Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Ads for the American Society of Retina Specialists (ASRS)

This gig filmed in the Chicago area in June.  It was an exciting gig, because it was bilingual.  I didn't think that my Spanish was good enough for a bilingual gig, but they booked me.

English 60 s


English 30 s


Spanish 60 s


Spanish 30 s



Age related macular degeneration (AMD) is much more common in fair skinned people, especially with blue eyes.  I was chosen for this ad, because they felt I looked like an AMD patient.  

My mom did, in fact, have this condition.  I've been told I look like her.  My poor mother had AMD, cataracts, glaucoma, and herpes in the eye.  I'm hoping that the brown eyes I inherited from my father will protect me from some of this.  She had blue eyes.

I learned from this ad that AMD is much more treatable than it used to be -- with injections into the eyeball.  While that doesn't sound so great, the ad emphasizes that it isn't as bad as you think.

The actress for the main character told me that she was particularly interested in this ad, because several of her family members suffered from retinal disease.

This ad was filmed in the Chicago suburbs.  I was out there for a personal trip and was able to combine the filming.  Here's the blog about the trip June Car Camping Trip . 

I am not fluent in Spanish, but I was able to rehearse the Spanish lines driving out to the site.  My pronunciation is good, but I found that the muscles of my face needed a workout to be able to form the words properly, especially since it was medical terminology.  My scene partner, who is a native speaker of Spanish, was very complimentary of my delivery.

#Actor #Actress #ActorsLife #ActressLife #ASRS #RetinaSpecialists #BilingualActor

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Tuesday, September 10, 2024

Updates May 2024

All sorts of things are coming out, clips are being added to the blogs listed at the bottom, as they come out.

There's an audio play called "The Count of Monte Cristo," based on the 19th century novel by Alexandre Dumas, that's starting streaming May 21 on lots of audio podcast platforms, where I play the evil Mme de Villefort. My episodes won't be out for a while.  This was recorded in the fall, director Chloe Wilson.

There's a vertical mini episode series on Short Max called "The Substitute Bride" where I have a role as a witness to an attempted murder.  The episodes started streaming May 2, but I don't know if my episodes are out.  I believe that this may be an English language remake of a series that first came out in China. Director Xiao Ying

The week of May 6, I participated in the filming of "The Divorced Billionaire Heiress" in NJ.  This is another Chinese production.  Apparently, this particular vertical series was the most popular one in China.  The director was again Xiao Ying. She told me I was the prettiest grandmother in New York City, which was very flattering.  There was a second woman there, whose full name I didn't get, who was introduced as one of the top directors in China.

It was interesting working in vertical format.  They were able to use five or six cameras at once, so there was only one or two takes for every episode. With a wide screen, they have to do these views as separate takes, because the views overlap the camera positions.  In the vertical format, there is no periphery.  That made filming much faster.

It seemed to me that older women have higher status in China than in the USA.  In the USA, the roles are commonly "older woman with Alzheimer's" or "older woman with cancer," where the primary feature of the character is that she is sick.  Here, in "The Substitute Bride," I played an important witness to a crime; and, in "The Divorced Billionaire Heiress," I played the head of a large, family business.  I appreciated getting higher status roles.  

Another difference I noticed was that the director was constantly urging me to act in the way that I've learned to call "big" in the acting world.  "Big" means really emphasizing the emotional response.  Most video directors that I've dealt with here in the USA don't like "big."  They will often tell me that I'm too "theatrical."  They want subtler portrayals.  It's been a learning process trying to suppress those "big" responses, but this director liked them, which was more fun for me.

My sister-in-law found a clip from "Mystic Tycoon" that I filmed this year, where I play the evil grandmother, Lisa.  It turns out, which I didn't realize at the time, that this production was actually a video trailer for an audio podcast series. I embedded the Facebook video into a blog, so you can watch it even if you don't have a Facebook account. I haven't recorded any audio for this series, so I guess, if the evil Lisa appears in the audio, someone else has recorded it. 

Links to separate blogs about these gigs (in reverse chronological order of the gigs.)  Some of these blogs include embedded clips or links to clips





Student film that I’m in.  Most of my lines were cut out, but you can hear me briefly at around 4 minutes https://vimeo.com/957504849

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Sunday, September 1, 2024

The Divorced Billionaire Heiress

 May 6-9 I had my first sleep away acting gig.  We were shooting a vertical format web series of mini-episodes.  This is a remake of a series that has been very successful in China.  

Here's a promotional video for the series, my part starts shortly after 19 minutes.  It's a long promotional video.  These vertical series are typically viewed in an app on cell phone.  This one is apparently called Short TV.

Thanks to my sister-in-law for finding this clip. She immediately remarked that the real "Raft of the Medusa" is 16'x24', much larger than the one shown in this clip.


Director: Ying Xiao

Production Studio: Paradox Films https://www.paradoxfilmsny.com/

Here are some set pix



The director gave me a nice compliment.  She said I was the prettiest grandma in NYC.  Swelled head. 

I bought myself a little souvenir on my own.  Part of the plot includes references to fake antiques.  This is such a one.




The team that made this series is very impressive.  Since there is vertical format, they can have multiple cameras at once, each one focused on one actor.  They only had to do one or two takes of each scene.  Normally they have a separate take for each view, but this way they don't have to take separate takes for different views.


****


Concerns:

The characters in this show are mostly very poorly behaved.  My cast mates compared this show to a series called "Succession," which I haven't seen.

