When you’re coming in to replace an established character the deck is already partially stacked against you, not to mention one who will be 25-30 years regressed in age. Actor Cameron Bright visits us LIVE to share thoughts on rising to the challenge of that journey in SG-1’s “The Fourth Horseman” and discuss his life, career and the future of digital entertainment!

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Timecodes
0:00 – Opening Credits
0:25 – Welcome and Episode Outline
2:02 – Welcoming Cameron
2:35 – Getting Involved in Acting
4:59 – Child Actors Becoming Unhappy Adults
7:23 – A Child Actor in Los Angeles
9:55 – Being on Disney
10:52 – Growing Up a Child Actor
12:00 – The LA Crowd
12:52 – Cameron the Badass
16:06 – Godsend and DNA Splicing
18:33 – Robert De Niro
23:45 – Patrick Swayze
26:00 – Years in Acting
27:42 – More Dollars Than Sense
34:50 – Transformations in the Industry
37:21 – Remaining Your Creative Self
40:28 – Working on Stargate SG-1
45:17 – Stepping into Sean Patrick Flanery’s Role
46:48 – A Dream to Be on Stargate
48:45 – In School During Filming
53:24 – Christopher Heyerdahl
57:11 – The Caliber of Stargate Productions
58:54 – Working with Sean Patrick Flanery
1:03:00 – What Became of Orlin?
1:04:00 – Orlin in the Future?
1:10:24 – Stargate: Timekeepers
1:14:18 – AI Advances in Entertainment
1:22:40 – Studios of the Future
1:30:15 – Setting Rules in Place
1:32:13 – A Balance with Technology
1:35:11 – Her and Ready Player One
1:36:45 – Every Technology Starts Fringe
1:40:25 – Where to Follow Cameron
1:44:09 – Cameron’s First Video Game
1:46:54 – Thank You, Cameron!
1:48:22 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
1:48:58 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone and welcome to episode 222 of Dial the Gate, the Stargate Oral History Project. Cameron Bright is joining me in this episode, he played Orlin in Stargate SG-1’s The Fourth Horseman Parts One and Two. He took over the role for Sean Patrick Flannery, there was a scheduling conflict so they redid the role for Cameron and they brought him in. We’re going to talk about that plus a lot more in this episode. But before we bring him in, before we get started, if you want more Stargate and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, it would mean a great deal if you click the Like button. It makes a difference with YouTube and will continue to help the show grow its audience. Please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend and if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. Giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guests changes. Clips from this episode will be released over the course of the next few weeks on both the Dial the Gate and GateWorld.net YouTube channels. This was originally a live stream, the long and short is my internet has been giving me a tremendous amount of difficulty in the past few weeks because my hard line into the house was destroyed and they don’t know why. Cameron was very gracious with me because I wasn’t able to publish the stream so we went ahead and did a pre-recorded show. I’m just going to go ahead and post this so I appreciate everyone’s patience. We may have him back on in the future, as you see we’ve got a couple of things in the works with Stargate Timekeepers. Let’s go ahead and bring in Cameron Bright on Dial the Gate. Cameron Bright, Orlin from Stargate SG-1 The Fourth Horseman. Sir, it is a privilege to have you. I’ve been a fan of your work for years and I’m really excited to have this conversation. How you doing? What’s going on?

Cameron Bright
It’s a beautiful day in British Columbia and happy to be here and thanks for having me on the show. Stoked to chat about Stargate and other things I’m sure.

David Read
Absolutely. Can you take me back to when you first knew that this is what you wanted to do for a substantial portion of your life. You wanted to act, you wanted to get into this industry? I’m curious to know, when you’re that young is it a parental influence or is it all you? Where does this come in to play?

Cameron Bright
When I started I was five, officially. I think I was five or six so I definitely had no clue what I was getting into. We started, it was actually just kind of by chance. When we moved from Victoria where I was born up to where I live now my mum was dating a pro at one of the golf courses in town here and it just so happened that the owner of the golf course, his wife at that time, was a local talent agent. My brother, my mom and I were were just at the course one day and she had kind of walked past us and basically said, “you have two good looking kids if you ever want to get them in Sears catalog. Just kind of small modeling, put some money away for college hopefully and just give us a shout.” My mum asked “do you want to try it out? and of course we said “yes” because that’s what kids say. Yeah, went from there. I did two weeks of acting classes and then I booked my first role. One of our telephone companies here, they had a big merger, Telus, when BC Tel merged into Telus. I was a pixie running around in the background in one of commercials and that was the beginning of the end I guess you could say. It’s not the easiest industry to grow up in, to say it the easiest way. I don’t regret it by any means and it was a crazy journey, especially as a young child.

David Read
You are uniquely qualified to speak about this? What do you think it is about all of these kids who go through this meat grinder and come out just unhappy people? So many of them kill themselves or just are a little Wackadoodle. What do you think it is about the system that does that to some of them? Is it the power trip? Is it’s the manipulation of the adults? What do you think’s going on?

Cameron Bright
Situational I guess, but all of the above? I kind of relate it to my mother. Obviously we had our differences on many things between mother and son but the one thing that I definitely was thankful for later on in life was how she handled that kind of stuff. I think it was when I was 13 or 14, I think it was 14, when I finally was doing quite well. I think it was right around Thank You for Smoking, yeah, because Thank You for Smoking was the first movie. Was it the first one? I think it was the first one that I filmed down in the States. Anyways, I filmed it in L.A and right around that time that was when I had an agent up here in Canada and then we finally got representation down in the States. I can’t remember if it was literally Thank You for Smoking or if it was when I was down there for one of the award shows, but either way, I was 14 when I got asked that question. My L.A agent was basically “screw school, screw everything, move to L.A and become rich and famous.” My mom was very much like, “no. We’re doing just fine where we’re at and we’re gonna stay there” which is kind of the middle of nowhere, not middle of nowhere I guess you could say.

David Read
Not LA.

