Day 2 at the WWW

Today's training at the WWW was excellent, albiet tiring, and I have a feeling my back isn't going to be liking me too much tomorrow. After a super-high impact warm-up (with well over 100 people involved) I went to my first class of the morning, which was broadsword training. Right at the beginning, the teacher said, 'If you do this right, your back will be way more sore than your arms' and I guess I must've been doing it right because my back was killing me by the end of it. Compared to the action katanas I'm used to using, even practice broadswords, are made of solid steel, and unbelievably heavy. I thought this was interesting because in Japan when you do sword choreography, the swords you do them with are extremely light, and you just act as if they are heavy. (Although admittedly that doesn't always work.) In the states, they just give you a fu--in heavy sword so you don't have to fake it.

It was also interesting because when my action teacher Yuji did the sword choreography for his firm Hollywood film, Way of the Warrior, after getting back to Japan he and his team thought the director and what not where nuts for making them go through the scenes using stell practice Katanas. (And if I recall, one person was actually hospitalized because he got one of them through the thigh), but I'm guessing this is why. Out here, it's just how they roll.

After that, I had a high falls class, in which we covered 3 different kinds of falls at two different heights, but I was told that once you have the 2m height falls down

the mechanics of falling and impact absorbtion are fundamentally the same all the way up to 50 ft. Hope i can try it sometime.

After that, it was back to sword training, but this time with wooden bokken. (Simulated Japanese Katana).

Lastly, but certainly not least, was another class on knife work. This one ended with a game in which the object was the cut your opponents across the hamstring and be the last one standing. Made it into the final match in the first round, and won the second. Lost the third round because one person distracted me (arguing my cut) and another silently slid up behind me and slashed me while I was distracted. I know it's just a game, but I'm still pissed at myself for falling for it.

After that was a hilarious comedy /sword fighting show by two of the masters. It was brilliantly funny. Not the easiest day on the back, but a great day nonetheless.

The Play comes to an end...

I had my last show this week. The last one went well, and I was happy that I managed to get through all 6 shows with no major mistakes. It was also cool because at the end of the latter shows, Miki had me coming up on stage to introduce myself and give a quick kicking demo at the end roll.

In one respect, it's a relief to be done, but after living, breathing, eating and sleeping this play for the past two months, I still have a hard time taking in the fact that it's simply done. (And of course, being a musical, I can't help but continually sing all the songs in the back of my head).

Overall, I had a great time of it, and was really impressed with what a different feeling it is from working in front of the camera (but yet still so familiar ;)

I think the biggest difference is that when you are playing a character on-screen, and you 'grow into' character throughout the filming, you can't redo the scenes that you already took. As such, you may be happy with your performance of a character near the end, but still not necessarily with the earlier scenes.

With a play however, you do the whole thing, start to finish multiple times. As such, as your character develops you have the chance to really hone all the scenes you are doing. Although what I was doing was relatively simple, it was interesting to see all the different ways I could experiment, and/or improve on how I do things. It was also interesting to watch how Miki (the main actress- who had to play a character that is diametrically opposed to who she actually is) continually grew more relaxed and comfortable with playing her character Lena.

Overall, great experience.

Chuck`s first Rock and Roll Musical!! ...with Katana fight scenes (?!)

So after the success of the short film, Miki asked me to join her again for an up and coming rock and roll musical she is co-producing called AWAY IN THE LIFE. Having very little theatre experience, I jumped at the chance, and so far, it has been a ton of fun to work on.

Insomuch as I can piece together without reading the script, (all in Japanese) it revolves around the formation of a rock band with a bunch a wild characters (an old narcoleptic woman, an ex hard-ass turned flaming drag queen, and a former super-nerd... turned hard-ass). Apparently, Miki's character is based off of a really famous old school Japanese rocker who will actually make an appearance during the show. Thus far, it looks hilarious, and I wish I had some way to show it to people at home.

As for myself, I will be playing a security guard (/ninja?) and I don't have any speaking lines, and am mainly there as an extra comic element.

Initially, as I was only brought in at Miki's request, (and the director had never heard of me) it seemed like the director didn't know what to do with me. As such, for my first scheduled practice (which I cancelled another job to go to) all I did was sit there. I was barely even acknoledged by him, let alone kept in the loop as to what was going on. Needless to say, my manager, Taka was none to happy about this, and after politely politely mentioning it, I was given another practice day.

