Acting climax for your viewing pleasure

Oh dear! I seem to have gone a month without blogging.
These days, the stress of internet life is too much. Myspace, Facebook, Mixi, Youtube, blog.... why are we doing all this?! How long can it last?
For a month I guess this blog has been playing second fiddle to others, despite it being the most "me" of them all. Looking at my Myspace page tells you nothing - except that perhaps I am slightly weird.

So, anyway, I finally got this DVD in the post the other day. I've been looking forward to this one! This was my last big acting job (4 days work for about 1200 pounds), so a pretty good way to go out. It's definately in my top 5. I laughed lots, and so will you (if you have ever met me anyway).

Sorry for the creepy American accent by the way!

Enough claptrap! Let's check it out!!



I know that you won't write a comment, but if you did, it would probably be "rofl", right?

It's political incorrectness gone made

It's strange how major life events like starting a career can really hit your blogging output. I realise that March has been a skinny month. I've had plenty of things to talk about. They're piling up, but fading in clarity, much as they did in my FFXII obsession era (I haven't touched since, and may never again. Everyone has limits).
I don't really want to go into any great depths job-wise just yet. It's only been two days. Let's see how it pans out though.

What I really want to talk about today is the USA. Yeh, the States, baby! That's one crazy place right there. A fat, pulsating boil that you can't help but look at. I feel that when one looks at the States, one can see a gushing rainbow of humanity's diversity. The good and the bad. The beautiful and the repellent.
To start with the bad, I watched the Al Gore documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth" last weekend.

No witty comments here.

No, I'm not saying that the documentary was bad. Suffice to say, the documentary does not cast the Bush administration in the most angelic of lights.

Let's not beat around the... uh, Bush... let's just beat the f****r directly. Damn, I hate that guy. That will never change. Watching this documentary, it occurred to me that the greatest historical event of the last ten years, objectively, is not 9/11 and terrorism, but a small number of Florida voters in 2000. Would the world be a better place if Gore had become president, rather than Bush? I don't doubt it for one moment. It saddened me deeply. That Bush won that election, and then got re-elected, fills me with profound despair. My faith in my fellow man drops. This guy is filling the world with resentment; promoting animosity and greed.

So I guess it's not too surprising to come across comments like this on the internet. Frequently. I've censored them for you, sweet children.

Rabownsyou (1 month ago)

Christ, I wish I could poke out everything wrong with American's. I f*****g hate them so much.

assimilate (1 month ago)

i hate americans.

phazzydoo (6 months ago)

lol, trying to sell an intellectual quiz show to Yanks, they're fat.

Firstly, it shocks me that people are willing to post comments like this on the internet. Publishing racist comments for the world to see. Secondly, the "intellectual quiz show"in question is "Countdown". Sigh.
I found these in the comments section of a Youtube video. It was an excerpt from Charlie Brooker's "Screen Wipe" TV show, where he shows clips of British TV shows to Americans. He deliberatly chooses campy, extreme examples. Unsurprisingly, the American audience find "The Bill" and "Countdown" to be cheesy, and, well, crap. And let's face it - that's what they are.

What I want to say is that just because we hate Bush (and rightfully so - he is a **** *******, a ***** ******, and ******** **************), it doesn't mean that all Americans are like that. Sure, they elected him (allegedly), but lets remember that only about 35% of Americans voted. and 51% of them voted Republican. So, we should only be disgusted with 18% of Americans.

I have been privileged to meet lots of Americans in my lifetime. And I've liked plenty of them. They aren't deserving of such baseless hatred. They can be funny, intelligent, sarcastic and they are clearly aware of their country's deficiencies.

Let's try to remember that the US has produced books, music, movies, games, TV shows, art etc. etc. of the highest quality and diversity. It would be callous to deny that we like any of it.

So, the Youtube people who stuck up for "The Bill". Can you really tell me that it is better than "The Wire" in any way, and expect me not to guffaw in your face?

I was led to "The Wire", ironically enough, by Charlie Brooker again

I watched all 40 episodes of The Wire in just over a week. Utterly gripping stuff. The UK could never produce anything like this. We need the US. I'm not sure if I'd like to live their myself, but on a visceral level, we need it. It's a mirror for us all to look in; because we all could end up like that. The highs the lows.

If only more Americans bothered to vote.

Good acting is for actors

As you have no doubt noticed, a lot of my acting work consists of cheesy dramatic reconstructions. There is big demand for them on Japanese TV, so there is consequently constant demand for actors.