Cameron Bright
Compared to L.A, yeah. Of course we can say we might have been different people but I can almost guarantee that I would have been a very different person had I grown up in L.A. It’s a whole different beast and being in the industry I would say just amplifies it. But growing up in L.A, regardless of just being in L.A, I kind of realized this later on when I was in my 20s, early 20s, I guess I could say and I’d spent five, six months living down there for work and stuff. L.A is just a really weird city. I kind of got it explained to me one day that it’s full of a different breed of person. L.A is that place where 95% of the people that are in L.A chasing that dream come from somewhere else. Normally they come from a very small town and they were “that” person in that town. They were that kind of unicorn, they thought they were better, they thought they could do something crazy with their life. They literally left everything behind to focus on themselves and then they show up to L.A and there’s 15 million other people just like them there. It breeds this different mentality of person, not to be disrespectful in any way to anybody in L.A. I’ve had so many friends there that have had friends they’ve known for 5, 10 years absolutely stab them in the back and that’s not even on a professional level. It’s just life there. I can guarantee that if I had to move there… Growing up here in my town I was the famous kid that everyone almost hated because I was famous so I had to prove to people that I was just a quote unquote regular guy. Whereas in L.A, I would have been touted for being the famous person and people would have been kissing my feet. It’s a shame to see. Going to L.A I’ve chilled with Disney kids and stuff like that and they’ll be 22 and they’re so far gone. It’s like, “Whoa man.” It’s the influences, right? I think being on Disney, when you are a Disney kid you are very much, I don’t want to say sheltered because it’s not the right case. There’s so much that goes on behind closed doors because that’s where it has to happen. No one can be open about their issues because they have to be that happy go-lucky kid on Disney. A lot of these people have major issues and I’m definitely thankful for my mother, long story short. Who knows what would have happened had I grown up with the majority of my teen years in L.A?

David Read
It’s a fair point man.

Cameron Bright
Could have worked out anyway, right? It is a shame and I think it really depends on the person. There’s a lot battling against the children in the industry and then of course as we grow up it’s a lot of pressure, it’s a lot of expectation. It’s that whole kind of thing, especially for someone like myself because I haven’t really acted in the past few years, COVID, blah, blah, blah, plenty of excuses I guess one could say. It’s kind of that constant pressure to always be that person. Now that’s the thing whenever I see someone. If they recognize me that’s the first thing they “are you still an actor? and it’s like, “well, am I ever not an actor? It’s like, “oh, I have to be in a movie because everyone expects me to be in movies.” It’s just that kind of expectation I guess you could say. Yeah it’s an interesting life.

David Read
It’s either like an on or off thing. You are always doing it or you’re always not and that’s not true. You can come in and out of it. “I’m paying my agent, leave me alone.”

Cameron Bright
Yeah, definitely.

David Read
I lived in L.A for two years actually working on a Stargate Project. I get the culture and I enjoyed it while I was there. It was a specific project and when it was done, I was grateful to leave. I have retained some relationships there. It’s funny, some of the most vapid and shallow people I’ve ever met and also some of the most important relationships in my life, deep relationships, were made there. So it’s all of it for sure.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, it’s an interesting city to say the least, that’s for sure.

David Read
I’ve watched a number of your films over the years and I have to say, in terms of your body of work from an actor’s perspective, you’re kind of a badass. You look at some of the projects that you’ve done, some parents would be like, or kids would be like, “I’m not touching that. He’s got to do what? And he’s in what kind of situation? No way!” I can only imagine you’re going, “I got this. I got this one. I’ll take the ball and run with it.” What is it like?

Cameron Bright
I think that was kind of the thing for myself as well. I’ve always mentioned that before, people will speak to my maturity and everything. I grew up around adults, literally. I was working with adults, very professional adults, one could say. I think the only role we ever turned down as a kid growing up, that my mom was literally hard-off on, was a true story about Ted Bundy. I was going to play the young Ted Bundy and my mom was like, “Nah.” My mom was like, “Nah, that might just be a little too hardcore and it might affect some people the wrong way.” I don’t think that movie end ever ended up being made anyway so it was probably a good choice. In the top of my mind, that is the only one that my mom was like, “No, we’re not even gonna bother.” Again, I was not a Disney kid moving up, if anything I was killing other kids in movies when I was growing up. It was fun. When I was growing up that’s kind of how I always was, acting, I was kind of that very monotone kind of creepy kid acting wise so I think it fit with a lot. I didn’t mind it at all, I thought it was more fun than anything. Once you grow up in the industry and you kind of start to learn what you want to do, I can’t tell you an actor that I know of that loves playing the good guy. Everyone wants to play the bad guy, it’s more fun, you get to do more with your character. That’s the thing; a bad guy can do whatever he wants. He can be a good guy, he can be a bad guy, he can be inbetween. A good guy just always has to be good, there’s no being bad. If you’re being bad then it’s sad and it’s depressing. The villain, it’s the guy you love to hate, right? For me, it was more fun than anything. Especially the movies like Running Scared where I’m literally running around with a gun. It was just stuff that as a child, it was amazing, it was fun.

David Read
If you look into the subject matter some of it was pretty cutting edge. If you look at Godsend, I suspect we can do that to some degree, or if we can’t, we’ll be able to soon. What’s to prevent some mad scientist from splicing DNA from one kid into another and creating this monster who’s incapable of controlling this other personality? Some of it was really ahead of its time.

Cameron Bright
I’m a bit of a conspiracy weirdo, they’re definitely doing that stuff in some shady dark corner of the world somewhere where they don’t have any laws.

David Read
They’re only cloning sheep. They’re not cloning humans, right!

Cameron Bright
Yeah, they’re only growing years on the back of rats. Right, that’s the extent of it. Recent years have run the gamut of doing all the Star Treks. It’s funny because it’s like a lot of pop culture, you look at books. You look at science fiction as a genre and it’s kind of like a lot of the technology that we end up coming up with [in real life], the ideas originate in film or book first nine times out of ten, right?

David Read
It’s our dream phase. Science fiction is our dream phase.

Cameron Bright
Yeah. I think Minority Report is only set in the early 2000s or something like that too. I can’t remember what movie it is but it’s funny watching movies from the 50s and 60s that say “in the year 2020 we’re gonna be driving flying cars.” It’s like, “well we’re not there yet but we’re close.” It’s just funny to see. Godsend was kind of one of those things too where it’s…there’s always a weird topic going on in the world I guess you could say when it comes to science fiction. Godsend was one of those movies for sure. The whole cloning thing was an interesting thing, there’s always something going on.

