Interests:This journal is an experiment delving into the day-to-day of one actor's path; realistically detailing all the highs and lows.
How will it all work out? Well, that's the point.
Good or bad, there's always something to be extrapolated for either future actors or the casual passerby. Expertise:Credentials/Links: www.imdb.com/name/nm0791487/,
www.parryshen.com,
www.myspace.com/parryshen
I ain't gonna lie -- 2009 has been pretty slooow acting-wise.
I'm pretty sure there was some correlation in getting my passion project with co-authors Jeff Yang, Keith Chow and Jerry Ma off the ground and into bookstores with SECRET IDENTITIES.
Although I didn't turn down any auditions, my heart/focus just wasn't on acting. Every time I had an audition, I couldn't wait to 'just get it out of the way' so that I could jump back into editing the next trailer for the book or find us another stop for the book tour. I wouldn't trade the experience for the world and I sure as heck wouldn't have agreed to sign on for VOLUME 2 if I felt otherwise.
It was the same thing the year "BETTER LUCK TOMMOROW" came out -- as you can see on the IMDB during 2003, I had no credits whatsoever because I was definitely more focused on touring and getting the word out for the movie.
But thankfully just before 2009 came to a close, I fortunately found myself doing a few paying projects (hence, making the wife happy) sampling from each major entertainment medium.
VIDEO GAME - "TRUE CRIME"
As shown in a previous entry, I've been working on a hush-hush video game project; providing the voice and motion capture work for one of the characters in the game.
The game was revealed at the Video Game Awards a few weeks ago and will be officially called: "TRUE CRIME".
It'll be Activision's biggest game to date (the average game has about 20,000 lines of dialogue, this one will have 55,000). Here's the trailer with Tom Wilkinson narrating - and that's me on the right in the wife beater (as you can see, working on a Graphic Novel for 3 years makes you ripped).
You can see/hear me at the :23 sec mark, "I just want to get along, make some money" and throwing out my Cantonese skills at the :36 sec mark.
COMMERCIAL - "BUD LIGHT"
Then the next project that came along was a hilarious Bud Light commercial with the rapper, T-Pain. Not to give away any spoilers, but it is T-Pain -- so don't be surprised to hear some AutoTune stylings from yours truly.
Look at all the beers it took to supply the party!
Interesting Tidbit: No one can be shown actually drinking a beer during a beer commercial and all the actors must be over 25-years old.
TELEVISION: "NCIS: LOS ANGELES"
Then on the same day as the Bud Light, I booked a role on TV's new #1 show, "NCIS: LOS ANGELES" (booking two things in the same day last happened to me in 1998 when I booked "Suddenly Susan" and "Beverly Hills, 90210", so a rarity). It's slated as a possible recurring character with the NCIS team -- I'm sure it'll be dependent on how well the character gels with the rest of the crew in the final product though. So, fingers crossed!
Interesting tidbit: LL Cool J is listed as his given name, "Todd Smith", on the call sheet -- just as I'm sure The Rock is 'Dwayne Johnson' on his call sheets. I was wondering what to call him before getting on set -- "LL", "Cool J", "Mr. Ladies Love"?
Nope, as it turns out... just "Todd".
FEATURE FILM: "HATCHET 2"
Then in a few weeks I will begin shooting "HATCHET 2"!
For those who saw the first one, you may recall something happened to my character that made it kinda difficult to return in a sequel -- but the writer/director, Adam Green made it happen!
This one ties in pretty nicely with the story of the first one and delves deeper into the mythology of Victor Crowley.
Juggling the Schedule
There was a lot of craziness when I booked the Bud Light and NCIS:LA. The workdays conflicted on the EXACT days in December that the TRUE CRIME folks requested me to work on.
But after a slew of phone calls, begging and requesting to move stuff around... the TRUE CRIME producers were awesome in being able to make everything logistically work out so that I could do all the projects.
It only goes to verify the nature of this business -- virtually unemployed for 11 months and then have everything slam in on the last month. But hey, it's better than being unemployed for the full 12 months!
Have a Happy Holidays & a safe New Year -- I leave you with this classic picture of Avery & Kori's experience with Santa this year!
The train wreck saga that is The Gosselins made this year's costume a no-brainer! Kim and I nabbed 'Most Creative' with this duo. It was either this or Balloon Boy (and NOT the kid from "UP!")
A LOT easier to put together than last year's -- as the weapons maker mogul Tony Stark (pre-Mark 2 and 3 fabrications, of course.)
Okay, this has been the longest gap in which I haven't posted. With all the Facebooking and Tweeting these day, it is just so much easier to fire off one sentence and be done with it.
But to catch everyone up to speed, here's what's been going on since July:
- Avery and Kori are getting bigger, ages 4 and 1 respectively. And as you can see they have already started driving (at Lowe's).
- The San Diego Comic Con was a HUGE success. We were told selling a graphic novel at our price point, averaging about 15 sales for each of the 5 days would be REALLY optimistic.
However, we averaged about 30 sales/day for a total of 153! Lots of our contribs were there to help with signings and draw different crowds with their respective fan bases. Ex: Keiko Agena brought in her female 'Gilmore Girl' fan base who would never have given us the time of day and Kelly Hu brought in the guys who were too cool for school to give us the time of day.
SECRET IDENTITIES is currently nearing its 3rd printing and we are most definetly getting the ball rolling on Volume II!
Also, amongst the thousand of people at SDCC, look at who I bump into - Jason Tobin (aka 'Virgil' from "BLT")!
