ChamberMade

Isolation

This is the indie project I am invovled in as an actor.  The orignal shoot was in Aug of 2004 at the 501 Studios in Austin with a few additional night shoots at Austin Studios.  The brain child of indie filmmaker Oklahoma Ward, it's a stylish sci fi thriller set in a bunker hundreds of feet underground where a child prodigy and his handler work in isolation on the cure for a virus that has decimated the surface population.  It soon becomes clear that both are there against their will, controlled by an unseen authority that provides for all their physical needs.  But the boy needs emotional connection, which the handler refuses to provide.  When the boy finds it on his own, without telling the handler, a crisis ensues.  Shot on HD, the project was rough cut and shopped around LA.  LA wanted more. So, Oklahoma reinstated a portion of the script he had cut and we're off to shoot it outside of Tulsa from August 23 to August 30.  It was a meaty role for me and it forced me to shut down many aspects of my personality to play the cold, nicotine/caffiene-addicted power freak handler.  So it will be fun to take him up again, though it means dealing with cigarettes again. I found some non-tobacco cigs to use so I didn't have to worry about addiction myself, but I was still smoking like a chimney for 16 days.

Here's the project website.

Six Man, Texas

Hola folks,

I'm Tom Chamberlain and I've been an actor and filmmaker in Austin since 1990.  The blog name, ChamberMade, is also my production company's name.  The title of this entry is the title of the documentary film I'm helping along in the birthing process.  It is the brainchild of Alan Barber, who is much better known in the decorative tile industry (Architera), but has put a tremendous  amount of time money and effort into making this project happen. 

Six Man, Texas is the story of the small towns in Texas that play the 6-man version of the national sport of Texas and their struggle to survive in a world whose economic realities seem to work against them.  Alan and his partner, Laura Toups started this project in 2000 and last year, they brought me and editor Mike Scannell on board to help figure out where the movie was and what else needed to be done to complete it.  Almost a year and maybe 30 t0 40 more hours of tape later we were able to craft a first assembly from the 150 hour total with the help of assistant editor Dipu Bhattacharya and submit it to Toronto and the IFP.  Mike is in the process of refining that first cut into a rough cut, while the rest of us are putting promotional and publicity materials together.  We hope to have our website up within a week www.sixmantexas.com.

Later, I'll post about my latest acting gig and later than that, about my past credits.

Here's my imdb.com  page if you can't wait.

More later.