I deliberated for a few weeks whether to post this up.

I finally decided to do it because I’m so busy these days that I need to employ more lazy blogger tricks.

Today’s lazy post is a YouTube video. Haha.

I didn’t want to post it up at first because there are some physically-intimate shots in it involving me and it’s weird posting something like that knowing that family and relatives read my blog.

But, what the heck. I’m sure they can handle it. It’s nothing sleazy, anyway.

A quick background first.

This is one of the films I did for NYU Tisch Asia graduate film students last year. It was their very first project and shot on Super 16 mm film.

(If you were reading my blog three months ago, you’d have seen my posts about it: Flat 7-Up doesn’t taste very good and Last day is for camwhoring.)

The requirements of the project: 4 minutes, black-and-white, no dialogue, no music.

The video you’re about to watch is the director’s cut. It’s in colour and has some musicky stuff in it, but it’s otherwise the same film that was submitted.

It’s called Mara’s Playground and I play the role of Mara.

So, here it is! Hope you like understand it.

Categories: Acting Journal
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An actor friend of mine just complained to me about getting screwed over by a production house.

He was offered $500 to act in a live event for a well-known MNC. The event is handled by a quite prominent production house run by a quite prominent individual. My friend accepted the offer and blocked the date for the job.

Three days later, the producer called to say that the fee has become $200.

Of course, my friend protested. How can $500 become $200??

The producer said he had thought he would be able to get that amount, but it turned out that he wasn’t able to.

A pretty lame excuse, if you ask me. My friend tried to negotiate. The producer said $250 tops, no higher.

Since my friend had already blocked the date and turned down other jobs for this job, he decided to take what he can get. He said he’d accept $250 on the condition that he’s paid on the day of the event.

The producer agreed.

Later, another phone call. The producer told my friend that he was going to hire someone else and that my friend wasn’t needed anymore, thank you.

WTF??????????????!!!!

I ask you. What are the little people to do?

Categories: Acting Journal
29 Comments »

I have to stop being a glutton for punishment.

I signed up for a two-day filmmaking crash course (nine hours each day) which cost me almost $400.

That, of course, is not the story.

The story is that class started 9 o’clock this morning and I gave myself only two hours of sleep, plus a mild hangover.

Aftiel called us out of the blue (after a few years of MIA) and asked us to go drinking last night.

Cannot say no, right?

Roomful of Blues was half filled with gamers last night. Bet you didn’t know that many gamers are alcoholics.

I had a great time reminiscing the crazy times we spent in-game together. I laughed so hard all night I thought I was going burst an appendix.

It was also great meeting new people and sharing scandals about their WoW guild leader, while said guild leader sat in front of us and gave us murderous stares.

Incidentally, we discovered quite by chance that yesterday was Christina’s birthday. So Aftiel got her two flaming somethings to down, and then forced her to play five-ten with every single one of us, turn by turn, for three rounds. Loser had to drink one Aftiel-sized shot of Chivas on the rocks. We knocked down half a bottle within 20 minutes.

Christina was quite traumatised but she turned out to be quite the hustler, winning at most of the five-ten matches.

I don’t know who came up with the idea of causing death by alcohol for birthday peoples. Isn’t it oxymoronic to celebrate life by killing yourself?

So, anyway, attending a nine-hour crash course right after a drinking party is not a very good idea.

Not good at all.

Today’s class was funny and interesting, but I dozed off a few times (only for short bursts). Damn stupid lah… pay money go sleep.

But after tomorrow, I will be a certified Hollywood Film Institute graduate and boast of having Quentin Tarantino as a fellow alumni and be equipped to make a feature film and get it shown in cinemas within eight months (or so the course promises). Impressive or not??

I find it somewhat hilarious.

It’s possible, actually, but I don’t think I’ll do it. I’ll wait for the other students to do it and cast me in their films.

Today’s blog is very boring, I know. But I think I’m entitled to a self-indulgent pointless post once in a while. I’m so zombified I can’t think straight.

And I still have homework to do!! Which is to watch a Hollywood film. *lol* Some homework!

I miss WoW and EQ2 and DAoC and even SWG! Yeah, like anyone’s gonna care.

Have a great weekend, whatever’s left of it!

Categories: Acting Journal, Gaming Notebook
21 Comments »

I was really annoyed yesterday.

I was so annoyed that I put this in my Facebook:

This is an old recurring peeve, but I was annoyed because there was a casting call for actors/models for a print advertisement that was paying a pittance.

It’s reasonable enough to expect commercial work to pay commercial rates. But these people are offering rates much lower than non-commercial work rates. I get more money posing for photographers who are just practising. (I don’t do that anymore, though.) I even get more money acting in some student films. Duh.

But what’s worse is that there are people willing to do the job and will answer that casting call.

