would-be career

My acting/modeling career never really panned out in Japan.  In 2015 there was the Marie Ueda video, and the photo shoot with the Kimono Queen and...that was about it.  To be fair, I didn't pursue it with any passion.  I suppose I thought jobs would magically appear on my doorstep.

This 5-year work drought recently came to an end when my friends at be-kyoto gallery approached me about a new project.  They wanted to do an English language instruction video.  I thought, enh...I don't know.  I'm an artist, not an English teacher.  And there are a million English instruction videos out there.  Okay, I said, if we are going to do this, it has to be different - no classrooms or blackboards (or whiteboards!), no textbooks, exercises or quizzes.  

After mulling it over for several weeks the project began to take shape.  Let's make a super short film!  We had no budget so we would have to be creative using the gallery space, a wonderful 200-year-old machiya, and our own talents.  I wrote several short scripts and did some Monty Python-esque animation.  Uchiyama-san easily took the role of cinematographer.  Okamoto-san became the reluctant but charming leading lady.  And Okamura-san was brought in as editor and advisor on all things technical.  Shooting and editing took another several weeks.  Finally we ended up with this, a breezy sketch that doesn't take itself too seriously, but nonetheless hopes you learn some English (er…that is, if you don't already speak English):