David Read
And you’re working with frickin Robert De Niro. I mean, come one.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, it was amazing to work with him, definitely. It was actually kind of funny because when you first show up on set you’re like, “here we go, time to be the most professional I possibly can. Straight face and all this kind of stuff.” Then you meet Bob and he’s just one of those guys, super amazing, super nice guy, friendly with everyone. One thing that I always laughed with him was you basically can’t make him laugh on set. If he laughs on set he remembers that moment and it will screw him up for like an hour and a half, two hours. He’ll be filming the scene and where he broke out laughing, he’ll reach that point in the scene and just be like [starts laughing]. He shakes his head and he’s like, “sorry, I gotta do that again.” It’s like, “buddy, how did you make it 50 years in your career laughing the whole time?”

David Read
Exactly.

Cameron Bright
There’s the one scene where he comes to the house in that movie and he says, “Adam, Adam” and I’m facing away from him. Then he says, “Zachary” and I turn around and I say “daddy” or whatever I said. My mom had it planned that I was going to do the “you talking to me?” at that point. I ended up getting cold feet and not doing it because of that reason. I didn’t want to literally destroy his day film. We ended up telling him after that I was gonna do that and he was like “if you want to talk about a broken record, I have heard that saying a million times. I never even crack a smile but if you had done that there I would have been done for the day.” That would have been literally the best one and my mom was like “ah but it’s done.” Oh well, joke not done. He was amazing to work with. We were filming that actually, Leo and I’m pretty sure it was Scorsese, were doing The Aviator at the exact same time. They were actually filming in the same studios that we were filming in, in Toronto I believe it was. We were going to meet them the one day, sadly we didn’t get to. He was an amazing guy, super nice, super friendly. He ended up giving me some crazy compliments that definitely in the beginning of my career were pretty crazy. My mom will always take it to heart, I guess I do too, he had mentioned, at that point I think I would have been eight or nine when I worked with him. The one compliment he gave that stuck with us is that he said that at that age he believed that I was the same caliber as when he had worked with Leonardo DiCaprio in This Boy’s Life. I think Leo was 16 or something like that so that was a pretty killer comment for the beginning of my career. Then later on down the road when I worked on Running Scared with Chazz Palminteri, I didn’t really realize at that time how good a friends they were. When I met Chazz on set, I’d walked up, was gonna shake his hand and was like, “hi, Mr. Palminteri.” He was like, “Oh you need no introduction there Mr. Bright. Bob’s talked all about you.” I was like, “Oh, I was not expecting that. Bob talked about me to other people? Holy…” That was four or five years later I think so to kind of even just get that was like, “holy…” He’s an amazing guy. My mom actually was in contact with his assistant or something and they’re always kind of passing stuff back and forth to be. When I do kind of get back into acting full time it would be amazing to work with him again one more time. I know he’s getting up there but he still seems to be working quite a bit. He’s going hard.

David Read
Absolutely. Considering everything that we went through in the past few years I think it’s so important to hang on to those bright specks from our life where it’s like, “you know what? The people who we look up to, we can make an impact on them.” It’s things like that that we have to hang on to to get back out the door and get back to work. We’ve all been through something really rough but we’ve still got it and we’ve got more to do.

Cameron Bright
Kind of touching on what we talked about earlier, too, it’s funny meeting these crazy famous people like Robert De Niro. Patrick Swayze was another guy that I worked with. You could see, much less with Robert De Nirom, Bob was great, he seemed to handle the fame and work and everything just great. But Patrick Swayze was definitely a troubled guy. An amazing human being again but you could see that the industry had taken a toll on him. Especially after working with him, watching him, I can’t remember what the show was called. He was on that spy show, the last work that he ended up doing. Even myself and my mom at that point watching that show, we could tell every episode, we were like, “he’s looking worse and worse and worse.” Then of course he ended up taking a hiatus from that show and shortly after he passed away. You could see that lifetime of being in that limelight. You expect these people to…well it’s just that. You have so many expectations and tabloid news and all that bullshit so to speak.

David Read
Yeah, it chases you.

Cameron Bright
You build up this idea of these people in your head and it’s pleasantly surprising when you meet them and they’re completely the opposite of what you would expect them to be, in a good way of course. I was fortunate enough to work with only those people. Of course, being an actor you get a little bit of a different experience with actors. They can be amazing to you and absolutely terrible to everyone else on set. But, again, luckily I never really worked with those people. All the super famous people that I did work with ended up being some of the best people I’ve met in my life. Some of the relationships, even with Paul Walker and stuff like that, it’s weird to say. Even for myself growing up in the industry it’s interesting because you kind of bypass a lot of stuff. When I go to an audition, well, I guess no one really goes to auditions these days.

David Read
When I hold one on Zoom.

Cameron Bright
“When I used to go to auditions” I should say. Especially in the past few years, here in our union, UBCP, you show up to the audition and you sign in. There’s a sign in sheet and you write down your union number and my union number is four digits and they’re into six digits now or something like that. It’s just like, “Man, I’m old! I’m an OG in this game and I’m only like 30.” It happened when I was on Motive which was hilarious.” I had the fortune of working with amazing actors, especially local Canadian actors on Motive like David Cross and Louie [Ferreira] and Kirsten [Lehman]. I remember one day we were sitting around the table and talking about how many years we had been acting. Even though they’re all in their 30s, 40s, Louis probably almost in his 60s at that time or something. They were like, “oh yeah, I’ve been acting for 20 years, 30 years.” I was like, “I’ve been acting for 25 years” and they’re all like, “Whoa man.” “Yeah, I’ve been doing it ever since I can remember.” It’s just a super interesting life I’ve lived, I guess. “Been there, done that” as some would say,

David Read
As long as you remember to be thankful for the gifts that you’ve been given, who knows what’s going to happen when you turn the page. I’m glad to hear that you’re continuing to plan to stick with it because a lot of people in their life, it’s like, “you know what? I’m done. I’m ready to do something else.” Or maybe balance it back and forth with some other things.