As I could understand the director`s reservation about using someone who 1) he`d never heard of, and 2) he hadn`t screen himself, I thought I`d have to really grab any chance I could get to show him what I could do. Finally, after I was allowed to join a practice, he had asked me to do a certain scene where I usher a woman off stage. Instead of simply doing as he said, I picked her up, threw her over my shoulder and carried her off-stage. It completely caught her off-guard, her reaction was hilarious, and he loved it. As did everyone else. At that point, he seemed to take a liking to me. And he started expanding my role to the point that now I'm in 4 different scenes. He even asked me to go to Osaka with them for the Kansai shows. (Which regrettfully I had to turn down because I'm working full time).

I really feel like I've melded fairly well with the rest of the cast as well, and for the scenes that I am in, we've gone past just 'doing' and has actually started 'creating'. It feels good to know that I can have synergy with an all-star cast of Japanese talent, and that they could feel so comfortable working with me (especially since my Japanese still has a way to go). My agent Taka said this musical is going to be really really big, and he will be shocked if I don't start getting a lot of work from it afterwards.

As a live stage necessarily means no retakes, it`s both a bit scarier and more intense as compared to working in front of a camera, but I also think it will be more fun, as we will have the energy of the crowd to feed off of. I`m looking forward to the challenge. Should be fun!

Sukeban Hunters Hits Theatres!

The latest film project I did, Sukeban Hunters hit the theatres in Shibuya this weekend, and I`m looking forward to getting in to theatres to check it out. After checking out the new trailers on the website, (which were head and shoulders better than the last one released for both films) and getting a glimpse of the final product, I was pleasantly surprised to see just how much more polished it looked with the sound and visual effects in place. Just goes to show you the difference between the rough cut and the final (and why a lot of directors don`t want to show their rough cut to their actors ;)In any event, I`m excited to see them both in their entirety.

Unfortunately, Im in the middle of rehearsals for my first major theatre production, and have two all-day practices next weekend, so Im just going to have to wait a bit.

Duel in Hell


Final Death Ride Battle

The Merits of Hanging in There

The director of my short film, Jorge, recently posted a raw cut of about 50% of the footage from our short film. It is all just raw footage, (and his first draft at editing) so he hasn’t done any lighting adjustments, or added in any of the ‘frills’ yet (i.e. CG for sword clashes, full soundtrack.)

Unfortuantely a camera mishap also caused us to lose a large chunk of the footage, so he was only working with what he had, but even so, it still turned out fairly well. Well enough, at least to earn me the chance to present my film ideas to at least 3 different production companies. In that respect, despite everything that we went through, and even the loss of footage, it was a complete success. Especially considering that this isn’t even the final version.

At this point, we are preparing presentation materials for 5 or 6 films to 5 different production companies (both in the states and here) giving us a total of 25+ chances at success. The flagship script for the American companies will be Hip-Hop Assassin (now tentatively called ‘Hewa’ – Japanese for ‘Peace’), while Hip-Hop Samurai will be the ‘flagship’ script for the Japanese production companies. Although all 5 of them will be action films, the submissions vary from historical fiction to sci-fi to comedy, and as all of them are being professionally prepared with painstaking effort, I’m expecting good things. The other great result of the short film is that it won me the endorsement of Shimomura-san, my longtime mentor, as action director. With 40 + films under his belt, and an international fanbase for his work, I’m sure he’ll push the limits of what we can do as well. At this point, I’m not excited to see if it can be done- I’m excited to see which one will go first.

As for the rest of the short film itself, it will also be a part of the presentation package. The loss of footage meant a reworking of the story, but the new script is great, and I think it is actually better for it. The only unfortunate loss is the fact that Masa’s return to LA means an inability to retake certain parts of the fight, and that it’s only going to be half as long as it was originally designed and filmed to be. In any event however, Jorge has shown full well that he knows what he is doing, and I have full faith in his abilities to work miracles with it. He certainly has so far.

Working title: Street Life 2009

One of the very first action projects I ever did was a short film called ‘Street Life’.At the time, I had only been studying action for a year or two, and I wanted to do it mainly as a chance to learn from the experience of working in front of a camera.

Despite the fact that I was a total novice when I made it (and believe me, it showed in my acting) it actually got quite a lot of hits on youtube, and seemed to be fairly popular. (Enough in fact that I decided to follow-up with another short one –Street life part 1 immediately after that.)

The more I trained in action however, and the better I got at it, the more I came to realize just how much I still had to learn at the time, and a few years ago, the idea of redoing it began to creep into my thoughts. At the same time though, other projects -namely ones that helped pay the rent- always seemed to take precedence, and the time just never quite seemed right to get to it.

Last year however, I was contacted about co-producing a feature film, and I thought that this was good reason to finally move ahead with the project – not as an experiment in action or acting, (as the first one was) but as one in production. I saw it as a chance to see just how well I can actually ‘activate’ my social network, put together teams of people, and orchestrate them all towards a singular end. Furthermore, despite my 4 years of training in Katana action, I’d yet to really have the chance to do it for the camera, so I thought it represented a good chance to bridge that disparity as well.

