I'm Back!
Hey everyone, I'M BACK!
And it feels good to be home, although it is WAY too hot for what I'm used to.
This will be my last holiday email to fill you all in on what happened in L.A. I was living with my Aunty while I was there who has been living in LA for I think 17 years now and works in movies so she's fairly well connected. She got to setting me up with meeting people fairly quickly which was great.
The first big person (big for me anyway) I got to meet was a man called Daniel Stevens, among his best credits are Crank, with Jason Statham, and the big one, he was Hayden Christensens stunt double in Star Wars 2 and 3. So I had dinner with Anakin/Darth Vader. At dinner we got along really well which was awsome and he invited me out to a training session with him and some other stunt guys, including Chris Tuckers stunt double from Rush Hour, Eddie Murphy's stunt double, and a couple of French guys out of Banlieue 13 (District B13, with David Belle - creator of parkor). After having a fantastic time with them and recieving some good advice on some of my flippy things I also discovered that Daniel needed some help with his backflips, yes, I can out gymnastics a jedi!
Another of the really cool meetings my Aunty managed to hook me up with was with a guy who actually lived and worked in Japan and Hong Kong for most of his carreer, and worked as apart of Sammo Hung's stunt team (for those who don't know Sammo Hung was in the Chinese Opera with Jackie Chan, they grew up together and almost always help out on each others films, and so this guy had worked with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung and said that yes, it was absolutely everything I dream it to be and that it has still been the best experience of his carreer. This guy produces and stunt coordinates in Japan and asked me to send him my stunt reel and let him know when I'm next in Japan or LA .
That happened at a couple of other meetings so I have at least a few people that I'm staying in contact with by email and will be visiting next time I'm in Hollywood, Japan, or Hong Kong with the possibility of scoring some work.
Apart from meeting a whole lot of really cool people and discussing the differences in the industry between Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Bollywood and Hollywood, I did do a little bit of breaking onto sets and production lots with help again from my Aunty. In my photo's when I eventually get them online you will see a couple of cool pics like me with two of the bat mobiles, including my favourite one out of Batman Begins, and with the Weasly's car from Harry Potter. It was not always easy to take photo's though so there aren't that many from on sets, I visited Disney, but got kicked off, I visited Warner Bros and Fox and got to see quite a bit, and then just some random bits like the place where they filmed the upsidedown kiss in Spiderman which wasn't actually on the Sony backlot for some reason but apparently that happens a lot. I was wandering around most of these places trying to find someone filming something stuntlike but unfortunately not much luck there, I wandered through a couple of the ER sets and then ran into them filming Gilmore Girls but alas, the Gilmore Girls were not set on fire.
Anyway, that is probably the most exciting parts of my LA visit, I'm sure I'll tell most of you about it in person in more detail anyway, but for now, I'm back in Aus and have been to the beach at least once, it's fantastic to be back at training too.
And it feels good to be home, although it is WAY too hot for what I'm used to.
This will be my last holiday email to fill you all in on what happened in L.A. I was living with my Aunty while I was there who has been living in LA for I think 17 years now and works in movies so she's fairly well connected. She got to setting me up with meeting people fairly quickly which was great.
The first big person (big for me anyway) I got to meet was a man called Daniel Stevens, among his best credits are Crank, with Jason Statham, and the big one, he was Hayden Christensens stunt double in Star Wars 2 and 3. So I had dinner with Anakin/Darth Vader. At dinner we got along really well which was awsome and he invited me out to a training session with him and some other stunt guys, including Chris Tuckers stunt double from Rush Hour, Eddie Murphy's stunt double, and a couple of French guys out of Banlieue 13 (District B13, with David Belle - creator of parkor). After having a fantastic time with them and recieving some good advice on some of my flippy things I also discovered that Daniel needed some help with his backflips, yes, I can out gymnastics a jedi!
Another of the really cool meetings my Aunty managed to hook me up with was with a guy who actually lived and worked in Japan and Hong Kong for most of his carreer, and worked as apart of Sammo Hung's stunt team (for those who don't know Sammo Hung was in the Chinese Opera with Jackie Chan, they grew up together and almost always help out on each others films, and so this guy had worked with Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung and said that yes, it was absolutely everything I dream it to be and that it has still been the best experience of his carreer. This guy produces and stunt coordinates in Japan and asked me to send him my stunt reel and let him know when I'm next in Japan or LA .
That happened at a couple of other meetings so I have at least a few people that I'm staying in contact with by email and will be visiting next time I'm in Hollywood, Japan, or Hong Kong with the possibility of scoring some work.
Apart from meeting a whole lot of really cool people and discussing the differences in the industry between Australia, Hong Kong, Japan, Thailand, Bollywood and Hollywood, I did do a little bit of breaking onto sets and production lots with help again from my Aunty. In my photo's when I eventually get them online you will see a couple of cool pics like me with two of the bat mobiles, including my favourite one out of Batman Begins, and with the Weasly's car from Harry Potter. It was not always easy to take photo's though so there aren't that many from on sets, I visited Disney, but got kicked off, I visited Warner Bros and Fox and got to see quite a bit, and then just some random bits like the place where they filmed the upsidedown kiss in Spiderman which wasn't actually on the Sony backlot for some reason but apparently that happens a lot. I was wandering around most of these places trying to find someone filming something stuntlike but unfortunately not much luck there, I wandered through a couple of the ER sets and then ran into them filming Gilmore Girls but alas, the Gilmore Girls were not set on fire.
Anyway, that is probably the most exciting parts of my LA visit, I'm sure I'll tell most of you about it in person in more detail anyway, but for now, I'm back in Aus and have been to the beach at least once, it's fantastic to be back at training too.