Cameron Bright
Sadly, that’s the one part of growing up wealthy I guess you could say. I always kind of said that I had more dollars than I did sense. Especially recently, I’ve gotten into web3 and crypto and all that kind of stuff. I understand, of course now I’m broke in my late 30s, I understand much more about how to spend my money properly. You kind of take a lot for granted and you fall into that loop of, “oh don’t worry, I’ll just get another movie and I’ll be fine.” That doesn’t always happen and that’s kind of how it was for me. Luckily, the one thing that I do have is I do own a house here in BC so I have something left, I guess you could say. I was more than happy to have spent all my money more or less and be that person. The fact of being happy in life and being happy with who you are, that’s a very tough thing to do when you’re in the limelight 24/7, actually love yourself. You’re constantly being criticized for what you’re doing. If you don’t have a six pack abs when you’re in your 20s then you’re not doing your job. If you’re not the sexiest person you can be at every second of the day and doing everything for everyone around you and not for yourself and blah, blah, it takes a toll after a while. For me it was kind of like 16, 17, that was when a lot of the rejection started. Not typical rejection but it was always just the battle of “why am I not good enough?” That was what would suck about auditions. I would go for these auditions and I would want them to say, “you did this wrong, you did this bad. But it was never that, it was always just like, “Oh, you didn’t look right” or “your hair wasn’t right.” It was always just such little things. Those are the things that build up in your head where you’re like, “there has to be more.”

David Read
What can I do with that? What can I do to change that?

Cameron Bright
Yeah, it’s like, “why are you telling me that ‘Oh, it was because your eyes are blue and not brown.’ That’s the reason?” There has to be more, right? It kind of just builds and builds and builds until, for myself especially, I was just kind of like, “screw this.” Especially when you grow up in the industry, you’re always asked those questions like, “do you want to direct? Do you want to be a camera guy?” I’m not against it but I’ve always wanted to be more the producer type guy, be the one that puts everyone together and make stuff happen, that’s what I’ve been doing more recently. I have a friend in town here who went to school for screenplay writing and we have, I don’t even know how many scripts we have right now. Officially, I’d say we probably have five scripts that we want to run with, that we’re finishing off. I still have plans for it but it kind of all circles back around to the financial side of it. When you grow up in the industry, sadly I ended up dropping out of school and everything, it’s not like that keeps me from jobs by any means.

David Read
It’s still a regret.

Cameron Bright
To get back into acting and to pursue acting full time is really a full time job. It’s hard to work a day job because you have to be able to drop anything on a dime. Maybe not so much now because a lot of auditions are just tape-ins and you’re sending in tapes. Whereas back in the day I’d have to go over to Vancouver for the day for an audition. It’s like trying to work a day job but then getting a phone call the night before saying that I have to be in Vancouver at 8 in the morning, well then I’m losing my job. Now the pressure’s added and added to that audition because I’m literally wasting time and money if I don’t do amazing on this audition. If I don’t do amazing on that audition it doubles back down on like, “now I’ve wasted time and money and now it’s on me again.” To get back into it it’s a big hill. I haven’t even had eadshots done since I was probably 18, 20. It’s a couple of thousand dollars for new headshots, a couple of thousand dollars to get into classes to get back into it because it is one of those things. I wouldn’t say it’s like riding a bike by any means, it’s a lot more like a muscle, like going to the gym, acting, right? If you haven’t acted or done an audition in two years your skills will lessen. You’re just not used to it and you’re not used to working out those muscles so to speak. It’s one of those things where I have to basically be able to dedicate a full year just to re-launching myself in the industry. To do that it’s like, “well, I got bills to pay just like everybody else does these days.” It’s just crazy times, I think the writer’s strike is still going on down in the States. Stuff is still moving, I still have friends that are working and stuff but it’s just weird. It’s weird times, ever since COVID obviously, especially here in Canada. Acting completely shut down, I had more friends losing jobs than were getting jobs. I had people that were set to be on the next season of something and then they got the call “yeah, your character’s cut because we’re not adding 10 characters when we don’t even know how to get the 6 we have in the room.” It’s just weird times and I don’t think it’s quite come back from that. The industry itself has seen many different faces in the last 10, 15 years what with the fallout, if you want to call it, of Me Too and then the now inclusivity side of it, which I’m all for. Everyone should be able to go to a movie or watch a show and relate to somebody, however you relate to them. But for myself, being the one that no one wants to see in movies anymore, it’s tough. Then as well, for a filmmaker or for myself, as an aspiring filmmaker I guess I could say, on the production side, again it’s tough. I’ve had this conversation with my buddy, my writer buddy and he’s like that. When he writes something he just writes what he wants to write. He doesn’t start off with “okay, I need to make sure somebody in my film is African American and I need to make sure that somebody touches the LGBTQ realm. I need to make sure that blah, blah, blah.” We, as creators, do not think about that, we just want to create, right? But that’s kind of where the industry is these days; you have to check these boxes so to speak to really make sure to get out there. Even with films these days, like short films, for me and my buddy that’s where we would start. Start small, do an independent, maybe a short film festival thing. But even then, it’s like we’re two white guys making films that we’re trying to get into film festivals when film festivals are kind of on the front line of showcasing the kind of trends, right? You just have to make compromises. It’s jumping through hoops, you have to jump through a lot more hoops these days than just like, “I need funding.” That was kind of the thing back in the day, once you had money you were good to go but that’s not quite the case these days. It’s just interesting I think with COVID and what’s going on in the world, it’s…

David Read
There’s a lot at play right now, there’s a lot happening. You’ve got these intersectional boxes that you are expected to tick and you have to make it work. You also have to be willing to say to yourself, “yes, I can still be my creative self in this realm.”

Cameron Bright
Yeah, exactly. It’s funny because it’s not a bad thing, it’s just added challenges. It’s up to us to adapt and overcome those those challenges. It’s nothing bad, on the creative side it adds more to it. One of the scripts we have, that’s where we’ve kind of tied it in. Our main character is a female and it was kind of like trying to bring out…it’s a bit of a twisted movie.

David Read
Really? You Cameron. No!

Cameron Bright
It is definitely my first movie that I wrote with my buddy in it. It started as one thing and it turned into a bit of a Frankenstein. We literally describe it as a mix between The Hills Have Eyes and Deliverance. So it’s like, “yeah, it’s a good one.” We were trying to build these things, there’s the one point where our captee, female, she snaps and she pulls the revenge against her killers. It was like, “we can’t just have her be a sheep, be a sheep be a sheep and then all of a sudden she just snaps and turns into a wolf.” There has to be a reason or there has to be something inside of her that has been building up over her life. What is this issue? Then it was literally one day we kind of broke the script, so to speak, by me coming up with the idea of having her have Vitiligo. was like, “oh, well now this is just her thing where she’s always been teased, she’s always been ridiculed or considered different just because of her skin condition.” That then added so much more to our script so as you were saying, it’s not a bad thing by any means. It’s just how do we use it and how do we utilize that. It’s just tough to fit so many characters into a script. If you have a script with only three characters then how do you fit every race and gender in? It’s just a challenge but it’s not a bad one by any means.