In the acting industry here, the process goes as follows;

1. The agency calls you with a possible job. If you are available on those days, you give them "First Keep". If you might be available (i.e. you already have a first keep), then you give them "Second Keep" etc.
2. The agency sends your profile to the production company - "Picture Selection"
3. If the production company like you, you'll be invited to the audtion for the part.
4. Some time later, you get a call telling you if you got the part or not.

When it comes to reconstruction jobs, step 3 gets cut, and the production company chooses actors purely from the supplied photographs - basically taking a chance on acting ability. The voices get dubbed, so accents aren't an issue. In fact, you don't even need to speak English. Once, I had a role as a father. I spoke to my wife in English. She replied in Russian. My kids cheered on in Japanese. Wild times! Truly, an international family.
For the record, the pay rate for reconstructions (called Saigen here) is appropriately poor.

Anyway, seems this week that a Saigen director got a bit too big for her boots, and thought it might be a good idea to actually do some auditions this time. Man, I'm pretty sure that I don't want them to pick me for this one! I'm sure the pay is crap anyway.

Anyway, this is what I had to do "off the cuff" in the audition. This should shut up any of you guys who think that this job is a cakewalk. If it doesn't - well - you are welcome to try for yourselves. I guess some people prefer hugging Eastern European models.

Basically, I turned up at the audition along with two blonde females - a Slovakian and a Russian (you would probably have fancied both of them). As the only guy, I had to pair up for the both of them (arf).

First scene. Slovakian girl tells me that she is pregnant. But. She has two wombs**. There are two babies in one of them, and one in the other. The emotions swirl in my head - dazzled by elation, struck by shock, smitten with anxiety... then I do it all over again with the Russian girl.
My emotions frazzled, we move straight onto the next scene. Back with the Slovakian. The doctor looks us in the eye: "I'm afraid there has been a miscarriage...". Cue scenes of disbelief, anger, shock; yeh, we're talking about the whole spectrum here! This is pure gold, so we do it all over again with the Russian girl. She doesn't take the news very well, and crumbles into my masculine arms.
No time to waste, so we plunge straight into the next scene - my Slovakian wife is giving birth - and - just as I had always expected, it didn't look that painful (just looked like they had serious piles to me). The baby is out in no time, and we share our elation with the world. Should I kiss her? Probably not. The doctor shows us our new addition - a beautiful Panasonic remote control has emerged from her designer jeans. Classic prop that - I do hope they find something more realistic for the actual filming though.

Congratulations

No sooner are we celebrating all this than my Russian wife is shoved in the chair. Her feeble hands gently squeeze mine as I command her to must her utmost power to evict the alien mass from her spasming body. As I am whisked once more to the highest of human emotions, the doctor shows us our child - another Panasonic remote. I'm starting to realise why those TV repairs took so long now.

It's all over. The three of us leave the audition - elated, depressed and unsure whether we should feel a common bond or simple humility. As professional actors, we luckily have no emotions of our own save vanity, so we leave it at that.

This post started out serious, but seems to have degenerated into flip-flap based on real events. One can only apologise.

I wonder if I'll get this part. If I do, I will try to cry for you all. That would be a befitting climax, wouldn't it.

**I think both of the girls got confused. Or had never heard the English word "womb" before. They kept on telling me that they had "..two rooms - two babies in one, and one in the other". Luckily, I knew what they were really trying to say. I have a deep understanding of women like that, see.

Dirty, dirty boy

Man, I'm glad that's over. Spent over an hour in make up just to look like this:

Oops, left the camera in macro-mode

Yeh, back to my mining heritage. I even wore a hard-hat.

Wearing a thick coat of make-up isn't much fun, I can tell you.
What made it worse was that they asked us to come in at 1pm, and we didn't start filming until 10pm! In the meantime, Kimutaku came and did his bit and left without any of us noticing... the rest will be down to the magic of post-production. I'm looking forward to seeing this one - should be pretty hilarious.

Still, it gave me plenty of time to practice my kanji. As you shall see.

Another brush with fame

Whilst we're on the twin subjects of bad-hair and Japan, I guess I should mention my current job that I'll be undertaking in a few hours. It's a TV commercial for Gatsby, a Japanese male beauty product manufacturer.

I'll be working with mega-famous Japanese talent and SMAP member Takuya Kimura (Kimutaku).

I won't ruin the contents of the ad, but for those of you who are curious, here is the previous ad;



Phew, it's gonna be tough to live up to that one!

