Actors

Jenny Lee-Gilmore – Actor & Filmmaker

Jenny Lee-Gilmore - Actor & Filmmaker

This week I spoke with actor and filmmaker Jenny Lee-Gilmore about working with children, intersectionality and representation in film, and her short film Breakaway, soon to air on CBC Gem.

Acting, Producing, and Other Roles

Jenny’s start in filmmaking was not like it is in the movies. Growing up in a small town in England, she didn’t view the film industry as a viable career path. Her first exposure to it only came when she moved to Vancouver and was signed to an acting agency when she was fifteen years old. However, she had always enjoyed creative writing in school, so when she realized that she could pursue a living writing for films, she decided to apply to the Film Production program at The University of British Columbia. While there, she experimented with several different roles on set and credits the program for allowing her to “dabble and learn what you liked”. She found that she especially enjoyed producing, a position in which she continues to work. Jenny shared that while there are definitely technical aspects to this role, one of the biggest challenges she faces is being “a mediator of all the different departments and making sure everyone is feeling heard”. While acting as the liaison for so many independent bodies gives her a great deal of fulfillment, she also adds that to stay energized, she needs to balance the producing gigs she takes on with her own independent creative work as well.

Moving to her work in front of the camera, Jenny began acting when she was fifteen years old, but didn’t really find her footing until a couple years later. Much of this formative time was spent auditioning for commercials, a process in which “you never know what you’re gonna do until they ask you in the moment”. On one especially memorable audition, Jenny recalls walking into the casting room to see a casting assistant spraying Windex on a sheet of plexiglass. (To be clear, this was not a COVID precaution. Quite the opposite). Once a sufficient layer was applied, the assistant then wiped down the sheet, removing a series of lipstick marks from the glass. Jenny was then instructed to “shove your face on this plexiglass and try and make this kid laugh” who was sitting on the other side. I didn’t ask Jenny what product they were trying to sell, but I’m pretty sure it was either midcentury Dutch furniture, red cabbage or Volvos. Unfortunately, she did not book this role, but it doesn’t seem to have hampered her career much (to this point).

Working as both a filmmaker and as an actor has given Jenny perspective on both sides that have cumulatively made her better at her craft. As an actor, she says that “I learned so much more about acting from directing actors” than in any class she has taken. For example, she has learned to bring her own array of options for a performance instead of trying to view the character from simply what the director would want to see. In addition, participating in the casting process as a filmmaker has helped her brush off her own unsuccessful auditions where she simply may have not been the right fit for the role. Conversely, as a director and producer, she has learned to ensure that the actors are included in the decision-making process and also recognize the vulnerable state many actors have to go to when delivering a performance.

Working with Wild and Child Cast Members

One of the first rules taught to film students is to never work with children or animals, but as we move to Jenny’s current projects we will emphatically tick both boxes off the list. Beginning with arguably the more trainable actors (animals), Jenny just wrapped her tenure on a wildlife rescue program showcasing the Marine Mammal Rescue Center here in Vancouver. As an On-Set Coordinator, she explains that by nature of the subject matter “you can’t really plan; there’s no schedule for the day” as they wait for a rescue to happen. This unpredictability kept the job engaging, as did the many, many, seals that Jenny got to interact with. As an aside, the individual taking over the reins on this process is none other than Dide Su Bilgin, who you may remember from an earlier article.

Moving on to working with children, even though Jenny only graduated from university in 2019, she has already amassed a significant amount of experience with child actors. Most recently in her short film, Breakaway, she cast a young girl named Kailee Lowe as the lead. There were several debuts to note at Breakaway with Jenny directing the first short film that she had also written, and Kailee acting in her first professional gig. Jenny says that this general inexperience is one of her favourite parts about working with children, as “they tend not to have any sort of ego or awareness of themselves,” lending themselves to giving more realistic performances.

While casting this film, Jenny had extra pressure to find a good fit for the titular role as the story of Breakaway is centred on the story of her own mother. Jenny tells me that her mother faced many barriers in the 1970s as a young, Chinese woman who was interested in playing ice hockey. Gender, class, race and other factors intersected with one another and created a narrative that Jenny thought had parallels to her own experience as a biracial woman in the film industry. This story has also struck a chord with many other viewers, as Breakaway was selected for streaming in an upcoming film competition on CBC Gem this October.

