the conceit of the scene is that we’re in a bar, where there would be some ambient sound.
There were some bits where I was really looking around the room to see if he had henchmen coming for me – I’m glad the director didn’t use those bits in retrospect because it looks much stronger that he depicted me as fixated on the whole Ozzy Griffin story. Just like on-stage, sometimes you have to subsume your own desire to constantly be DOING what your character might do to whomever has the ball in the scene at that moment.
I don’t love all my work here but I don’t entirely hate it. In fact, I think it’s a huge step up from the test I shot earlier this year for a short film that never happened. There I was super fidgety and blinky and weird; here, I think, I’m finally getting closer to human.