Open Hatch

Archive for the ‘Acting’ Category

This can alternately be watched in High Definition @ the YouTube site via this link.

A silly rhythmic clip. Game developed by NinjaBee. The critters’ voices in this game are my voice acting, and I did other sound and particle effects work.

Re the previous two gag promos here and here.

I think Rhapsidiom’s comments in his post here are right on target.  We exchange comments after his post.

This is the finished product from this script.

The film releasing today in which I have my first lines, it’s time I followed up on my promise to write about what persuaded me to act. Following is an abridgement of previously unpublished writing about it.

In June 2003, I was reading a test preparation book which described methods to calm over-anxiety and free up energy to perform well. It suggested vividly recalling moments of past successes, times I did something really well. Doing this for an exam connects feelings of past success to the present, producing a calm confidence. This book asked me to list memories of when I did really well with something and felt really satisfied. Reflecting for a while I came up with many things I did just well enough, but not well, nothing I was satisfied with – until one memory came: haunting and thrilling at the same time.
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Last night I saw myself in a big movie, speaking lines with big actors, thus enlarging the size of my head. At least, my head was really big on a big screen.

I enjoyed the film a lot. I thought there were a lot of very funny scenes, that it was a riot on the whole, and also that it held together while being poigniant, which is a very difficult thing for a comedy to do.

Afterwards a friend asked if it was weird to see myself on the screen. Yes, it was disorienting – the shots for my scene were assembled with a timing and sequence different from what I imagined, and the improvised lines weren’t used. I was so distracted wondering about the cause it took me a long while to suspend disbelief again.

Good shots and lines can be taken out of films if they break editorial continuity – not matching other shots, etc. It can be painful but better the film.

I’ll look forward to seeing the official Utah premiere without my distractions, on the 7th.

I landed my small role in Mobsters and Mormons because I got to know the director – John Moyer – and kept in occasional email correspondence with him, which led to the auditon and the part. I got to know the director in an acting class that he and Michelle Wright ran. I also took a screenwriting workshop from John.

I have five lines if they use the take that I think they will. Originally I had three lines and improvised two more stupid lines in response to the lead actor ad-libbing. He may have add-libbed because my character was a fool for his character to prod and malign. After this add-libbed take the cast and crew laughed: that’s why I think they’ll use the take. That my character possesed me during my closeup, and the lead actor also drew more of it out of me, and that it all illicited laughter – this was very, very gratifying.

[I keep getting nasty trackback links posted to my entires that relate most closely to my creative ambitions. Someone out there wants to pollute that. No more luck for them. TRACKBACKS OFF.]

In recent years, various situations have impelled me to seriously reconsider a previously buried dream of being an actor, then revive and pursue it. I wrote scraps here and there about these experiences and owe it to myself (and probably the curiosity of others) to gather them into one. I’ll do that, revising this entry from time to time.

Meanwhile, I’ll recall one of the prompts: a sentence in a new-agy titled book:

“Make no decisions based on security. There is none.”

Strictly, I disagree with this sentence. I believe there are things about which we can be absolutely certain. The context in which this sentence was given may admit that (I don’t recall). But the point is that there is risk of failure and insecurity in everything. If we run risks everyday in a pursuit or occupation we don’t like, why not take (carefully planned) risks for an occupation we really want, instead?

A counter-argument is that risk is greater for artists. Barring situations with factors that truly cut off success for artists, I say that this is not so: only for failures on the part of the artist in self-marketing, self-development, business savvy, etc. Pointing back to the everything is a risk argument, these skills are necessary to every professional pursuit.

This philosophy is dangerous to folks of black-and-white, all-or-nothing thinking (yours truly). No one should burn their life to the ground and hope that all their buried dreams will resurface in a new life instantly reborn. More on this later.

Here is a movie I made with a friend.

For discussion with your children: Did the Sinner in this movie cause the end of the world by telling a prophet to “Shut up”? Or was the world doomed to die anyway? Which came first, the chicken or the egg, the sinner or Armageddon? Do you think the world was going to end even though this Sinner said “Shut up”? Was God so upset with too many people saying “Shut up” all the time that He decided to blow up the world? Does God’s promise to Noah not to flood the world mean he is free to blow it up nonetheless? If God were going to blow up the world, do you think prophets would warn us first?

MAYBE SO, BUT WE’VE BEEN WARNED A LOT!! SO THE NEXT TIME A PROPHET RUNS UP TO YOU AND YELLS THE END IS NEAR, YOU’D BETTER BELIEVE THEM!! SHAME ON YOU!! SHAME ON YOU!! ALL SINNERS, SHAME ON YOU!! YOU HAVE 3 SECONDS TO REPENT!!

Someone pointed out that this is the Most Violent Film ever made. Film violence has been rated by the number of deaths in a film. By that standard, Star Wars is the Most Violent Film Ever: while several films have blown up populated planets, Star Wars edges them all out by blowing up Alderran and the Death Star. But if you rate by Violence Density (number of deaths divided by length of film), this is by far the Most Violent Film Ever!

Someone else pointed out that I coincidentally released this on the same day that the FLDS church moved down near Waco Texas for their prophecy of the end, 04-04-05. Um.. how sort of appropriate.

CREDITS

Script and Prophet – Richard Alexander Hall

Directed by Richard Alexander Hall and David A. Skousen.

Photography – David A. Skousen.

Hoodlum – Richard Skousen

Hoodlums – Paul Green, Izak Rock

Earth Image – NASA

Fireball – DetonationFilms.com