Battlestar Galactica - MUCH better than the original series

That's right. Sticking my foot out there on this one.

Believe it or not, this is sci-fi. In the future, people wear two vests.

It's pretty good. Good enough that I watched all of series 1 (5 DVD's) in one weekend.

As a teenager, I watched StarTrek - The Next Generation almost every day after school. I wasn't a Trekkie - it was just the best thing on TV from 5-6pm.
But I'm not gonna lie to you - it's obvious that I enjoy a bit of escapism. My life is steeped in Games Workshop and video game lore. And traveling is basically escapism too.

But oddly, what makes B.G. great isn't that it's sci-fi. Its visual effects are adequate if unspectacular (though they never look cheesy), and its premise is hardly new (robots go out of control and attempt human genocide).
What makes B.G. great is that it's a human drama. It just happens to be set in space. And dang, it really sucks you in.
The producers really did a great job. They really understood the zeitgeist. Now, I'm gonna talk about the zeitgeist for a bit. Some of you may wish to switch off now.

In this era of "web 2.0", people aren't so easily wowed any more. You can't expect to just stick some futuristic gadget on TV, make it go 'bleep bloop' and then the audience are amazed. We're too wise to all that now.

Last night, Moonraker was on the TV. Somehow, I'm a Roger Moore fan. He made James Bond so camp, so debonair... it was great 80's stuff to watch. But watching it last night, for the first time in yonks... it was quite... stupid. Maybe Austin Powers really helped us all realise how ridiculous it all was. So detached from reality. The best, most memorable scene in the film is the cable-car scene with Jaws. There are no laser guns. No quasi-futuristic clothes. Just two men trying to kill each other in a tense spectacular scenario. It's a great scene.
Now don't go telling me that Sean Connery was the "correct" Bond. There are just as many problems with the smarmy, rotund Scot as any other of the Bonds. But that's a different issue.

If we fast forward to the now... the new Bond... Daniel Craig... I would say that it's the best movie containing James Bond ever . It isn't necessarily the best Bond movie (continue reading and I hope you'll catch my drift), if you consider Bond as a genre unto itself, but, if you just consider it as a film, an artistic, dramatic creation, then it blows the other Bond movies away. Bond movies should always be a product of its era. And, like Battlestar Galactica, Casino Royale is most definitely a product of (and a contributor to) the current zeitgeist.

So, what is the current Zeitgeist? I would say that it contains the basic tenants (there may be more - please enlighten me);

• The characters are human, and therefore susceptible to human weaknesses. We are vulnarable. And you can't just kidnap a girl and then the guy must put down his weapon. It goes much deeper.
• Characters have a reason for their evil actions. They cannot just be de-facto evil. To see why people become terrorists, to see people lie and cheat out of greed and a desire for power... these are human traits, and we want to see them. Think of a Ghibli anime compared to a Disney one. Thinking about the world this way can help us understand the current socio-political climate of our world. It ain't so black and white. We all have the potential to undertake malicious acts. Stories help us understand the motivation that can provoke such acts. That's why there should be no censorship, and no 'taboo' subject matter.
  
• Technology isn't a story element - it's a prop. So, find a suitable, believable prop, use it, and move on with the story. Don't dwell on it. Don't gloat over its omnipotent powers. You will look stupid in 10 years time, I guarantee you. In B.G., much of the technology actually goes backwards from our current time - phones are cluncky and have wires. That's future-proof, right there. They have circumnavigated against any possible future accusations of being outdated - genius.
• When people fight, it hurts. Body's slam against walls, blood flies, scars remain. For a while afterwards, you will be exhausted. Fighting isn't fun. Look at Bond fight. It hurts just to watch. You really believe that a guy like him would fight like that. There are no roundhouse kicks.
• Women can be tough. Men can be sexy. The two are not exclusive.
  

In a nutshell, it's about people. B.G. is basically ER in space. ER must be more than 10 years old now. It was pretty groundbreaking at the time. The notion that Doctors get tired, that Hospitals aren't super white and squeaky clean, that people die and bleed and cry...
B.G. also borrows the camera style from ER. Close-up, shaky hand cams. Faces that fill the entire screen. The B.G.'s commander (The guy in the photo above) has a really rough, pitted skin texture. You watch B.G., and you will see it. This is a tough guy. What a contrast to Captain Picard.

