Announcement
- Hey everyone!! Thanks for stopping by my page. I have been a bit busy lately. I have had 3 auditions lately and am lining up a few more for summer. I just got a message about a comedy show in Chicago and I am up for filming in the remake of Nightmare on Elm Street. Sorry if I haven't responded to your messages, I will get back to you.
Finally some updates here---http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2955982/
My blog
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Public Eneimes Day 0
Saturday, Jun 13, 2009 4:08AM / Standard Entry
Well I did get the call back for being in Public Enemies about a week later. I was going to be in the Aragon Ballroom dance scene. About a week before the shoot I would have to come into the wardrobe office and get fitted for a period piece suit and haircut. At the time I still had the mustache even though Formosa Betrayed was long gone.
I arrived at the office which looked kind of a mess. There were racks of clothing everywhere. Shoes stacked up over the edges of the boxes they were put into. Hats everywhere. I mean the place was a disaster. It wasn't as big as the wardrobe location for Dark Knight. They had a warehouse full of clothing and uniforms plus several semi trailers full of clothing racks outside the warehouse. In the building, I filled out more paper work before going to the back area where they had a makeshift hair salon. The guy looked at several old photos in a book and compared them to my head. Then he went to work on my head. It felt good to get the sideburns gone as they were getting bushy, plus I really dont like long hair on myself. Then he got stuck on the mustache.
There were no notes from the casting office or Mr. Mann about if it needed to be shaved off or not. The 3 people in the area couldn't make up there mind about it. Finally one of the head costumers said to leave it and if it needed to be, it could be shaved off on the set. They actually didn't have many people with facial hair at all so they thought it might be great if I keep it. I didn't care but I was hoping to get rid of it soon because I hate having facial hair,
After my cut, I met with one of the wardrobe people. She took my on a whirlwind tour of the racks going through shirts and suits. I tried on about 7 different shirts and about 20 different suits. Once we had the colour of the shirt and suit combination, it was time to work on the tie. That went easy. We had it on the second tie. After she had me dressed in the combination, I was in another dressing room and she was working on hemming my pants. She told me stories about situations while working on other films such as Planet of the Apes, Mission Impossible 3 and Sweeney Todd. She has become something of an pro working on peiod piece films. She had to run but had an assistant finish up on me.
I was making some small talk with the assistant. I was explaining how I was shocked that the woman dressing me worked on such big films. This was the assistants first gig too, she was just out of school and wound up interning on it. She was also excitied to work with her. It turns out the lady'd name was Collen Atwood. The 2003 Oscar winner for Chicago and 2006 winner for Memoirs of a Geshia both in costume design!!! And here she is designing my costume for this movie!!!!! I was floored to say the least.
She returned a little while later to finish picking out my coat and hat. Even though we are shooting in May -June it is winter in the movie. I wound up talking to her about the costumes in Memoirs and talking about how cool Kyoto was when I lived there. We only went through 3 coats and 5 hats. She took me to another section of the office to take some Poloroid pics for them when I get on set. Upon taking the pics, she though a different colour coat would work better and we went back and picked out another coat and then back again for the photos.
After nearly 5 hours in there, I came out looking something like this.
After it was finalized, I had to go back to the dressing room which was a sheet hanging over some pipes in the cieling and had an chair and racks in there. I was given a stack of hangers and some plastic bags to put my outfit into. Then a guy came in and gave me a sheet of numbered tickets and a stapler to attach tickets to the bags to keep my outfit together. On my way out of the offce I had to stop and confirm everything with one of the desk girls.
The shoot would be next week on Thursday and Friday night. It was an all night shoot. I would maybe have to go in on Tuesday night for a dance practice with the choreographer from LA. It was just waltzing and tango. Wednesday night I would get my call time and they would see me Thursday. The scene was a big club outting with Johnny Depp and all of his gang. They were celebrating and having dinner. This was also the night he met his girlfriend played by French actress Marion Cotillard.
One week to go.........
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Casting Day For Public Enemies!
Saturday, Jun 13, 2009 3:09AM / Standard Entry
Last spring I had went out for being in Public Enemies, a new film by director Michael Mann about the true life story of the notorious bank robber and gangster, John Dillinger. Johnny Depp is playing Dillinger and Christian Bale was back for the 2nd summer in a row in Chicago playing the FBI agent hunting him. The film was set in the 1930s and Mann was very set on using the actual locations throughout Chicago. He also went all over Wisconsin and Indiana for the rest of the filming. I missed out when filming started back in Feburary on getting a speaking part so I resorted to getting extra work. I did want to be a part of this project in any way, shape, or form. I was being recruited for a big ballroom scene because I did have a background in dnace from when I was younger. I finally got the call to come into the office.
It was an early call and the weather was nice that day so I wound up making a day of it in downtown Chicago. I had made some friends throught the Chicago film industry and even had a friend who worked on the hospital scene of Dark Knight with me had wound up on the production crew. Turns out that none of them could hook me up with getting on the film. The director is very very detail orientated and actually picks everyone from the main actors to even the most minor background person on his films! If you seen his previous work, Collateral with Tom Cruise and Jamie Fox, there was that shoot out scene in an Asian nightclub. He hand picked every single person in that scene!!! SO I would take some photos and fill out paperwork and then the director himself would review it.
I was instructed to dress in a suit and tie and any type of overcoat I had. They were just trying to get a visual for Mr. Mann to picture using us in the film. I had not cut my hair in a while because I was trying out for a Taiwanese film set in the 70s called Formosa Betrayed. I had a huge mustache and side burns because the one casting director wanted to use me as a cop or a teacher. The PE people were ok with it but I was told not to change anything til I hear from them. The office was located near Millinium Park which I had not seen before because it opened after I moved to HK.
It's amazing how fast this area has become an icon of the city. The bean you see at the top is the main attraction although the fountain blocks with the faces have become just as popular. Many film and tv productions started throwing this area in as well. The tv show The Beast had a scene in there and so did Leverage. The WWE promo I filmed used there too. Unfortuneatly Public Enemies could not use it.
The bean is basically a solid formed mirror. It allows for some really fun photo oppertunities as you can see.
I almost used up my camera battery taking pics of this thing. I won't bore you with all of those.
On my way out of the park, there were some cute girls promoting some new extra vent on top of a beer can.
The one girl with just bare arms next to me was actually giving me a sales pitch on a beer can!!! I laughed and told her beer is one of the few things I would not need an explaination to buy! They were very cool and gave me a little rubber squishy Coors can. It was a cool little souvenier from the day. After I left there I was hungry and only wanted to eat at one place........CHINATOWN!!!
Crazy to say but one of the things I miss the most about living in Hong Kong was I could eat Chinese food every day. I ate like a pig while I was here. Its the only place around me that I can get authentic dishes just like in HK and China when I was there.
I had to have some of my usual favorites.
Then I was off for the day. On my way out of town I went by La Salle Street. This was the intersection where I first worked as Sgt. Spellman in Dark Kngiht.
They also filmed that truck flip sequence and the bat pod chase right here as well.
Now came the hard part. Waiting for the call back......
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The 48 Hour Film Project
Wednesday, Jun 10, 2009 9:34AM / Standard Entry
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Countdown to Public Enemies
Monday, Jun 8, 2009 9:07AM / Standard Entry
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Back on track!
Saturday, May 30, 2009 9:18AM / Standard Entry
