Author: Heath

Over the weekend I was in a film for the International 48 Film competition. This was basically the next round for the guy who won the last round of the (not international) 48 Hour film competition. The deal is basically this; Friday night you get assigned a genre, and are give some details you have to incorporate. For example, Friday night, Rimas, the director, found out that he had to make a comedy that involved finding a briefcase full of money in a public place. There had to be a character named “Earl Frickle, Chair, Board of Directors”, and he had to have the line “Will you meet me later?”
Friday night, Rimas and his cohorts came up with the concept for the film. I met them Saturday morning in a park on a gray and freezing day to act in it. The cut they submitted for the festival is now online, but Rimas is going to put up a “Director’s Cut” later with a bunch of stuff he had to cut out due to time. I’m quite happy with it! Can’t wait to see the longer cut though. We filmed a lot of stuff that’s not in there!

Yesterday I started my gig with Compass Learning doing videos and voiceovers for the educational software. It’s aim is to be fun, funny and educational. They’ve brought together a small group of us to do multiple characters/voices as needed. Yesterday I played an exceedingly cool guy who LOVES to graph things mathematically. To quote my character, “I once made a graph out of leftover graphs to graph how much I like graphs.” It was a lot of fun, but MAN was I glad there was a teleprompter! I am not a math person. I don’t think there was any way I could have memorized all the gobbledegook about functions, compositions, formulas and “F of X”, “G of X”, etc.
This project has made me discover some new talents though. Apparently I can just spontaneously read things off a teleprompter but sound like I actually know what I’m talking about and do it in character. They seemed pleased at my performance and I felt good being appreciated for my creativity and skills.
I got a call last night to see if I could come in today for another piece. I, of course, said yes and today was even more fun. Me and one of the other cast members named Danu were to perform as infomercial hosts…as sock puppets. When the director told me that I told her that strangely enough, I have sock puppet experience.
Just like in my previous sock puppet experience, I once again found that I seemed to be a pretty natural puppeteer. I enjoyed expressing things through a puppet. It’s a whole different experience and skillset. My favorite moment was when they had me voicing my puppet (with an appropriately cheesy infomercial host voice) and simultaneously voicing a robot who would be put on screen later by the graphics team. The dialogue was very quick in some parts where I would rapidly be switching between the characters and having to remember to only make the puppet talk for one of the rapidly alternating voices. It was a blast. Danu and I had a great rapport and brought a lot of our own improvisation to the performance that the crew loved. At several points the crew were having to hold their mouths to contain their laughter so as not to ruin the take. I felt so in my element and like I really brought it. Everyone, including me, seemed really happy at the result and at how quickly we got it done. There was a lot of long tongue tripping dialogue (this was a science piece about conversions, and scientific accuracy and process) but we breezed right through it.
I went to lunch with Jess and Staci and then headed home for a nap before my second gig of the day. The guy who runs the murder mystery dinner theatre troupe had hired me to go to a private party event. Interestingly, it was a one man show. I was given all the details of the plot and I showed up at a house where 30-40 Dell employees were having a dinner party. I pretended to be with the catering crew as I mingled with the guests, putting on an Italian accent and generally being an over top, slightly obnoxious character. Only the party planners, the “killer” and the catering crew were in on it. I pretended to be kind of pushy with one of the employees (who would turn out to be the killer) and generally just made a scene with my silly behavior. I then pretended to take ill (I had been eating the food and drinking on the job, as well as complaining that the water tasted strange), and ran outside. The owners of the house pretended to call for help. I then came back to the party in a trench coat and wig as “Lt. Calabro” of the Austin Police, doing my best Columbo rip off. I made a scene, told people that my previous character had died and that someone at the party was the killer. After some investigation I “found” a stack of copies of a riddle the killer had left, obviously toying with us. The riddle gave clues to the killer identity, who turned out to be one of the Dell employees (who was in on the plot, obviously). It was all quite unusual and a lot of fun and everyone seemed to enjoy it.
Coming up, I’m doing scenes from “Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang” and “The Princess Bride” for some UT directing classes, as well as ongoing sessions with Compass Learning for the next six months, more short films, murder mystery dinner theatre shows, probably a bunch more things I’m forgetting and anything else I get my creative claws into! I’m a working actor! It’s still kind of hard to believe.