This affects the overall quality of work produced in Singapore. You see sub-standard actors and models appearing all over the place because many companies now prefer to hire untrained or untalented people because they’re cheaper.

So the rates just keep going lower and lower.

And the quality of creative work gets worse and worse.

I mean, have you seen actors and models who are so bad, you just want to shoot them to end everyone’s misery?

Have you seen commercials or TV shows that are so bad, you feel ashamed to admit you share a country with the people who produced them?

That’s because people aren’t freaking willing to pay for quality work!

Sometimes, I have no choice but to propagate the atrocity that is happening. I take a job even if the pay is sub-standard because, if not, I’m sitting at home not earning any income.

I try my best not to, but, once in a while, I feel compelled to cave in.

If I don’t take the job, someone else will and the production house won’t lose any sleep over it.

They know this and they’re exploiting the hell out of us.

Singapore needs an actors’ union. A models’ union. But I doubt that’s gonna happen in my lifetime because Singapore only cares about money. Companies have to be protected and allowed to exploit the little people so they can make even more money for the country.

Very sad lah.

Today, I received a call from a production house that produced a drama series I acted in.

I started work on it May 2007 but I haven’t gotten paid yet.

The payment terms had been made verbally with the project manager. There was no contract. It’s a big and reputable company. I had worked with them before, so I trusted that they would hold to their words.

What I didn’t realise then was that the project manager and the producer weren’t even staff of the company. The whole drama series had been outsourced to freelancers.

During the negotiation, the freelance project manager, after getting verbal approval from the freelance producer, agreed to pay me an extra $400 allowance on top of my regular episodic rate.

Today, the boss of the production house called to say that my invoice has an extra amount quoted, can I explain it?

I explained about the $400 allowance.

“The producer didn’t submit that amount,” was the reply.

What’s worse, both producer and project manager have conveniently disappeared off the face of the earth. Attempts to contact them have failed for a month.

“I know it’s a very small amount,” said the boss. “But I’m sorry I can’t give it to you because we need the producer to sign the approval for that amount first. Otherwise, the auditors will start asking us questions.”

So I can’t get my $400 until the producer reappears and is willing to vouch that he did agree to give me that amount.

If he reappears and if he’s willing to vouch.

It’s very possible that, should either of them ever resurface, they will just conveniently forget that they’d made me that promise, just to make things easy and save on paperwork.

Yes, I have that much faith in the human condition right now.

No matter, you know. Just exploit the little people. It makes the economy grow.

Anyway, I’m taking a break from being exploited, for now. I’m not answering any casting calls and going for any auditions unless the terms are reasonable.

I guess I’d better start thinking about how to make money with my blog.

Categories: Acting Journal
35 Comments »

So, I just found out that the “theatre” we’d been working in is haunted.

Our stage manager, who is apparently “sensitive” to spirits, can see them. Throughout the five days we were at the Q Bar, she saw a mother and daughter spirit always sitting or standing in a corner.

The Q Bar was one of our performance spaces and acted as our base where we met and put our stuff, so we spent a lot of time in there.

There’s also another female ghost residing outside the bar.

The security guards around the Arts House confirm that this is true.

We had a post mortem meeting today and all this was revealed after the meeting. We learned that there were times some of us even walked through the ghosts or sat on them.

OMG.

There were some moments I was alone in the Q Bar late at night.

But nothing happened to us in the five days we were there and our show went well without major hiccups so, if there were spirits, they must be benevolent.

But I think Sean (designer) was a little disturbed when he heard that there was a moment when he walked right through the skirt of the woman spirit, who was just floating in mid air.

Bendini (The Fun Stage) exploded into dramatic hysteria. “Why must they float around and scare people?? Why can’t they just behave normally??!!?!?!?”

Timothy (publicist) burst out laughing at that, but that’s Timothy.

We learnt that ghosts look just like us except that they have a translucent quality and they pretty much just go about doing whatever it is they do.

“Well, what is it they do?” I asked.

No one could tell me.

“When they’re walking along Orchard Road, do they go shopping?” Bendini wanted to know.

“Of course not!” said Richard (Little Red Shop).

I think ghosts (if they really exist) are misunderstood. Maybe most of them are harmless (I’m not saying all are). It’s the media that makes them into horrible, scary beings that eat people or whatever.

But I wonder. Do they have a purpose when roaming the earth? They allegedly can’t interact with objects in our plane and I haven’t heard any reports of them having their own objects. So what do they do? Aren’t they bored being restricted to sitting, walking and floating, maybe for eternity?

I would be. No computer games, no DS Lite, no camwhoring, no blogging, no going to parties, no reading books, no acting in plays and accidentally sitting on ghosts.

What a horrible existence.

Categories: Acting Journal, Regular Blogs
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