I was contacted on Backstage about a month ago to submit for a short film project called Warrior in the Garden. I don’t really do short films anymore as I feel I am past that in my career and short films no longer really benefit my career, but since the dayrate was decent, I decided to submit. About an hour after I submitted to the project, I was contacted by the producer, saying that I had the role. No audition. Only based on my reel. A script was sent and it was also communicated to me that the short film would be used as a conference opener for over 1000 lawyers later this year.
The shoot would be over two days and in three locations. I showed up at location one which was a small studio north of Atlanta. I had been there before back at the beginning of 2023 when I first start acting. I had done a really crappy feature film called Mummies vs Robots which I regretted as soon as I got there. Luckily they never finished it and it’ll never come out. It’s the only project I’ve done that isn’t on my resume.
The first scene was a courtroom scene and the only scene with background actors. There wasn’t any audio, so everything I said was improvised. At one point, I was just telling stories about my life and had nothing to do with being a lawyer. Two of the background actors follow this blog, so I was recognized again from something other than acting I’ve done. One day, hopefully.
After wrapping location one, we headed to the Atlanta Botanical Gardens. The second part of the shoot was outside, but luckily, it was fairly overcast, but super humid. We wrapped at location 2 around 4pm and headed to the final location.
The final location was a house that was rented for the evening/night on Giggster. If you don’t know, Giggster is an online platform and marketplace for people to list, discover, and book film-friendly locations. They booked the house for 4 hours, but we ran over time so they called the owners and asked for an additional hour, which they agreed to.
Day 2 of filming is this upcoming Thursday. Unfortunately, this won’t give me an IMdB credit, as it is basically an industrial, but it might give me some additional reel footage and, as always, some new contacts in the industry.
Simon Shih 