Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Music Video and other updates

July has been a busy month. Every year I go to Evolution (A Street Fighter Tournament) and San Diego Comic Con, which takes up two weekends. This year I also tacked on a New York trip. The month isn't over yet so maybe there's time to do something else, but I'm honestly kind of exhausted. I had some huge auditions that happened as well, so I'm really excited to see what happens with those. As always I'm also writing. Currently have two shorts, a pilot, and a feature in the works. Wish I had something closer to production, but it's tough.

So a few months ago, I was contacted on facebook and asked to be in a music video. It was from a director I had never met and for an artist I had never heard of. It was a paying gig though and it would require me belting out on karaoke, which I would have done for free. Not everyone knows, but I'm a karaoke enthusiast. I really let out when it comes to Karaoke even though I'll shy away from doing almost anything dance related. I actually list karaoke as one of my very few performance skills on my acting resume. Funny enough, apparently the director told me that he cast me based on my performance in The Big Short and Hand Fart, which don't really give any indication that I would be good at karaoke at all. But good on him for recognizing my potential?

The music video was recently released. It has a press release on Teen Vogue. Never thought that anything I would be in would be featured on Teen Vogue, but there's a first for everything!
http://www.teenvogue.com/story/sweater-beats-hayley-kiyoko-glory-days


Here's the link to the video itself.


Saturday, July 1, 2017

Hand Fart as a Vimeo Staff Pick

Long time without an update, but I was kind of waiting on hearing on a few things. Lots of ups and downs lately, but this one will be focused on Hand Fart finally being released online.

It's been over a year since Hand Fart first screened and I had really high hopes for it because it's a really short piece that leaves an impression. I submitted to all of the larger festivals and even got invited to some higher end festivals, but by the end of it I had only gotten into the Nashville Film Festival. That experience was really great though and we won the Audience Award at that festival so I still believed in the movie, but we never really got into any other festivals. I was told that it was hard to program, which I suppose I can understand.

Because Nashville Film Festival was an Academy Award Qualifying festival I was eligible to submit for the movie to be a Vimeo Staff Pick Premiere. They only pick one movie a week and they usually follow it with a small write up. Unfortunately, I didn't get a staff pick premiere, but my movie did get picked as a staff pick, which is just as good. I always thought that Hand Fart would do better online anyway, so I'm glad to announce that it is now online for all to see on Vimeo. I even made this cool thumbnail for everyone.



So watch it, share it, do whatever. I think this is the greatest artistic achievement I've created so far and I hope people recognize it. I've been writing a lot and have a lot of things coming, but I hope this holds people over until then.


Hand Fart from Stanley Wong / Travis Ashkenasy on Vimeo.