The project itself was set to be about a 15 minute film that would follow the same basic premise of the ‘street life’ film albeit in a much more complete story with (hopefully) much much better action, music, camera-work, and emotional impact. Originally, I wanted to do it with the same opposing actor, but after months of unsuccessful attempts at trying to contact him, I’d finally given up on the idea when one of the actors from the feature film, Lance Masa contacted me to tell me he would be in town for the holidays.

As Lance is bilingual, and accomplished action player and actor, and not too much smaller than I am (a serious problem for me out here) I thought he would be
great for the role. I asked him if he’d be up for it, and despite the tight time frame, he agreed.

The two weeks before filming was a fury of buying materials, creating props, developing choreography, storyboarding, script modifications, and a myriad of other things.

As is always the case in Tokyo, the biggest issue was location. As one of the tightest cities in the world (some bars literally don’t even have seats- only standing room) filming inside in most places is usually impossible, and given the Japanese propencity for order and regularity actually getting permission to film -sometimes even when you have major backing- is about as easy as sticking a wet noodle in a key hole.

Despite that though, I finally managed to find a place the day before we were set to start filming. It was on the edge of a construction site along the banks of the Tamagawa river, and according to the weather forecast, it was supposed to be sunny and warm the next day. Beyond that, as our main filming day was on a national holiday, there would be no one around. Logistically, it seemed perfect… and it would have been…had the weather been cooperative.

Instead of being warm and sunny, it was overcast, and freezing. It was cold to the point that the director had to borrow gloves to stop his hands from shaking while operating the camera. Although it was tough on all of us there, the actress I brought in, Sumie, had it the worst. She was wearing nothing but a skimpy TINY little sleeveless dress with an open back, fishnets, and high heels. Granted we bundled her up as very best we could in between takes, but she was still freezing, and our hearts went out to her.

( When we filmed the short film Yassy it was equally freezing on that day as well, but having a $40,000 budget, at least we had the benefit of massive outdoor heaters that you could run to in between takes.) Sumie remained an incredible trooper though and got through half the day, but eventually we had to stop and send her home for fear of her health.

This left myself and Masa to complete all of the action sequences in about a half a day. At least in our case, as we were doing action, we were moving so it was easier to warm up. We got through most of it, but eventually we just ran out of sunlight, and had to go back on the next (non-rainy) day available.

We came back the following Wednesday, (the last day we had before Masa had to leave Japan) and most of the morning was spent trying to obtain permission to finish filming. Finally, through some act of God we managed to pull it off, but by the time we had, the wind had picked up. It was sunnier (and warmer) that day, but with no buildings running along the course of the river, the wind down on the banks where we were shooting was twice as strong. It was nearly impossible to make any good sound recordings, and it felt like a sub-zero wind tunnel.

It was truly the coldest I’d ever been, and the fact that I was recovering from bacterial pneumonia (I think?) didn’t help. Still we managed to get through it, and get some good footage out of it.

The director said it reminded him of the filming of Apocaplyse Now. Apparently the weather and conditions were so bad for that film that what was supposed to be a 6 week shoot turned into 16 months. (Francis Ford Coppola actually lost 100 lbs in the process and Martin Sheen had a heart attack. )

As it stands right now, the project is in editing. Masa has since returned to LA, Sumie has since warmed up, and now the fate of the project rests in the very capable hands of the director, Jorge. Because some elements we had to create and/or figure out on the fly, certain scenes need may need to be reshot, and if so, hopefully we will still have time to make it out to the location one more time before Jorge has to go. (He is also leaving Japan at the end of the month to return to Holland). As Masa is no longer in the country, the prospect of having to reshoot any scenes requiring him may present some interesting dilemmas, but thus far, as a team, we’ve found a way around every issue we’ve had to face, and I’m sure we will get around that as well.

I’m still undecided on what kind of a letter grade I would give myself for my first attempt as a producer, but I guess the final product (and it’s popularity) will be the real gauge of that. In the end, if nothing else, I can say that I got what I came for- a learning experience. And it was an incredible one at that. Although admittedly, I still have a lot to learn, I did get a feel for exactly what kind of things need to be done, the kind of time frames that can be worked with, and what kind of factors need to be taken into account from pre- all the way through post-production. I found that elements such as lighting, sound, WEATHER, logistics of transporting props, location, equipment choices (note: Panasonic tapes tend to GO BLANK after filming! - not fun) WEATHER, scheduling of staff, and WEATHER, must all be carefully considered throughout the entire process. Did I mention weather?