David Read
Depending on how much time you have I definitely want to get into web3 and the future of entertainment because I think that that landscape is is changing. You know more about that than I do and it’s something that I’ve always been wanting to get into a little bit more.

Cameron Bright
I’m free, I’m not doing anything. If anything, I gotta go to work but that’s at like 2:30 so I still have another hour and a half.

David Read
Okay, good. I’m really enjoying this. I want to touch on, obviously Stargate.

Cameron Bright
Yeah. Say, wait a minute!

David Read
Right. How familiar were you with the franchise before this audition came up and tell me about this whole journey.

Cameron Bright
I actually don’t think I auditioned. I think I just got the roll.

David Read
That’s awesome.

Cameron Bright
I knew about it for sure, I was a fan of the show before SG-1. It’s funny, I actually had never watched Atlantis or, what os it? Universe I think, right, up until recently. I’d actually just watched those probably six, seven years ago now. SG-1 I had kind of grew up watching, especially being based out of Vancouver. Going to auditions all the time, you knew about Stargate. It was one of the largest shows, it was filmed right in Vancouver. I’d go to auditions on that..It’s funny, they don’t really do that anymore. It’s so funny just knowing how the industry has changed over the years.

David Read
Rapidly.

Cameron Bright
The studio that they filmed out there would sometimes be auditions for…

David Read
At Bridge Studios?

Cameron Bright
Yeah, at Bridge Studios. I’d be sitting waiting for my audition and you’d see people walking by in the military gear and you’d be like “Ooo you’re from your Stargate.” I don’t know the timeframe, I want to say it was eight or nine months before. I was actually with my mom, we were flying. I can’t remember if it was to or from, but we were flying either to or back from L.A to Vancouver. Amanda was actually on our flight and she was preggers at the time, very much preggers. She was actually amazing at that point, we got a photo and chatted with her for a few minutes. Little did I know, I think it was within a year, so maybe seven or eight months later, I was on the show. It was pretty interesting because we had met and chatted with her and then six months later I was her boyfriend basically.

David Read
You and those wacky roles! But it’s Amanda Tapping. Come on!. Seriously?

Cameron Bright
Not bad at all. I cleaned up well in my young age.

David Read
Yeah. Nicole Kidman.

Cameron Bright
She was actually amazing. Thanks to my mom I was really good at learning my lines when I was a kid. That was the scene where where I first come back, I guess you could say, and I’m chatting with all of them in the boardroom or the War Room, whatever they called it.

David Read
You’re explaining what’s happening.

Cameron Bright
Yeah and I go off all crazy on the Ori and Origin and blah, blah, blah. That I had memorized and they were all day players so they all had their scripts out. I remember that was one of the first standing ovations I actually got on set. We were just in rehearsal and I said it all off-book, no lines, and they all looked at me like “man, you have that memorized?” “I guess so.” everyone was amazing. Like I said, I was a huge fan of the show first. Shanks and all of them, they were all amazing to work with, they were all amazing people. It’s funny, I want to say, what was his name? It was Browder, the one that…

David Read
Mitchell.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, Mitchell, that was his character, right? He was actually amazing to. I’d always hang out with him after work. He was a steam room guy so we’d always kind of hang out in the steam room at the hotel and chat. The only person that I didn’t actually meet was the old Richard Dean Thomas or whatever there but I also heard that I wasn’t missing too much.

David Read
Richard Dean Anderson, this was his first full season away. He had come and gone a lot in the last couple of years. What was it like stepping into Sean Patrick Flannery’s role? Did you watch Ascension? Did you take anything from that? Or were you like, “this is mine now, it’s mine, he did his thing.”

Cameron Bright
I’m trying to think back if I had seen that. I imagine I would have because I would have watched the show at point but I don’t know if I watched every episode, But either way, I don’t know, that was never really an issue for me. I feel like maybe it was kind of a bit of a saving grace that my character was literally losing his mind because that was kind of what they were saying. I feel like it was the way they explained it to me that even his character, he had taken that form as well. It’s not necessarily that I had to be exactly like Sean was because I had ascended. In reality I had grown and aged and all this kind of weird stuff and I kind of almost was a bit of a different person when I came back. It was a completely different situation and everything and I knew that it was kind of my death sentence. I was gonna save everybody but I was gonna lose my mind in the process basically.

David Read
I think one of the few things that were for sure the same was his love for Sam and his willingness to once again, give himself up for an entire civilization of people like he did before. And also, you’re losing your mind, so there’s got to be something freeing in that?

Cameron Bright
Yeah, it was super fun. Like I said, it was a bit of a dream to be on that show, regardless. Especially when they were filming, it’s kind of like something that every actor from Vancouver wanted to be on. It was definitely that show. Maybe not everyone, but most of us wanted to be on Stargate. But yeah, it was super fun and it was just crazy. It was just fun to film; all the sci-fi, the sets. It kind of reminds me as well of X-Men. You get to see the production side of things and it’s so much more fun when you’re doing cool stuff like being in the hazmat suit. It’s just all these different things as a kid, getting to meet Louis Gossett Jr. when he’s all done up and the makeup and all that as a shoot. I don’t know how old I was. I must have been, I don’t know, maybe 11 or 12 or something maybe. But yeah, it was the literal kid in a candy store at that point. It’s just fun to be there seeing all the moving parts and what goes into it and meeting the people. As a huge fan of Teal’c so meeting…

David Read
Christopher Judge is amazing.

Cameron Bright
Chris Judge.

David Read
Kratos.

Cameron Bright
He again was another just amazing person. Everyone on that film was absolutely awesome. So yeah, it was super fun.

David Read
Were you there on the day they rigged Ben up to do a flip through the air, to be pulled by the Prior. Were you there for that?

Cameron Bright
I would assume I was but I might not have been on set when they actually did it. That was the only terrible part about being a child on set; you’re in school. Whenever they don’t need you, you get rushed away to be in school and tutoring. I missed a few things because I was literally tucked away in a closet somewhere, more or less.

David Read
Are you alone or do you have a tutor?