Some of the characters are depicted committing crimes such as commercial bribery and conspiracy to monopolize interstate commerce.  A concern I have, as an attorney, is that viewers may not realize that these acts are white collar crimes.

If you see a murder depicted on a a show, I think you know right away that that's a crime.  You immediately know that you're not supposed to do that yourself.

I'm not sure if the viewer of white collar crimes -- as shown here -- knows that they are just as much crimes as physical crimes like murder and assault.

I wish there were some kind of warning about the criminal nature of the activity depicted.

#DivorcedBillionaireHeiress #VerticalDrama #ShortTV


Here's an Instagram post that I made about this film.

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Sunday, August 25, 2024

The orange (or red?) dress


This blog was originally posted in 2015.  I am updating it in 2024.

It relates to a possibly defunct UN campaign to get people to wear orange on the 25th of every month to protest violence against women and girls.

This blog originally started with a story about how my attempt to wear orange apparently failed, because people saw the dress, which I thought was orange, as red

Update 240825


I'm wearing an orange shirt today, but the link to the UN request to do this is now broken, so I guess I'm alone doing this.  

So here's some more up to date information.  More recently I started following Nina Aouilk on Instagram.  She narrowly survived an attempted honor killing.  Here is her TED talk.  WARNING: her story is truly horrifying.  


She is also running a group to stop honor killings.  

Here is her instagram link 

I can't find the post that I originally watched on Instagram, but hopefully the Ted Talk will give you an idea.  I don't have the courage to watch it again. 


**********

Story from the original Post

(With some edits)

This picture was taken by Gerry Goodstein.  Please note that if you click on his name you will reach his website. There is a story behind this picture.

Let us begin with the dress.  I wore this dress, because I perceive it as orange. The color here is not quite the same as the dress, because my scanner was not quite right with the colors and also I think the computer display may also not be quite right.  Gerry's picture has the right color.  The original is more orange than this.  In any case, I've found that others perceive the dress as red, even in person.  I wanted to wear orange, because it was the 25th of the month.

I've been told to wear orange on the 25th of every month to protest violence against women and girls.  

I first heard about this campaign from an attender of my Quaker Meeting.  The link to my Quaker Meeting is:  http://www.scarsdalefriendsmeeting.org/ .

So, red or orange, I wore this dress into New York City on May 25, 2015.

One thing I planned to do on that day was rehearse with Gerry. We were both in a class at the Wynn Handman Studio.  Wynn cast us in some scenes from Arthur Miller's "All My Sons," as Kate & Joe Keller -- just for performance in class.

We planned to meet at Grand Central Terminal (GCT) and find a place to rehearse lines.  Ultimately that place turned out to be an empty platform.

Aside: Just for those who don't know, the difference between a train station and a train terminal is that in a station the tracks go through and in a terminal the tracks end.  The tracks mostly end at GCT.  That's why it's considered a terminal.

We agreed to meet, as I think most people agree to meet, by the information booth in the main room of the terminal.  When I first got there, I didn't see Gerry, so I pulled out my trusty cell phone and started accessing the Internet -- probably Facebook -- and also sending him a text, telling him I was there.

While I was using my cell phone, Gerry, who is a professional photographer, started photographing me, because of the striking color of my dress.  He points out that behind me in the photo there is also someone photographing me.  He thought there were others as well.

When he took this picture, he did not realize who he was photographing.

When he started taking pictures, I did not notice, but eventually I did see him taking my picture.  I looked back down at my cell phone, because I wanted to finish something I was writing, and also figured he would want to finish his photograph.

Afterwards, I waved at him and he realized who I was.  He was quite bemused.

So, we live in a city that tourists often visit, the largest city in the country, home of the United Nations, arguably the capital of the world -- and here we were in a historic landmark -- but a striking dress still draws a lot of attention, apparently.

I am hoping that that attention might go to the campaign to end violence against women and girls.

*****

About the possibly now defunct UN Campaign

I have a link here that used to lead to information about this campaign.  This link no longer seems to work.  Perhaps they have given up on it.  It's hard to get people to focus on this issue.  It's so painful. Here's the former link to the UN website that explained this http://endviolence.un.org/orangeday.shtml.   

This is the former image from the link 


 ]




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Monday, July 15, 2024

banker madness

Some not so great photos from 2015



 

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HIstorical Media links




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Friday, June 21, 2024

Trip May 31 - June 16, 2024

 Here are some instagram posts from my extended car camping trip -- tho I also stayed indoors sometimes

Please note that a lot of these instagram posts have multiple photos or videos, so you should click through to see everything.

Mosquito Lake, Ohio


Harrison Lake, Ohio


Original Culvers, Sauk City Wisconsin



Devil's Lake, Wisconsin


Silos near Plano, IL, with weird Moiré effects


LaSalle Manor retreat center, Plano, IL




Cottonwood Campground, Lansing, MI



Straits State Park, St Ignace, MI



Oastler Lake, Ontario

There were tornadoes that night.  They sounded like military aircraft buzzing the campground.  I spend a half hour locked in a shower, because it seemed safer than my car

The next day, the ranger told me she saw, I think 3, tornadoes -- but they were all spiraling upwards.  She didn't know if any touched down.




KOA Holiday, Niagara Falls, Ontario


Niagara Falls, Ontario



Back in the USA.  Delighted to see a rest stop



Scenic Hudson Overlook, Near Bear Mountain Bridge


View from home looking very good after 17 days away



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