Representation in Film

A common theme throughout all of Jenny’s personal projects is her stance that “it’s really important to make things that you want to watch or would have liked to have watched growing up”. Growing up in a small town, Jenny says that she never felt that the media she consumed was representative of her personal experiences or point of view. Therefore, she feels a responsibility to try and improve the levels of representation for other individuals in similar circumstances. This also manifests in her student short film More Than Just a 1/2, which documents her experience growing up biracial. One of the few Asians she saw on screen as a child was Sandra Oh, who she ultimately had the chance to work with soon after graduating from UBC. Jenny says that Sandra certainly lived up to expectations as she “ugly cried in her arms for about five minutes”. (Hopefully, it is clear who was doing the crying and who was doing the holding). Unfortunately, Jenny adds that “I blacked out and I don’t remember any of the advice she gave me,” which will sadly be forever known to only Sandra Oh, a true Canadian treasure.

In closing, while Jenny continues to pursue filmmaking on both sides of the camera, don’t be offended if she hasn’t seen your film. Living with narcolepsy, she says that the dark confines and comfortable chairs of a theatre don’t exactly create an environment in which her attention is maximized. For this reason, Film Studies was a notoriously difficult course for her, but she adds that on the bright side, “it’s a really big compliment if I stay awake in your feature film”. Who knows if she has made it to this point in the article.

For more on Jenny, stay up to date by following her on Instagram and Twitter. Also, make sure to check out Breakaway when it hits CBC Gem this fall.

Follow A Musing on Facebook and Instagram for more content on Jenny and the other creatives in this series.

And don’t forget to check out last week’s interview with textile artist, Julie Newton.

-BF

Amanda Sum – Theatre Artist & Musician

 Photo by Olivia Pannu

This week I spoke with Amanda Sum to talk about her roles as a soccer-playing teen, a local cricket star and the upcoming recording and release of her original music.

Growing up, Amanda says that while “performance was always kind of around,” she didn’t decide to pursue this lifestyle until the end of high school. Throughout her five years there, she found herself in band and choir classes but wanted to explore music outside of these domains. After teaching herself to play the guitar, she shared some covers singing on Youtube. However, let it be known that the catalyst behind her channel “was not for self-growth, it was for me to try to impress my grade 10 crush”. I am in no position to judge, none of my attempts to impress love interests have resulted in any tangible skills. While this strategy ultimately didn’t work, she still finds value in it and “leave[s] up old embarrassing videos just to keep humble”. Despite all of these involvements and other creative endeavours, Amanda’s decision to study theatre in university largely came through the elimination of other options. She says that unlike classic origin stories, “I wasn’t blessed with knowing” that this career lay ahead.

Crickets & Wolves: Fitness in the Theatre

While attending Simon Fraser University, she received tutelage from Maiko Yamamoto and James Long, the co-founders of the experimental theatre company, Theatre Replacement. Amanda struck up friendships with both of them outside of class and even interned at their Pantoland children’s summer camp. She had many roles there, serving as someone who “tamed kids tantrums” as well as serving as someone who served lunch at noon. Last year, Amanda earned a role in East Van Panto, one of the most well-known installations from Theatre Replacement. Donning a plaid blazer with an extra set of arms, she played “Jiminy Pattison,” the Jiminy Cricket/Jim Pattison hybrid in their take on an East Vancouver Pinocchio. After three weeks of rehearsal, she embarked on a performance schedule of eight shows a week over a total of seven weeks. In addition to this commitment, she was arranging music for a project that I’ll touch on later, along with finishing her final classes at SFU. Amanda describes this workload as both a physical and mental marathon but adds that she learned a lot from this experience and was also “the most fit I’ve ever been”.

Before her time in East Van Panto, Amanda earned a role in a stage production of The Wolves, not once but twice. In the initial run (2017), she saw a casting call for nine teenage girls, a demographic that she obviously had some experience in. However, the more unfamiliar territory was that all of these girls were members of the same soccer team. Pushing any inhibitions aside, Amanda thought “I’m so bad at sports, but how fun would it be to act like I’m good at sports?”. After a crash-course on dribbling, she got the part and completed a successful, albeit unpaid four-day run. But due to the positive reviews of the cast’s performance, the show was picked up for a larger, paid, remount for the following year. Amanda said that receiving news of this was both very exciting and validating as their passion project was garnering appreciation on a larger scale. Unfortunately, as rehearsals began for the remount, and Amanda returned to the physical nature of the role, she developed a nerve issue in her foot. She says that “I woke up one day, and I thought my foot was asleep, but then it never went away”. In the spirit of athletic perseverance and something about a show going on, she pushed through without any major incidents right up to the preview, the first night with an audience.

During the preview and midway through a scene in which the cast was doing some warmup exercises, Amanda tripped and was unable to catch herself due to the numbness in her foot. She suffered a sprained ankle with half a show to go. She still had lines, so leaving the stage wasn’t the optimal solution, but neither was changing the tight blocking she had with the rest of the cast. Without many other options, she says that “it was such a team effort” to adapt as she stayed seated for the rest of the show. One small silver lining was that since her character was concussed and “always kind of out of it a bit,” the audience proved never the wiser to her static nature in the second half. However, due to her injury, Amanda was unable to return for the entire four-week run of the remount. While she initially felt “devastated” at this prospect, she was extremely proud to see the camaraderie between her understudy, her original castmates and the new team members over the successful run.

Artistic Integrity

Over the last year, Amanda has shifted focus towards her music and has been awarded grants to record and release some singles with her band later this year. While “music was always something that was like a hobby,” she found herself integrating her music more and more into her work in the theatre. She makes the distinction that she isn’t very interested in performing in traditional musical theatre, rather that she is interested in how music and theatre can intersect “without being a flashy thing”. ***jazz hands***

Due to COVID-19, her original recording date in April has been moved to July. Amongst obvious difficulties rescheduling recording time, this shift also jeopardized her dream of having an all-Asian female band. Since she was in a position to curate her own team, she wanted to collaborate with individuals who share similar experiences and values to those influencing her music. But due to the rescheduling, her guitarist was no longer available to record. To fill this need and stay on schedule, Amanda was sent a list of session guitarists; all of whom were White men. She felt that bringing one of these guitarists in for the sake of staying on schedule would be “rubbing directly against the value[s]” at the core of the project itself. Instead of accepting this as an inevitability, she rewrote the guitar arrangements to be played on a synth and is excited to have hired a new musician to join her team. This solution required much more work to rewrite and rearrange the parts, but she is “happy to do the work to make both process and product something I can stand by”.

Expanding on this ideology, Amanda derived these principles of artistic integrity from her experience in the theatre. She said that she has no desire to make generic pop songs, and wants to tell stories that are important to her. The personal aspect of this project is also unique in that “this has been the first time where I feel complete agency” in the work. In theatre, she is generally “some sort of vessel for someone else,” whereas now she is bringing her own stories, inspiration and team together to create an original product. Speaking about her body of work as a whole, she says that as a theatre artist and musician she is constantly confronting societal norms that do not necessarily line up with her own perspectives or experiences. However, she sees opportunity in polarity, and says that “when I don’t match up with these norms, that’s even more exciting”. Hell yes.

For more, follow Amanda on Instagram for updates, content, “and other performance-related antics”. If you went to high school with Amanda and would like a do-over, I’ll also link to her Youtube channel. Stay tuned for her singles later this year, but in the meantime check out New Societies, an interactive theatre game that can now be enjoyed online at 7pm on June 25th.

Follow A Musing on Facebook and Instagram for bonus content on Amanda and more!

If you missed last week, check out my interview with filmmaker, Corim de Guzman,

-BF

Kevin Saxby – Sketch Comedian

Kevin Saxby - Sketch Comedian

This week I chat with Kevin Saxby, a sketch comedian known for his features on Funny or Die and Byte. We talk about why more people should be watching horror-comedy, overcoming performing in public, and what exactly a meth circle is.

At the time of writing, Kevin has been producing comedy videos for seven years, but it took him a while to see comedy as more than a hobby. Early on in his career, he experienced relatively high levels of viral success, even achieving 25,000 Reddit views on a video titled “I Got a Moustache”. A combination of slow camera pans across Kevin’s (real) moustache, the opera music from The Matrix Revolutions, and a punchline of shaving the moustache off struck a chord with a large audience. He was 19 when he posted this video and admits that such early success may have put unrealistic expectations on himself to maintain such viewership.

Bikes, Bubble Baths, & Other Short Films

During his first year at Western Washington University, he found himself struggling to find any particular direction to pursue. Underlying his day-to-day studies Kevin said, “I was too embarrassed to admit that I wanted to, at that time, be a comedian and be an actor”. To clear his head, he decided to embark on a cross-country cycling trip from Seattle all the way to New York. I prefer a walk around the block or a decently-cold beer but to each their own. On the course of this trip, he describes bear encounters, being blown around in a storm in the middle of Montana, and relying on trespassing as a way of life. During one memorable night, he was even invited to what he described as a “meth circle” at the campground he was staying at. Despite the salesmanship, he politely declined; a decision which Kevin deems probably “a better story to tell my kids”. In between these escapades, he says that all the time by himself allowed him to achieve some clarity on his life. After returning from his trip, he decided to switch gears and attend film school at The University of British Columbia.