Cameron Bright
We had a tutor. When you’re under the age of 18, by law, you have to have a tutor on set. It was good and bad. I got my schooling done but I hated it. That was the only part of growing up on set that I absolutely hated. I would actually physically hide on set, I would hide behind furniture and stuff. I knew, I was like, “oh, they’re switching cameras, it’s gonna be an hour. They’re gonna shove me in school” so I’d go and hide behind a couch or whatever. “I’m not going to school man. I’m just gonna sit here and let them find me.” I did that for sure. I got a story about Birth with that actually with Nicole Kidman. I thought they were trying to use her to flush me out from my hiding spot. Nicole was like, “Cameron! Cameron! I’m not trying to send you to school.” I was like, “what?” She was trying to give me an Xbox actually which was amazing. But yeah, it was funny. It’s actually kind of interesting because it becomes a lot more taxing. I’ll be working with 30 year olds, 40 year olds, and when they have a half hour break they get to go lay down in their trailer, they get to go have a coffee, they get to go hang out and chat.

David Read
You get put to school.

Cameron Bright
I get put in school for 30 minutes so there’s really no breaks for a child. Of course, they’re not allowed to work you after certain hours and other tiny little things but during the day it becomes quite taxing. I remember, I think Birth was one of the first times that I actually broke down on set to. Nicole was very particular about having her eyeline be the actor as well so I was almost working double shifts. When the camera was on my close up, I didn’t necessarily need Nicole there but she would want me there off-camera. I would be standing off-camera for her and then in school and then I’d be pulled out of school to help her and then back in school. At one point I just broke down and I was like, “can I just have a nap instead? I was bawling my eyes out basically and it was like, “haven’t we done enough school for one day?”

David Read
I can’t imagine the frustration of being expected to memorize your material, to have it ready to go, and also be expected to have a full day in school. That’s a lot to expect a kid to handle.

Cameron Bright
The way it is, what is it? I think you’re supposed to have a minimum of three hours a day or something like that but you can have a maximum of five hours. What they do as well is they’ll try and bank hours so if you there’s one crazy film day where you’re probably not going to be in school much that day then they need to make up hours. There would actually be weekends where I would have to do school. If you have a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, where I don’t get any school that’s three hours a day that I have to make up. I’ll do a five hour school session on Saturday and a five hour school session on Sunday and then that catches me up for last week’s school. So even on days off, they weren’t days off. It’s just like, “man!”

David Read
You have to have you time. You have to play a video game or something to decompress.

Cameron Bright
It definitely wasn’t too painful and education is important although I hate it. Or hated it, I should say. But yeah, that’s the only thing I ever hated about anything, was definitely that. Stargate, it’s funny too, because then later on down the road I ended up working with Chris. Christopher Heyerdahl was absolutely amazing.

David Read
He’s brilliant, he’s so brilliant.

Cameron Bright
Actually, if I were to name an actor that I enjoy watching, Chris is top for sure.

David Read
He’s a chameleon. He can become anything, he just disappears.

Cameron Bright
He speaks like 12 different languages or something crazy. He’s just insane. He’s literally that guy you look at as an actor and you’re like, “Man, I suck.” This guy’s crazy, man. It’s like, “how do you do this? Stop making me look terrible.” When we were doing Twilight I ended up going out to L.A. Not L.A, sorry, Australia, completely different place. We went to Australia for some conventions and that was actually where I ended up meeting a lot of the Atlantis guys. I met Paul McGillion and, I can’t remember the other guy’s name…

David Read
David Hewlett, David Nykl?

Cameron Bright
Not Hewlett.

David Read
Joe Flanigan? Jason Momoa?

Cameron Bright
That was actually funny because Jason Momoa was there. Jason Momoa and Paul McGillion, I remember, actually this will be a good one for the fans. I was underage at the time so all the underage people don’t listen. I snuck into a bar in Australia, I wasn’t too underage, I think I was 17 and I think their legal drinking age is 18. I snuck in and I ended up getting rather inebriated with Jason Momoa and friends. Because we were all signing autographs and stuff I ended up getting a couple photos of them and they had their spread of five, six photos. My whole thing was I picked the more ridiculous looking photo and then I would make them make up a comment for them. Paul’s was literally a shot of him holding a gun up but he was all shocked looking or something. I think I had him put “oops, I shit myself” or something like that on it and sign it. Jason Momoa was his character pulling his sword out of his back but it was mid kind of like this [half drawn]. I remember I was like, “oh yeah, put on it ‘ooo yeah my back’s itchy'” or something and he looked at me, I think it was like, “I’m not putting that dumb shit” or whatever. Then he literally wrote on my paper “I have never been so drunk with a 16 year old in my life” and I was like, “no, no, no, no, don’t put that. My mom’s here, man. My mom’s gonna hate you.” So yeah, that was funny. It’s always interesting when you meet those guys, it was only a couple of years later that he was on Game of Thrones and now you see the meteoric rise of Jason Momoa.

David Read
Absolutely. He’s untouchable.

Cameron Bright
Well, he was one of those guys for sure, even there meeting him, he was a great guy. It’s always good to see those people get success.

David Read
What was the caliber of the Stargate production like? How on par was it to other work that you had done? At this point they’re in season nine of production, they are a well oiled machine. How does it stack up to some of your other work? You’ve done the small, the large, I’m curious as to where it fits in.

Cameron Bright
It’s funny, I probably wouldn’t have thought about that at the time but I would say the production value is nice and high. It was amazing to work on; all the sets. I think that was kind of my first thing that was like a studio based show. Birth, we filmed quite a bit in studio but it was an apartment building in a studio so it wasn’t very like, “Oooh, this is cool!.”

David Read
Yeah, this is an undeground base.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, exactly. Even me seeing seeing the gate for the first time, I was like, “Ooooh, yeah!”. It was amazing. I’ll always remember when I was in the hazmat suit and just that set, as a kid I was like, “what are all the buttons and flashing lights?” It was amazing. That was kind of my first big studio based show that had tons of sets built and I myself was on. Kind of the great part about filming in Vancouver too, for myself as well, throughout the years I’ve filmed all over and there’s just something for everyone in Vancouver. It’s actually funny too because when I look back I was there, now that I remember actually, I was in a movie with Sean Patrick Flannery super, super early on. I spilt ice cream on him and told him he’s not dead or something like that. I think it’s called Border Town or something but it’s basically a mock Western set that a lot of different things…

David Read
Stargate is filmed there.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, exactly. It’s just stuff like that where even just being in Vancouver and being on one of those shows that travels around and kind of uses these different locations. For cool things too, even the little village when, of course I can’t remember his name. I didn’t know who he was at the time, I thought he was a little bit creepy which is funny because then I watched The X-Files and I know him as the smoking man.

