Chapters tells the story of a burned-out teacher who re-discovers the reasons he became a teacher in the first place by reaching out to some students in trouble. Robb Hudspeth plays the teacher, and I play a kid who’s being abused by his dad — one of the longest scenes in the film is me getting tossed around a parking lot and thrown into the backseat of a car. Pretty intense, but the shoot was a lot of fun. We filmed at a huge high school in Plano, Texas.
Sorry I haven’t posted in awhile. 2017 has been busy!
So far this year I’ve finished two film roles, gone to New Orleans on the weekend before Mardi Gras for a gig I can’t talk about yet, and picked up a new musical skill almost by accident. And I got the flu — even after I had a flu shot, which I hate — and have been busy with school, too.
I worked several days on a film called Chapters, about a teacher who starts out ignoring his students but winds up helping them. Robb Hudspeth played the teacher, and I played Grant, one of his students who keeps showing up to school with bruises and black eyes from the beating he gets from his father. Robb took the black & white photo at the top of this post. He was super cool to work with.
We had to film part of it at night, because we were using a classroom at Plano East Senior High School. One scene we shot was the one where Grant’s teacher confronts his dad about the way he treats Grant — that was a pretty intense day. I spent most of it getting thrown around a parking lot or thrown into the backseat of a car. But Robb got thrown around some, too. Can’t wait to see it.
The other film I did last month is called Esperanza Road. It’s about a Latina girl who wants to be a singer, and is set in the 1970’s. I’m a musician in a garage band that rejects the would-be singer. Here’s a link to the teaser. I don’t have any lines in the teaser, but I like it anyway. (A teaser is like an extended trailer that independent filmmakers use to raise money for a feature film. They can be anywhere from 3 to 20 minutes long. This one is just under 6 minutes, and I come in during the last minute.)
it’s based on the real-life story of singer/songwriter Analisa Thirwall. She came to the set while we were shooting and we got to meet her, so that was cool. The director, Joe De la Fuente was great to work with, and so was the rest of the cast. I was glad to meet Cody Ray Lee — he’s a great guitarist and actor, and we have the same agent, but I had never met him before. So this was a fun gig!
This is the first film where I actually got to play guitar on camera — except we needed a bass player, so I had exactly 10 minutes to learn the bass part, and I’d never picked up a bass before. It was so much fun! Cody Ray Lee, another actor from Linda McAlister Talent, plays lead guitar.
I’m having a lot of fun with the electric guitar I got at Christmas, but now that I’ve tried playing bass, I think I am going to try to master that skill, too.
Bet you can’t guess what the commercial in New Orleans was for from the picture below! Yes, I was filmed juggling machetes while blindfolded, but the product has nothing to do with circus. It was so windy that it was hard to juggle even heavy knives, especially blindfolded. But I didn’t drop while they were filming.
We saw the Krewe of Endymion’s floats, parked by the entrance to Old City Park for one of the biggest parades. KISS was the headline act for Endymion this year — wish I had gotten to see the parade and the KISS concert! But we didn’t get the call about the gig until Thursday afternoon for a Friday shoot, and there wasn’t a vacant hotel room anywhere in Louisiana or southern Mississippi on Mardi Gras weekend. So we just drove home after the gig.
it’s usually 7 to 8 hours from our house to New Orleans, but we finished the gig and started home at 4 o’clock on Friday and didn’t make it home until nearly 3 am on Saturday. What a long day! But anybody who thinks being an actor is all glamorous and fun is forgetting about the hard work and long hours! It’s still the best job a kid can get, though.
This is me before a shoot in New Ozrleans, sitting on the steps of the New Orleans Museum of Art (NOMA), in City Park in New Orleans. It was the Friday before Mardi Gras, and the city was packed with tourists. All the parade floats for one of the Mardi Gras parades were parked at the entrance of the park, and the park was filled with people. It was a gorgeous day in the low 80s, but it was pretty windy. I wish we could have stayed for the parades, but there wasn’t a vacant hotel room anywhere in Louisiana that night, so we simply drove home to Texas after we were finished for the day. What a long, long day!
Kameron Rie Badgers 