"Hatchet original Parry Shen returns to play the brother of his character from the original, and in doing so properly hams it up, but in the most charming of ways." - Cinemaroll.com

"Parry Shen also returns from the first film... which will nonetheless guarantee a few laughs as he demonstrates yet more of his fascinating array of terrible accents." - NefariousFilms.com

The FULL H2 TRAILER:

Today's entry is hosted at angryasianman.com 

http://blog.angryasianman.com/2010/09/guest-post-don-scene.html

So, here we go.  

To countdown the 3 weeks until the opening of HATCHET 2 on October 1st at AMC Theaters, I've mocked up four flyers to be released each Wednesday centered around the dilemma of my character, Justin, in H2 -- finding out what happened to his twin brother, Shawn.

The premiere will be on: Tuesday, Sept 28th at the beautiful, 773-seat Egyptian Theater in Hollywood and folks can obtain tickets here.

Reviews have been great but my favorite thus far has been: 

"Hatchet 2 is to Hatchet what Aliens is to Alien"  - BleedingCool.com

H2 takes place the very next frame from where the first film left off -- continuing the saga.  So it's an amazing coincidence that the distributors of H1 have released the H1 Blu-ray just in time yesterday for everyone to brush up on the back story in full 1080p!

H2 is the first genre film in 25 years to be in theaters unrated -- so the fact that the AMC chain is behind it, is awesome.

Below is an excerpt of the new commentary on the H1 Blu-ray that delves into the ridiculous problems we've run into with the MPAA ratings folks.  It reveals why we were forced to find an alternative this time around instead of accepting a fate of being on limited screens and/or having a severely over-edited end product dictated by a secret society that often inconsistently and arbitrarily wields their ratings rubber stamp on a whim.

And here is the H2 teaser trailer - "Hold on... to all of your pieces":

Seriously.  I feel like it was only a few years ago before this entry.

2 more chunks of this exact time frame and she's about ready to drive.

Then 2 years after THAT, she's off to college.

Sheesh.  

As mentioned in the previous entry while researching stuff in audiophile-land, I constantly kept reading about one key component that I was missing... a pair of STUDIO MONITORS (a fancy term for speakers).  

This entry from Paul Stamatiou is stellar in explaining why monitors are a necessity for editing: How to Upgrade to Studio Monitor Speakers

Basically, if I were to just use my recording booth solely for auditions - a pair of studio earphones would be sufficient to make sure the audio was clear.  However, I have also been playing around with editing/sound effects with the SECRET IDENTITIES promo videos and discovered that without monitors, you will never hear the proper audio levels if you have several tracks.

Monitors put out a 'flat sound' and normal speakers make audio sound their absolute best.  So if it sounds like junk when you originally mix it - with monitors you'll immediately hear it and can correct it accordingly.

Whereas with normal speakers -- case in point in this SI video, around the 3:30 mark it's really hard to hear poor Keith's dialogue over the music.  And I didn't know the mix wasn't right until I basically showed it during a presentation and had to jack up the volume for the attendees.

I wound up purchasing a pair of Rokit 6's and watching/listening to stuff has been so much more enjoyable on my computer but now also I'm able to really hear the true audio mix.  So after I lay the audio down in the booth, I bring it all over to the desktop station with the monitors to edit the mix.

The first project I officially got to use them was for my sister-in-law.  She's a first grade teacher and asked if I could re-record the dated audiobook she had of "The Tale of Peter Rabbit".  She needed the pace slowed down for her students to follow along, the read to be engaging, etc.  Not knowing I had this set-up, she gave me a cute 'lil analog cassette tape to record it on (hee, hee).

But as anyone who has seen the past SI videos knows -- my favorite part is putting in the sound effects/music.  

So here's where the monitors played a vital component in making it fly.  As you can see, I've got 10 different audio tracks that I had to make sure didn't overpower each other.  One track was for the book's dialogue, one for ad-libs, one for the page-turn sounds, 3 for music, 2 for sound effects, etc (it kinda looks like a computer screencap from Star Trek:TNG).

A lot of man hours went into this because I kept going back adding more and more stuff.  So I figured I might as well share it with you guys too if you have your own kids/nephews/nieces or friend's with children that might be interested.  Plus since it includes music from GLEE, Taylor Swift, and James Horner -- so there's no way I can sell it!

You can download the audio book here (The link will EXPIRE in seven days on AUG 18, 2010 - but if you still want it after that date, you can shoot me an email at: parryshenwebsite@yahoo.com and I can send you an updated link to download it.):http://www.yousendit.com/download/aHlTL0dGUnI5eFUwTVE9PQ

The page turns are set to be read along with: The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter - The Original and Authorized Edition - ISBN-10: 0 7232 4770 6.  You can get the book here for $4.00 (.01 + $3.99 shipping).