David Read
Oh, absolutely.

Cameron Bright
He was…

David Read
Damaris, the Ori Prior?

Cameron Bright
Yeah, the Prior, that’s what they’re called. I was going to say Pastor but that’s wrong. I thought he was a bit creepy.

David Read
William B. Davis.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, that’s it. It’s kind of that thing when you’re a kid, you meet a lot of these cool people and you really don’t know who you’re meeting. When I met Lou Gossett, Jr I just thought he was just some crazy, intelligent old guy that was telling me crazy things. I remember he was talking to me about Waterworld, which of course at that time, I had no clue what it was. He was talking to me about how he got his voice down, and he was doing it in front of me and I was just like, “whoa, what are you doing?” He was able to do this little weird little like gargle voice. He was telling me how for a month he trained in front of his mirror where he would literally just take a glass of water, fill his mouth with water and then talk while his mouth was full of water so it would add that gargling. He slowly reduced the amount of water until he was able to do it with no water in his bed. I was like, “what! Is this something I have to do when I grow up?” It was just stuff like that where as a kid you just take so much in and you kind of don’t really know what you’re absorbing until later on in life. You’re like, “man, that had an impact on me.” It’s just kind of that where I think looking back at it, I kind of said it earlier, I was just the kid in the candy store.” It was just super, super fun and everyone on set was amazing. I think the director at that time, I believe his name was Andy.

David Read
Andy Makita.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, I think Andy was the director of that and I’ve worked with him on other stuff after that. Again, it was a Vancouver show, I was a Vancouver based actor so it was kind of a perfect show for me to be on. I met a lot of people and I worked with them in further projects. I actually think he ended up directing an episode of Motive and we couldn’t figure out where we knew each other from and then it was like, “Stargate” and we’re like, “Stargate, oh yeah.”

David Read
He’s a good guy.

Cameron Bright
I can only say it so many times, yeah, it was an amazing experience for sure.

David Read
What do you think became of Orlin? I always thought it was interesting, okay, they’re putting this little boy in the old folks home. Okay, did he continue to lose his mind? Did he just remain in a childlike state? It’s a pretty sad ending to the character.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, it’s kind of a shame to think about. He probably just ended up turning into a vegetable. It’s kind of one of those things where you’d almost hope that he went back to the stars somehow, who knows. I think that’s kind of the way it goes, right. I do remember that scene, of course Amanda, is it Carter? Yeah, I’m terrible.

David Read
Yeah, you’re good.

Cameron Bright
Don’t kill me Stargate fans. Yeah, so when Carter comes and visits it is the sad thing where she’s trying to see if he’s still there but he’s not. He’s just kind of like, “Oh hey, how’s it going? Who are you?” You never know. I guess that’s the…what’s the word I’m looking for? That’s the… no, can’t think of the big word. No big words today.

David Read
We could see him in the future. I know that Amazon and MGM are developing something Stargate related but to my knowledge they can’t determine what it is that they want at this stage because of all the strikes that are going on. They’re not exactly pushing that ball up the hill.

Cameron Bright
I did hear about that. I rewatched all of it in the last, recent years I should say. As far as science fiction, I just really enjoy the history of it. It makes sense to me, the whole idea of the Norse, the…

Cameron Bright
Yeah, the Egyptian. All of these gods being Gods that we have today, it’s basically like I relate it to Ancient Aliens, the show. But Ancient Aliens to me is almost based on Stargate.

David Read
Egyptian.

David Read
Right, exactly. One feeds into the other.

Cameron Bright
They are taking everything that Stargate already said and then they’re like, “yeah, these are aliens.” After rewatching it, for me, it’s one of those shows where I’m like, “man!” You would think that it’s a show that needs to be on TV just because of that. It’s such a cool take on the alien versus human versus whatever. I just see, out of out of all the science fiction kind of shows that I’ve seen, for the most part, I see it being the most believable that one day maybe we do come to that realization.

David Read
It feeds into that question of “what if?” Our beliefs had to come from somewhere and Occam’s razor says… Humans have an amazing capacity to create and invent but what if there is a physical force that visited us and imposed these ideas upon? Then came back and back and back to feed on us a little bit more and take more of us here and more of us there and those who are left behind were left with these ideas. That’s what Stargate represents. I think when you pull everything back I think it invites us to wonder about our nature in the universe and what we can potentially become. You played an Ancient for crying out loud; the previous iteration of humanity. They achieved a height that we can reach for and I think that that’s the wonderful thing about science fiction. We can sit back and watch it and go, “yeah, we can become something more than what we are now.”

Cameron Bright
Yeah. To speak on the history side of it, it’s that exactly. I’m definitely a huge believer, I was raised religious and baptized as a Christian. I am definitely not hyper religious myself these days anymore but I definitely am that believer that…

David Read
There’s something more.

Cameron Bright
Something is afoot. There’s energies and things that we don’t understand that happen in the world whether that is when we die we go to heaven, whom you choose to believe in.

David Read
Something is occurring.

Cameron Bright
Yeah. I believe in that for sure, I’m a big paranormal guy and everything as well. I full well believe that there are emotions and energies that can be left behind by certain events. Who knows if it’s a higher power or whatnot but it is that idea of just we don’t know. We can speculate all we want, we can try and say “this happened” 40,000 years ago or 100,000 years ago but we don’t know. I find it funny that we kind of live our lives. There’s always that saying where you can look back in history and kind of learn, hopefully we learn, from our own history. I feel like we’re getting farther and farther away from that where it’s like no one actually looks into our history these days anymore. For myself it was video games that made me look into history. When I started rewatching Stargate all of a sudden I got hardcore into Egyptian mythology again, right? I was like, “Man, I want to learn about this.”

Cameron Bright
They did it very cleverly and just played off… Their lore is literally rooted in our own history and they’ve just built this kind of possible outcome almost of our own history. I just really enjoyed Stargate as a show and how it did that. It does kind of make you think “Oh hey, what if those Egyptian gods did have little worms in their tummies? Who knows?” It was a super crazy privilege and honor to work on the show and being able to watch it later obviously is always fun to.