- I'm providing a voice for an upcoming video game. It's all hush-hush but it will be this company's largest to date.
At first I was only syncing my voice to a video clip of the stunt person doing all the movement and interaction. But it was honestly one of the most challenging acting experiences I've ever encountered having to 'match' the intentions of my voice/performance with the physical traits that someone else provided.
And the producers and casting director could tell. So they came up with an awesome solution.
As you can see, we the actors are now suited up. The tiny nodes on our suits motion capture (mo-cap) our movements into the computer. The bar attached to my helmet has a tiny camera that records all my facial movements (as seen in these monitors) and also inserted is a tiny microphone to record my voice.
It's basically like shooting any other movie but just taking care not to bump into the other actor's face rigs or having a node fall off (which would make it look like a body part fell off in the computer) - oh, that and trying to take each other seriously in this ridiculous get up.
The nodes don't actually light up, it's the light reflected from the camera's flash. We perform in this grid and the nodes get picked up from the red lights stationed all around us. It was kinda cool to not have to worry about where the camera was because no matter where we moved, we were caught from every conceiveable angle!
- And finally, I've been secretly drawing lately.
I actually used to draw fairly frequently -- like the Sesame Street characters for the playhouse I made for Avery that I wrote about in this entry.
But man, after hanging out these past few years with professional artists for SECRET IDENTITIES, it's just humbling for a lack of a better word.
For example, imagine you're doing Karaoke with some friends and all of a sudden the cast of MAMA MIA! walks in and just gets up on stage and does their thing.
Sure, you could keep on singing and they're not intentionally trying to embarass you but it's a whole different level.
I mean look at this drawing of prize fighter, Manny Pacquiao for a shirt our Art Director, Jerry Majust whipped up because he felt like it a few days ago.
And then Cliff Chiang did this awesome tribute to the late Director John Hughes - the Teen Titans as "The Breakfast Club"!
And last week, Bernard Chang whipped up this live painting of Wonder Woman for charity at the Baltimore Comic Con.
However at the same time, it's impossible to not get inspired and WANT to draw when you see these folks in action (I witnessed Bernard draw BUMBLEBEE from 'The Transformers' for a kid while playing poker!!!)
So I thought, what have I been inspired by lately?
Well, that's easy... anything Apple. Yes, I'm taking about the Steve Jobs Cult. I am a PC to Mac convert. It started with the iphone back in May and then I dove in and bought the 24" iMac -- so that was the jumping off point for this drawing below:
The reason I chose Plastic Man as my muse is because until I get more practice in, the guy's what I call: 'Accident Friendly'.
If you're not familiar with 'Plas' -- he's a superhero that can take on the shape of whatever he envisions - the only catch is that he can't change colors or anything, so his costume usually gives him away but that's also what makes him such a fun character.
I refer to him as 'Accident Friendly' because if I happen to make his arms a different length, I can simply justify it as Plastic Man intentionally making his arms uneven -- he can be anything he wants!
I mean, now looking at the final product - you can see the bottom right of the 'screen' is not as straight as the left bottom - well to that I say, "It's 'supposed' to be like that, he was in mid-shift on his way into morphing into something else!"
Well, things have been going swimmingly with Secret Identities. We sold out of our initial print run and are in our second printing of the book. Lots of professors are slowly adopting the book into their applicable courses using these lesson plans.
And last week we (SI Universe Media), helped put together the very first Asian American Comic Con at the MOCA Museum. It was a HUGE success and definetly filled a niche that was missing as almost 500 people came out to the event -- even though we had a cap of 250.
One of the highlights was filmed by MTV, where fellow SI contrib, Bernard Chang 'art battled' his studio pal, Sean Chen. As you can see in the video clip below, Bernard somehow roped me into the battle and I happened to just walk by and the camera caught my baffled reaction to the whole thing:
* EDIT: Kirin Beer is the beer sponsor. Hakutsuru Sake will be providing the Sake. There was a conflict with the Kogi Truck but in lieu, Marked 5's truck will have their truck parked outside after the event and selling their delicious Torakku Burgers with handmade rice buns! Check out their menu here: http://www.marked5.com/menu.html STOP! Before you make your weekend plans, be sure to set some time aside for "SI"!
Sapporo will be sponsoring the evening. The famous Kogi Taco Truck (http://www.yelp.com/biz/kogi-los-angeles) will make an appearance, music, desserts, a gallery presentation of original artwork from the book and silent auction.
Hear the contributors' inspirations about their respective pieces and you'll witness an original Asian American superhero created on the spot from the audience's suggestions and drawn to life in a shootout by our contributing artists on hand. The event is free and open to the public - parking is available for $6.50 in a lot located directly across the street.
Scheduled to appear : Lynn Chen, Keiko Agena, Bernard Chang, Michael Kang, Jonathan Tseui, Daniel Jai Lee, A.L. Baroza, Jason Sperber, Benton Jew, Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow and Jerry Ma.
However, if you can't make the big shin-dig on Saturday, there are PLENTY of other opportunities to catch us ALL OVER Southern California that weekend:
Scheduled to appear : Keiko Agena, Benton Jew, Jonathan Tseui, Michael Kang, A.L. Baroza, Koji Steven Sakai, Jeff Yang, Parry Shen, Keith Chow and Jerry Ma.
As you can see, it's very easy to get too big for one's britches with all these stores rolling out the royal treatment with their in-store promotions, which is why seeing something like this - a patron using our book as his personal coaster - is great to knock you back down into reality every once in awhile!
Premium
And then 