The downloadable link will include 5 items:

1 & 2) The version WITH page turns and its artwork.

3 & 4) The version WITHOUT page turns and its artwork  

5) CD artwork.  

Avery and Kori were always listening to it when I first burned the copy for them and it's pretty rewarding when they follow along with the book.  Their favorite part they kept repeating is the ad-libbed line, "Mmm, crunchy" and "Now, that's a radish".

Anyways, tonight you can be off the hook for a bedtime story -- enjoy!

One personal project that I've been working on this summer has been putting together a recording booth in my bedroom closet.

Whenever my voiceover agent emails me a script for a video game, commercial, animated show or movie... 90% of the time I can just record it in my closet and email it back as an MP3.  It's super convenient when I have the kids and can't drive into the city.  And it's AWESOME when you can say, "I booked a job from my closet!" -- like I did with TRUE CRIME: HONG KONG and a Fruit Roll Up commercial.

But as some of you may have seen from this video -- my original setup was ghetto.  

Straight up.  

A tiny vaio laptop, my USB Blue Snowball microphone and my clothes as sound buffers.

Since I'm looking to work more in this medium, I decided it was the right time to invest in a quality setup for auditions and my own projects.

So I immersed myself for weeks into this strange, new world of an audiophile - various books/jargon/techniques/websites and sorted it all out for what I needed.

The first order of business was to get a new, quality microphone.  

The Snowball was a great and affordable mic to start with but I found that I often needed to get really close for it to pick up sound.  I wanted another USB mic so that I wouldn't need a preamp and a whole bunch of other stuff/wires that I didn't want to deal with.  Just plug it in and hit record.  Easy peasy. 

Then the key is to surround the nearby area of the mic entirely with acoustic foam - as that's the only thing picking up the sound.   Since acoustic foam is very pricey, that bit of advice was very helpful so that I didn't go broke covering the entire closet.

As for the design, I followed in theory of what this guy did but with actual wood since I needed it to be sturdier.  I used double stick tabs to attach the foam onto two light pieces of plywood. The top portion is acoustic foam attached to a piece of foam board.

I also mounted the plywood onto hinges to the wall, so that the 'studio walls' can fold back if I ever need my closet as... well, a closet for actual clothes in the future.

And a simple lanyard attached to a large paperclip holds up the material/dialogue in front of my face.

I knew from prior experience with ghetto setup 1.0, that mounting the monitor on the wall was important as there would be no room on the shelf with the keyboard there.

I made use of my old pc to record all the audio and stuck it under a little table, surrounded by carpet pads that fit under the shelf where the mic sat.  

Again, another critical feature as the fan of the computer needs to be buffered so the mic doesn't pick up its sounds.

I still can't believe it all worked out the way I had it in my head and on paper - with all the products, mounts, hinges, etc.

I did a few trial recordings but found that as I backed off from the mic to do some 'yelling' dialogue (for video games) - my voice sounded echoey despite having my entire wardrobe buffering the vocals.  

What I realized was that the sound was bouncing off the 10 ft high bare walls and ceilings.  So a friend of mine got me a bunch of mattress foam for cheap.  I cut it up with a serrated bread knife and began applying it to certain key areas around the room.  

I've read mattress foam doesn't absorb as well as acoustic foam but it seems to do the job fine for the walls (remember that the foam around the mic is still the acoustic material). 

My latest auditions have sounded PRISTINE with this new room.  

With ghetto setup 1.0, when the kids would yell downstairs or the doorbell rang -- I would have to redo a take.  Now, the mic doesn't pick up any of it. 

However, it does get hot in there during long sessions - so I need to figure a cheap and quiet solution besides the current solution, which is to do my sessions topless (ah, the perks of working from home).

I did put the old snowball mic to good use and packed it into the new mic's flight case and made it my travel VO Kit complete with pop filter/mic stands/usb cords so that if I ever get an audition while on the road (speaking at a college, on vacation, or on location filming), I can just record it in my hotel room during a free moment and never turn down a potential job.

While delving into audiophile territory, I also kept reading about one final key component that I was missing... but more on that in the next post.

Now to book something with this new setup to pay for all this!

I know, I know - I haven't updated in sooo long.  

Life just gets in the way so much these days that writing about it is the last thing on my mind.  I barely even watch TV these days anymore.

But something recently came up that I thought was pretty interesting to pass along.  It was my first entry into the topic of skin color with Avery when we were playing a board game called, "Guess Who". 

Each player starts the game with a board that includes cartoon images of 24 people with different faces/traits/accessories, etc. 

Each player selects a card of their choice from a separate pile of cards containing the same 24 images.

The object of the game is to be the first to determine the character your opponent has selected.  

As you can see, I chose 'CONNOR'.

