So remember that Diversity Day video we made in 2014? Apparently it got shared with the State Coordinators of the Maine Civil Rights Team Project, where it was a big hit! They were quickly reaching the anniversary of the project and wanted to commemorate it with a big recruitment video. According to them, they talked and talked about what they wanted to do, and curiously, my name kept popping up again and again.
Eventually, they just decided, 'Why don't we just HIRE him?' And so, here is the culmination of that decision! Months of hard work. I wrote, directed, voice acted, and animated (thankfully with help) the recruitment video for the Maine Civil Rights Team Project. It's shown all across the State of Maine, to schools all over. Apparently it's helped their recruitment numbers up too, so it did its job!
The Recruitment video.
There's a shorter cut for elementary schools, but it's essentially the same video, just with some younger students.
I'm really happy with how it came out, and even happier that I got to return the favor to the Civil Rights Team Project. It really helped me out back in the day.
I got hired to work on this movie, Funan (2018) as a voice actor! It was my first paid professional character work on a movie. (Gkids) I got to work directly with Stephanie Sheh, the voice actress for the English Dub of Sailor Moon! She's incredibly talented, and really funny. It was pretty intimidating, and I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous as hell. But the engineers were super nice, and I really enjoyed working on the movie. I think it came out okay, but I'd really like to try it again. My voice tends to get a lot of good feedback, especially my villain-voice.
Funan is a beautiful, but tragic film about the Cambodian Genocide. It was incredibly personal for me, and part of the reason I got hired was because of my Khmer heritage. The story is taken nearly directly from the Director (Denis Do) and his mother. He was a graduate of the Gobelins animation school (a really prestigious animation school) and I was really surprised I got chosen, but I honestly have no idea how many Cambodian American actors there are working today. I know of 2, and they don't actually identify as Cambodian.
I played the role of Sok, the cousin of the main characters. Sok was a complex role. It'd be simple to label him as an extremist villain, willing to subjugate his own people, his own FAMILY for the "revolution." However, I feel like he was more than that. He was someone who desperately wanted things to improve in the world, and his idealist hopes didn't match up with the reality of the situation, and he ended up overlooking abuse and corruption. I feel like part of my challenge was to try to convey this conflicted part of this character without leaning towards either good or bad. He was in morally gray area, one that we could all find ourselves in when confronted by our family with our own ideals.
Anyhow, the film is available online now for purchase. It gets put on and taken off of Netflix from time to time, but I'm sure you can find it fairly easily elsewhere.