While at UBC, Kevin began creating content with more intention; beginning with his first short film, Bubble Bath. He followed this up with another short-film titled Tofino, alongside Colin Williams, who you may remember if anyone is reading this blog with any regularity. Kevin says that having a partner to film with is what made Tofino an especially enjoyable experience; what began as a normal trip between the two of them resulted in a film that won selections and awards at several festivals. Between these two films, Kevin materialized his long-standing passion for horror-comedy. For those who stay away from horror, myself included, Kevin argues that the “communal feeling” and emotions an audience shares when watching a horror movie together is what attracts him to the genre. Speaking about horror-comedy in particular, he enjoys that this combination is “a little bit less mainstream, and a little bit less formulaic,” to stand out from traditional horror. The interrogation of the Gingerbread Man from Shrek is far enough for me, thanks.

Byte

After completing film school, Kevin began producing more short-films and using Youtube as his primary platform for sharing content. However, he struggled with diminishing returns and the challenge of finding consistency with his views. To work more efficiently he began producing shorter videos to also post on Instagram and diversify his audience. After gaining more traction, he received a message from someone who had found him while searching the hashtag #sketchcomedy on Instagram. From this conversation, Kevin was eventually invited to become a beta tester for Byte, a platform for short, six-second videos made by the creators of Vine. Would this be a Byta tester? Byte has since increased its video length from six to sixteen seconds, but this is still an incredibly short amount of time. Kevin said that one of the biggest difficulties transitioning from traditional length to what he calls “punch line humour” is that “it’s really just enough for one or maybe two jokes,” and that it’s difficult to establish any kind of character in such a short amount of time. Kevin also says that one of the biggest difficulties he has faced is that due to only posting shorter videos, he has felt the pressure to release content on a much more consistent basis than when he was creating longer sketches on Youtube.

When he first began his partnership with Byte, Kevin released content every single day for three straight months to build, grow and maintain his following. He said that to accomplish this he developed a structure in which he spent at least 90 minutes every day in front of his computer, trying to write. Not every session was successful, but he says that “if I didn’t write a single word, that was fine. As long as I set aside that time to do it”. This discipline allowed him to stick to his content schedule over the three months, but his creative process has evolved to now be more akin to “improv with a camera”. He still posts six times a week but has found that this workflow is more sustainable. When I asked him what is most difficult about releasing content almost every day, Kevin said that like many creatives, he can still find himself “not in a mood to do anything funny,” or slip into prioritizing his work over maintaining a healthy lifestyle. He also touched on his efforts that go on behind the scenes to market his videos. Between Byte, Tik Tok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Discord, YouTube and other forums, managing these platforms alone takes up a large portion of his time.

Some of Kevin’s most popular videos share a common theme of being filmed in the public. A recent example of the difficulties that come with this is the filming of his submission to The Vancouver Quarantine Project. This sketch revolved around someone who has to cross the road but is unable to do so due to constant distractions from the environment. In the absurdity of the sketch, Kevin started “dancing, and doing pushups and spanking [his] ass” to get a variety of takes to choose from. This prompted an inquisitive citizen to ask Kevin what was going on, amongst stares from other passersby. Kevin says that he is not immune from embarrassment from filming in public, nor does he seek out attention during filming, but pushes himself to go big to get the best content. He says that you can tell if a performer is “too nervous or embarrassed to give their character 100%”, and that this warning brings him solace when he finds himself filming while half-naked up a tree.

Eventually, he sees himself moving sketch comedy to the side as a hobby and passion project while pursuing acting as his primary goal. But regardless of the medium, Kevin says that the best part of performing is that “I get to make people laugh”. Speaking about his earliest videos he says that looking back “I always knew that I wanted to be an entertainer” and is now excited to make that goal a reality. To keep up with Kevin, check him out on Instagram and Byte for new releases. For more content, he’s also on TikTok, Youtube, Twitter and Facebook. One Spotify account away from a Royal Flush.

Follow A Musing on Facebook and Instagram for bonus content!

And if you missed last week’s article with Amanda Sum, check it out!

-BF