The players then take turns in asking strategic questions to eliminate the potential tiles:

AVERY: "Does your person have white hair?"

ME: "No"

Then she would close the tiles with people who possessed white hair.

AVERY: "Is your person a Girl?"  

ME: "No"

Then she would eliminate all images of girls, etc.

Finally when she got down to her last two tiles, she couldn't think up of any more questions.

I tried to help, "Do they have different color hair, facial features, a hat, glasses, eye color?

She answered, "They're the same."

Confused, I looked at the two tiles she had remaining:

Sigh.  

I wanted to say: "Yes, honey.  They ARE the same" to keep her innocence intact.

This game should be called, "Guess Who's PROFILING?"

Valentine's Day = A box of chocolates.

Chinese New Year's = A Red Envelope.

Asian-Pacific Heritage Month = a copy of SECRET IDENTITIES: The Asian American Superhero Anthology. 

Do you have your copy yet?

If not, you're in luck because SECRET IDENTITIES is teaming up with BLACKLAVA for today's Daily Deal! And to celebrate, a lot of green screen was used for the Hot Minute Video (as seen below).

Orders received within the first 24 hours will receive a BOOKPLATE(drawn by Art Director, Jerry Ma) AND a SIGNED LITHOGRAPH of Kelly Hu and Cliff Chiang's creation, "JIA" -- free!

There are two editions to select from: An Unsigned Book for $20 OR a Signed Book for $35 (autographs and artwork on inside cover from Keiko Agena, Sung Kang, Lynn Chen, Benton Jew, A.L. Baroza, Martin Hsu, Bernard Chang and myself).

This is a deal you can't get on Amazon.  Shipping is free so don't delay as once this deal is gone -- it's gone!

Check out the deal at: www.blacklava.net

Tonight my small part on NCIS: Los Angeles will air on CBS at 9pm.

This month completes my nice little run that all began in the beginning of last December (see last entry).

Principal photography on "HATCHET 2" has been completed and will be out in limited release and then on DVD in October. 

It was a really fun shoot and I think the sequel will be akin to "Terminator 2" - a stronger companion to the first film that will delve deeper into the overall story arc.  I discuss more about the movie in this interview.

It can now be revealed that in H2, I come back as my character's (from H1) less-incompetent & showy, twin brother - JUSTIN (who the director named after "BLT" director Justin Lin in honor of hearing tons of   inspirational stories about starting out as a director from "BLT" crew members and me over the years).

H2 takes place the very next day after H1 ends.  Where Justin discovers his brother (Shawn) never came back after giving a Haunted Swamp Boat Tour the previous night and goes off in search of him.

However to help with the suspension of disbelief, I sport a new look for this movie.  Gone is the spiky hair and baby smooth face. 

And as you can see from my svelte legs, Justin wears the trendy "skinny jeans" (that my character on NCIS: LA also wears) - which were a bitch to pull on and off. 

At the end of the day, I felt like Peter Parker trying to remove his black symbiote suit (*CGR #1 - Comic Geek Reference).  I thought several times to myself, "Should go into a ringing bell tower to get these damn pants off?" (*CGR #2).
   
As with any horror movie, your death scene and how you exit the film is what it's all about -- and with mine, all I can say is that it gets messy. 

So much so that after coming home from shooting my big kill last Wednesday,  I noticed that my contact lenses were permanently stained red from all the fake blood (looking very much like the X-Men's Scott Summers/Cyclops' Ruby Quartz contact lenses - CGR #3). 

And for the sake of good taste, I won't post any pictures of what my underwear wound up looking like.

One of the highlights was working again with my stunt double, Steven Ho (he stunted for me on H1). 

Steven has recently been a staple of "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" -- doing segments where he basically kicks Conan's butt. 

But with the whole late night shakeup and NBC maintaining ownership of Conan properties like: In the Year 3000 and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog - one of the first things I asked Steven was, "Does NBC get to keep you?!?" 

But he assured me that since he was a guest, we'll hopefully see more Steven Ho afflicted injuries to Conan in the near future.  He is actually auctioning the 'Asian Baby' used in the sketches for charity here.

Also I've noticed the Twitter revolution just won't go away. 

Sigh. 

First Xanga.  Then Myspace.  Then Facebook.  And now Twitter.  And I'm the type of person that won't abandon anything -- so I keep updating ALL these things.  I've become a social network hoarder.  So if you wanna 'follow' me as I figure out this 'tweeting' business, here I am www.twitter.com/parryshen or as I think I'm supposed to write: @parryshen (I think I did that right, right?)

Then finally this Saturday, I will pop into one of my favorite colleges to run a few workshops for The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana's APAC - Seen and Heard Conference.  So sign up if you're nearby and say "Hi"!

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!