David Read
It encourages you to learn, you know?

David Read
You see how they make the magic happen, it’s always cool. I’ll never forget the first time I visited the set and it took away so much of the magic for sure. Seeing the ceiling, “so it’s all just a bunch of lights! It’s not a CG roof, with retractable roof.” But it adds something as well that you didn’t have before so the magic is replaced by something more. You are a gamer! Have you heard about Stargate: Timekeepers?

Cameron Bright
No.

David Read
Okay, Have you played any realtime strategy [RTS] or real time tactics [RTT]?

Cameron Bright
Oh yeah, definitely. The Total War games are one of my favorite that I play actually. I guess they’re kind of more turn based I think, but yeah, they’re a strategy game.

David Read
Yeah, Empire at War is probably mine.

Cameron Bright
That’s interesting, actually.

David Read
It is in development right now, it’s gonna be coming out in the next several months. It is in beta. There are eight or nine missions and I’d love to have you back to play one of the missions at some point when…

Cameron Bright
Yes.

David Read
When the game goes a little bit more public. I’m communicating with them right now to see how we want to do it. I want to take each episode with a Stargate star and go through the map with them. You being an Ancient, there are definitely some Ancient levels in this thing that’s coming out and I’d love to have you back for one.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, that’s funny. It literally says from the producers of Warhammer 40k Gladius. The Total War game I play is Warhammer based. I actually know the Gladius game too that they’re talking about. I haven’t played it, but yeah, that’s crazy. I’m just looking at it on Steam right now.

David Read
Yeah, it’s beautiful. I am not that familiar with it. It’s more RTT, I’m not that familiar with real time tactics.

Cameron Bright
I see the couple of screenshots here.

David Read
It’s definitely turned based.

Cameron Bright
You probably move your guys X amount per turn and then you set up their sites. It looks interesting for sure. I’m trying to relate it to a game that I’ve played recently.

David Read
What are you playing right now? I saw you were fishing.

Cameron Bright
Right now I’m on Starfield.

David Read
Oh, how is Starfield? How is it?

Cameron Bright
Starfield’s alright, it’s Fallout in space. If you like Fallout then you’ll like it.

David Read
I’m an Elite Dangerous fan. I don’t know if you played Elite Dangerous?

Cameron Bright
Yes, I did. I definitely went on the old ED binge for a bit.

David Read
Oh man, I go back to that every couple of years. I love the combat.

Cameron Bright
I play Eve as well.

David Read
I couldn’t go down that rabbit hole man. That’s a rabbit hole. I have friends who have lost years of their lives to Eve Online.

Cameron Bright
The last time I played, I played for a few months and I remember I just wanted to fly stealth fighters and it was like a six month like training session. I literally had to train six months worth of abilities just to fly my stealth fighters. I was like, “well, maybe when I come back to this game in two years then I can fly stealth fighters.”

David Read
I couldn’t get over the permadeath. It’s like if you lose like a Titan, it’s gone. That’s it.

Cameron Bright
Luckily now, it’s not too bad. You definitely want to make sure to have your ship insurance.

David Read
Absolutely. So any interest in coming back and playing a level of Timekeepers with us?

Cameron Bright
Oh totally. Oh yeah definitely. I’d love to.

David Read
Legit. With the advances in AI, I saw a guy, it was a YouTube video of a guy entering a video game and just talking with a non player character [NPC] on the street and just having a conversation with him. With the advances that are coming with video games and continuing to enter this world of entertainment, with web3 and all this stuff that’s coming up, where do you foresee our entertainment future going? Is it wide open for anyone who just wants to sink their teeth into it and make a few million dollars in trying this new direction? Where do you foresee us going as a species in terms of how we consume our entertainment in 10 years, 20 years.

Cameron Bright
I always relate it idiocracy. We’re slowly becoming more and more like Idiocracy, we’ll be sitting in our couches eating sludge pretty quick here, just 20 screens. I’ve taken the journey into web3 and crypto the last, I don’t know, it’s been like three years. It feels like it’s been two months. It’s weird, that’s what crypto will do to you. Some days it feels like two months, some days it feels like 10 years.

David Read
I have Bitcoin and Ethereum myself, I get it. It’s like, “how’s it doing today? Ah dammit, it’s down.”

Cameron Bright
Yeah, everything’s down. I kind of took different phases as well. I started in crypto with mining.

David Read
Oh, you’ve mined? Okay.

Cameron Bright
Yeah. That’s where I started and that’s kind of what I understood and I obviously entered it a lot differently. One of the best things I find about web3 right now is it’s kind of like the great equalizer. I myself, I’m come from film. Yes, you can say that I am intelligent, I’m not an idiot by any means. I don’t have a problem learning or anything like that but I wouldn’t say that I’m a techie guy, a developer. I don’t know anything there, I didn’t at that time know anything about crypto, how it worked. I never would have thought that I would have found Twitter as the home to it all. I was actually talking with someone the other day and I was mentioning that it always devalues the thing when people are like, “how do you learn about crypto?” and you’re like, “what are spaces?”

David Read
Yeah, the more I share the more people are gonna be on it.

Cameron Bright
Honestly, the best place to learn about it is Twitter. Everyone’s like, “I don’t want to go to Twitter to learn about crypto” and it’s like, “well, that’s where everyone’s talking about it.”

David Read
Let’s clarify here, web3 is the third generation of the World Wide Web. It’s meant to be a decentralized system open to everyone on top of blockchain technology; the same type of thing that crypto is built on.

Cameron Bright
So web3, it’s a shame to almost say web3 but that’s the big differentiator right now, especially for film. So my long story short, I started in mining and at that time NFTs were also popping. I was ignorant to NFTs, I was like, “it’s JPEGs that are worth millions. It’s like art.” At that point, okay, I can understand why some art might be worth millions but I’m not gonna pay millions for someone’s art. That’s just me.

David Read
I own it but everyone else can still see it, but I own it.

Cameron Bright
Once I got into NFTs and what NFTs are, that’s a whole nother explanation and rabbit hole and blah, blah, blah. But that’s where I started to kind of, I had the light bulb moment so to speak, of anything that I had merchandise wise, right? I was thinking of autographs, Stargate cards, different things that I had signed over the years, those could have all been NFTs. I’m trying to do Film3, it’s called. Of course, I don’t really like using that term but that’s what other people are calling it, Film3. