film

Did you get the role?

- Sheylara 15 Comments

I don’t normally like to talk about my auditions or, if I do talk about them, I try to talk about them in non-specific terms, not naming anything or anyone, so that people won’t know which auditions I passed and which I didn’t.

One reason I don’t like to talk about auditions is because people always ask stupid questions like “Did you get the role?” on the very day of the audition.

I have news for everyone. Film auditions are just like job interviews. They don’t tell you on the spot whether they’re giving you the job, because

a) they still have more applicants to see after you, duh,

b) they need time to hire a PI to do a background check on you,

c) they want to go home and consult their dogs first. “Wag your tail if you like this girl.”

Or whatever.

This is not rocket science. It’s common sense.

Sometimes, they take months to decide. Gasp. Just like any other job interview, you don’t say, would you like fries with that?

Another reason I don’t like to talk about auditions is because people like to follow up, as early as a day later.

One day later…

“So, did you get the role?”

I get asked the same question every day for the next ten days by different people. Sometimes by the same people.

I don’t know if I got the role! I just auditioned for heaven’s sake!

What’s with this insatiable desire to know whether I got the role or not??

Who cares? If I got the role, you’ll read about it on my blog. You’ll see me on TV. You’ll see me on film, on YouTube, on the papers, wherever.

Making me go through the same conversation a million times will not enrich either of our lives.

“So, did you get the role?”

“Yes.”

“Congrats! I knew you could do it!”

“Thanks!”

“So, what’s for dinner?”

Or…

“So, did you get the role?”

“No.”

“Oh. Well, I’m sure you’ll get the next one.”

Yes of course I will get the next one! I just don’t need to go through this conversation two hundred times a month!!

Another thing is, it’s very unpleasant to talk about failure. In showbiz, they say that a 20% success rate is the standard.

You must understand that actors go for auditions all the time. Sometimes every day. Sometimes three or four times a day. And, sometimes, a thousand people are gunning for the same job.

So, a 20% success rate is pretty golden.

But, on the flip side, it means that you have to report failure 80% of the time.

And you’re reporting failure a lot because your friends won’t stop asking you, “Did you get the role?”

I repeat, it’s very unpleasant to talk about failure. Or be reminded of it.

I don’t want to have to say “No, I didn’t get it,” eight out of 10 times, you understand?

So, anyway, I haven’t gone for an audition in months because I’ve been busy with my new media work. But I went for one on Thursday and I will talk about it soon. Just don’t ask me whether I got the role.

Because I don’t know.

Ghosts are in the air… this month

- Sheylara 16 Comments

I never used to know (or care) when the Hungry Ghost Month came unless someone specifically bugged me about it.

“Be careful when you go home tonight, there are ghosts wandering about.”

“Be careful in the toilet, don’t talk to anyone in there in case they’re a… you know…”

“Don’t look now, but I think there’s someone behind you…”

I hate you people. Go scare someone else.

I’d been scared to death of ghosts since watching The Ring in 1999, refusing thereafter to watch another horror film or listen to anymore ghost stories.

But the good news is that I kind of lost this irrational fear after (ironically) starring in a horror short film last year.

My director Jon made me watch several Japanese and Korean horror films for research and I survived those and the filming. I felt reborn after that. I could watch horror films again!

Otherwise, I would not have attended the screening of A Month of Hungry Ghosts last night.

I’m really glad I did now. The screening was part of the Golden Village Blog Aloud series, in which audiences get to interact with film directors and ask them questions about the film.

Of course, I only found out during the show that A Month of Hungry Ghosts isn’t exactly a horror film. It’s a documentary of the rituals and lives of very interesting individuals for whom the seventh lunar month is particularly significant.

There’s a touching account of a woman who has lost both parents and a son, so she religiously burns offerings for them every year.

There’s a young and pretty getai singer who’s been performing for spirits during the seventh month since she was six, whose parents have turned her getai singing career into a family business.

There’s an old wayang (Chinese opera) matron who relates anecdotes of her profession and her encounters with spirits during the seventh month.

The film crew also followed SPI investigators into sinister discoveries.

In the 99-minute documentary, you will be touched by the tales of these people and you will develop a new respect for this age-old Chinese tradition which you’ve always conveniently brushed off as a silly and annoying superstition.

One tale which particularly haunted me was of this woman who unknowingly placed her infant son on a table used to offer food to spirits duing the ghost month.

The next day, the baby’s body turned black and he died. Apparently, the spirits thought that her son was a sacrifice. Actual documented photos of this are shown in the film.

I cannot recommend this film enough.

I didn’t find it scary. Some parts are maybe kind of eerie, but I would use the words interesting, shocking, touching, delightful and inspiring to describe the film.

I was at first disappointed because I was expecting to be scared, since we were watching it on the first day of the Hungry Ghost Month, the day when the gates of hell are opened and all manner of spirits are allowed to roam our land among us uncontested.

But then, I was quickly drawn into the colourful narratives which revealed a wealth of information and surprises that my mind hungrily feasted on.

The Goonfather was simliary impressed and fixated on the film, although that didn’t stop him from trying to scare me halfway through.

There was a scene in which wayang and getai professionals explain why they always leave the front-row seats empty during performances.

The seats are for the “good brothers”, they say earnestly.

Apparently, if the seats aren’t kept empty, things always go awry during the performance.

At this point of time, the Goonfather leaned over to whisper to me, “The seats in the front row are empty. Got ‘good brothers’ watching the movie with us.”

I peered over at the front-row seats and shot back, “No lah! There’s one guy sitting on the leftmost seat in the first row.”

“Uh oh, I think got something sitting on him.”

Idiot.

At the end of the film, though, when director Tony Kern and producer Genevieve Woo came in to the theatre to take questions from the audience, they confirmed that they had indeed deliberately left the front row empty for the “good brothers”.

I wonder who’s the brave guy who sat on the corner seat.

The director also shared with us his encounter during a jungle excursion for a spirit-invitation ritual, where he almost got possesed by spirits. You can read about it in this TODAY report.

A Month of Hungry Ghosts doesn’t have the most polished cinematography and editing which you’d expect of a, say, Discovery Channel documentary, and the film starts off a bit sluggish as it establishes Singapore as a “world-class centre of business and culture” (as cited by the wiki page for this film).

Foreigners might find this of interest, but Singaporeans will probably be wondering when the scary stuff is going to happen.

But once the film is done with the expounding, you get taken on a surprise ride from which you won’t return the same.

A Month of Hungry Ghosts premieres at Golden Village on August 7.

Also, check out the Golden Village website to find out more about the Blog Aloud series. Next up is Money No Enough 2 from August 5 to 7. Watch the film before the official premiere and meet director Jack Neo to find out more about the making of his movie.

Today is the second day of the Hungry Ghost Month. There are 28 more days to go. Be mindful.

Almost addicted to smoking

- Sheylara 15 Comments

Being an actor gives one the license to do all sorts of naughty things.

So, that’s gonna be my line the next time someone asks me (for the umpteenth time) why I decided to become an actress.

Some of the “naughty” things I’ve done in the name of acting:

  • Push someone into the Singapore River
  • Dance in a graveyard
  • Drink on the job
  • Do a mock strip tease
  • Slap someone
  • Kiss under a fountain
  • Scare an unsuspecting public with ghostly makeup
  • Blow cigarette smoke in someone’s face
  • Yell at someone older than me
  • Tell a lie in court

I don’t know why anyone wouldn’t want to be an actor.

Of course, then again, one would have to be able to take all the shit as well as the fun.

Example of shit:

Long waiting hours between shots, sleeping in all kinds of weird places because there is nothing else to do.

This isn’t an extreme example of shit but I’m not really going that direction today.

I promised to tell you what this guy was doing to me, some time back.

Only one person got it right. Mince Pye said, “Sound technician installing your wireless mic?”

Yes.

The wireless mic usually goes under the clothes, around the chest area. But, for some reason, my wardrobe during that shoot kept causing a lot of sound disturbance, so this one time, the sound guy decided to hide the mic behind my ear, where it could be covered by my hair.

He went a bit overboard with the tape.

The mic was held in place by surgical tapes because the sound man’s gaffer tape had mysteriously disappeared (again, he claimed).

On the first day of the shoot, the mic was placed inside my hat, just above my forehead where my hairline is.

It wasn’t done nicely the first time and the gaffer tape stuck to my hair and refused to come off. I had to pull off quite many strands of hair in the process.

Ouch.

Well, I generally have no problems with losing hair, but it’s painful when done forcefully.

My co-actors didn’t have any mic woes like I did. Their clothes didn’t mess up the sound, so they had their mics in the regular spot.

I had my long smoking scene that day.

(No smoking photos because, like I said before, I don’t want to glamourise smoking.)