Does all this have any implications for video games? Yeh, of course. Unfortunately, they are pretty harsh ones too. In TV and movies, visual effects are an accompaniment to the actual footage. You analyse where you need CGI, and you make it.
A video game is 100% visual effects - everything has to be realised by an artist. It's a cruel twist that the resource most important to TV and film is also the easiest to aquire - real human actors. Sadly for games, they need actors, humans, too. But they have to create them from the ground up. And humans are the most complicated, detailed of all objects.
With so much focus - and resources - on the visual effects, it's very easy to forget that the goal of a video game isn't to have spectacular, eye-bleeding effects (stand up Perfect Dark Zero - now get out) - but to have great gameplay. With the new generation of consoles, the resources required to produce adequate graphics in high-definition are astounding. I really suspect that many developers will lose sight of the goal.
The second challenge comes from this rejection of form before function. If games aren't played for their graphics, what are they played for? The answer is of course, gameplay. Good ol' mysterious gameplay. Nobody knows what gameplay really is - just like we don't know what a great story is. There is no guaranteed formula. This is why we really need higher education courses that focus on this. Wake up people - games are real, they entertain millions of people, and create millions of jobs (developing, manufacturing, distributing, retailing, press, PR...). The amount of people from varied backgrounds with game-specific skills is cripplingly low. I'm talking about non-techincal skills here. Anyone can learn Maya or 3D studio Max. But how do we learn about level design? Game narrative? Character design, when we have to design the game for every individual player?
Giving people three years to think about things and experiment will make the world of difference. Currently, High-Ed game courses are of a fairly low caliber. This will surely improve over time as the mount of people qualified to teach and the quality of game related literature improves.
Many games are also important for their story and characterization. Half Life has an intriguing, character-led story. Final Fantasy 12 does not. They aren't necessities for a great game, but they sure do help to maintain your interest. Half Life is unique in that there are no cut-scenes. You never once leave the body of your avatar, Gordon Freeman. Sometimes, you walk past a door and you hear a conversation on the other side. This is an example of game designers looking at narrative from a gaming perspective rather than a film one. We are in the game - so please, don't take us out if it. It's all so wrong. In Total Warrior: Spartan, there are occasional cut-scenes where your avatar gets angry, shouts, and generally makes decisions on your behalf. This is a guy that you never really see in-game, as the camera is zoomed out in order to make the game playable (as opposed to Dynasty Warriors, where the camera is much closer - too close in fact, and you can't keep track of your enemies). This actually made me dislike the Spartan character. At the end of the day, perhaps all video game avatars should be mute, like Link, Gordon Freeman and Master Chief. As soon as some deep American voice bellows out of my body, I'm suddenly reminded that I'm in a video game.

Games are starting to get more realistic. More human. They will start to challenge our actions. Deus Ex tried it, and I think more will. When we play a game, we kill people without question. There will be games that challenge this notion. Don't let your kids out of the house, because, you know you don't want kids playing this stuff. That doesn't mean that its wrong - games have an untapped potential to be profound. I can't wait to see it.

It's no longer good enough to make a 'cool' product, market it to death and reap the rewards. In this era, consumers are smart. If something is full of crap, flawed or cynical, then you can bet your board-room-decisions arse that "the web" is gonna talk about it, and your reputation will be shredded mercilessly. In the 90's, in the decade of marketing, Playstation killed Sega's hardware division by appearing to be the 'cooler' product with guerrila advertising in night clubs and festivals. No-one realised that the Dreamcast was stuffed with great exclusive games. Fast forward 12 years, and Sony is getting murdered by bad press surrounding the PSP and PS3. They are essentially using the same marketing tactics - ads that concentrate on the 'spirit' and 'coolness' of the Playstation brand rather than the quality of the product.
In a distant land called the internet, consumers are tearing them apart in forums.
In the meantime, Nintendo releases a new, reasonably priced, innovative product. The TV commercials show people playing the game. If you make a good product, the people in the internet forums will do all the marketing you could ever need.

This is web 2.0. We won't be patronised any longer.

What were they thinking...

Oh dear. TV has come a long way in 30 years I guess.

Watching them now, the Star Wars movies are a little cheesy at times, but overall, I'd say they still do a good job of suspending belief.

This 2-hour special from 1978 did a great job of almost destroying a dynamite brand. It's about Chewbacca trying to get home for "Life Day". And it's just shocking.


The best part is at around 4:20 - make sure that you stick around for that.

Don't let anyone tell you that the 70's were "cooler" than the 80's. They weren't. They were just wrong in different ways.