h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The story of my film acting debut has taken a strange twist.

As mentioned in an earlier episode of my Journal, I took a role in a short film being produced by a media student friend of mine as part of her University coursework. The theme of the film is adult illiteracy. I play a man who goes into a car showroom, sees a car he likes, and tries out a few of its features in the showroom, with evident pleasure. He is approached by a salesman, and looks ready to buy - until the salesman produces a contract for him to sign. At that point he panics and flees, because he can't read and so can't understand the contract.

A few weeks ago this poignant drama was filmed in a Bradford car showroom. A real employee of the showroom portrayed the salesman. He had a couple of lines to say - I had none.

Unfortunately, when my friend played back the recording, she found that there had been too much background noise in the showroom, and the soundtrack was unusable. Obviously feeling that she couldn't expect the car salesman to go to the University sound studio for a recording session, she instead looked for an actor to dub on the salesman's lines. I volunteered to help out again, and we did the recording last week.

I understand that it has all come out pretty well now, and I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product. But I suspect that it's going to seem pretty odd for me and and anyone who knows me, seeing a film in which one character has my body and the other has my voice!

that is quite funny, it's cheered me up quite up quite a bit, thanks!

That sort of reminds me of something........

I now have a time and place for the film's public debut, on the big screen at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television: 14:10 on Friday, as part of this event - http://www.eimc.brad.ac.uk/show2004.html .

Later on in the same show is an animation, 'The Perfect Witness', for which I and a couple of my theatre buddies provided the characters' voices. So I'll get to see myself on the silver screen once and hear my voice coming over the hi-tech cinema sound system twice!