The smoking scene was done in a big, beautiful house.

Smoking in style.

Me taking a photo of myself on the screen:

There was a scene in which I had to enter the house with two bottles of beer. We did many takes of that, so I had to spend many long minutes waiting outside the door.

There was nothing to do but camwhore. I set my camera on timer and did a self-photoshoot.

After years of experience waiting on the set, I’ve developed several effective ways to entertain myself, besides sleeping.

The smoking scene didn’t happen till late at night.

It was a very long scene. A five-minute scene done in one shot. That means there had to be many takes to get it perfect, because if there was even one small mistake anywhere in the five minutes, we had to do it all over.

I was literally chain smoking that night as we did take after take.

By my fifth cigarette (although I didn’t have to smoke each stick all the way), I started feeling high.

It was a nice sensation, actually, my first time experiencing it. Thoughts running through my head:

“No wonder people get addicted to smoking.”

“Oh, no, am I going to be addicted, especially since I hang out with smokers?”

“Hahahahahahaa!”

That last one was me feeling happy and giggly from the smokes.

I lost count of the number of times we redid the scene. By my 10th or so cigarette, I started getting seriously giddy, like I had drunk too much alcohol, which actually kinda helped because I was supposed to be partially drunk in that scene.

But after way too many cigarettes, I started feeling not very good. My hands turned cold and I felt like I might break out into cold sweat any moment.

By about 1:30 am or so, we finally wrapped. I grabbed a cab and felt sick all the way home.

When I got home, I complained to the Goonfather, “I’m going to die.”

He informed me that I was suffering from nicotine overdose and asked me to drink a lot of water to dilute the nicotine.

I was nauseous and giddy and just generally horrible. So I cooked a packet of instant tom yam beehoon because I always feel better after eating something sour when I have a hangover.

After the tom yam, the nausea got a teensy bit better, but I still largely felt like shooting myself out of misery – https://www.nafsiyat.org.uk/viagra-online/.

The next day, when I finally felt normal again, I decided that the sickness was a blessing in disguise. It had totally turned me off smoking. The ordeal I had gone through had given me a huge distaste for smoking.

But still I love being an actress and doing things I otherwise wouldn’t get to do under normal circumstances.

I think it’s an interesting way to live, anyway.

Call me the Aids girl

- Sheylara 5 Comments

The first time I got Aids was in the year 2004. (Technically HIV, but Aids is easier to say.) I was cast in a student short film as a wilful teenager who runs away from home to be with a bad boy who gives her Aids.

The shoot was cool because it was my first time getting Aids. And the first time, they say, is always the best.

The second time, I gave myself Aids.

In May 2004, I was conned into taking part in the Channel U reality TV show, The Next Big Thing.

During the qualifying round, I had to perform a three-minute gig of my choice. I wrote my own monologue and performed my own song. I guess I was inspired by the work I did in that student short film, so I devised a performance about a girl who gets Aids.

That performance was very well-received.

After that, I had to wait a whole year before getting Aids again. My third time was for an educational video commissioned by the Health Promotion Board.

I played this girl who gets picked up by a handsome bloke at a party. After some idle talk, we proceed to make out in a quiet room but, before we can get too deep into it, I get a vision in my head of myself getting Aids and crying hysterically. That, of course, puts a damper on the festives so I ask Mr Handsome to get lost or else.

By this time, the novelty had worn off. I was sick and tired of getting Aids.

But, last month, I was offered a leading role in yet another educational Aids video by the HPB. I couldn’t reject this one because the production house had done some high profile work and I thought it would be a good idea to work with them. Besides, the video was to be made like a TV drama so that’s cool.

Of course, the fact that I was asked to play an 18-year-old made the decision easier. We don’t often get cast as 18-year-olds, do we?

May, the stylist, gave me curly hair for some of the scenes (at the director’s request) without making me look older, like how curly hair always does to me. She’s wonderful, and I enjoyed playing the role very much.

I had the pleasure of acting opposite Louis, an actor whom I met last year at a very intensive acting workshop. During the shoot, we were able to connect and understand each other very well as we applied what we had learned together.

It was an amazing experience and I don’t regret doing it, never mind being typecast as The Aids Girl or whatever. Who cares.

But I think that’s about enough times. People are going to start wondering why I keep getting Aids but I’m not dead yet.

No, wait. You know what?

Cast me in a feature film as the Aids girl next. I’ve gotten it before and I’m really good at it.