I love me some green screen. Yes, indeedie! It offers limitless potential on creativity and has probably been used in a third of all my favorite films. Why do I bring this up? Why write about it? A couple reasons.
First, because the rest of my blog ideas are Holiday related and, unlike Madison Avenue, I want to hold-off until all my Halloween candy has been eaten.
Second, because an episode of Charmed I was on years ago is re-running next week, yet again. It got me thinking about why I still dig it so. My role was small and not significant. I kinda walked the line between effete gay man and anal retentive executive. But there’s one thing I got to do that tickles me pink: play on green screen. It’s a simple thing that unlocked all my Star Wars fantasies. Except I was just turning into a pig.
It was actually 20 minutes of work at the end of the day. Get on all fours, snort, get up and go home. Yet, it was swine bliss.
I got a triple whammy of sci-fi geek-bliss when I was cast on Star Trek: Enterprise.
The first joy was spending two hours in make-up every day to become a Denoublian, including fake chin and creepy contact lenses!
The second was sitting in a shuttle and “rocking” back and forth as we were being shot at by a patrol ship.
And, of course, the third was scurrying on all fours across a green floor – later to be turned sideways so I was climbing up a cliff. I giggled like a little boy at the end of those shots.
[Sorry the quality is so bad. Climbing is around 1:45.]Sadly, no one has hired me since for green screen fun. But I’m not one to deprive myself of the green scream. I made two very silly music videos on green screen years later. The first was a “$600 for 2 hours in a studio” blast…
And it birthed The 80’s Man. Feast on my spandex, dude.
The second music video was shot for free at a friend’s house with a small green cloth attached to a book case! (When you need a fix, man, you’ll take it anywhere you can get it.) We made it for the kids of our good friends, Ben and Kathleen. Since it contains inside jokes and an animated fart, I’ll just link to it!
The last time I fed the green screen beast was for The Crooked Eye. You can the see the trailer here: IndiePix, as well as stream it on-demand (worth it!). But the behind the scenes video gives a better look into this terrible disease and how it can tear a family apart… Huh? Wait. Rather, how it can bankrupt a character actor.
And this brings me to the point of this blog post: Begging. If you’re in the industry and are working on a green screen project, won’t you pull a few strings and get a character actor like me a quick fix? I swear, I’ll get clean after one last green screen shot. C’mon, man, do a thespian a solid!
Personally, it’s not easy not being green… Perhaps I should’ve been a weatherman…
[This is part of a series – Love Letters]
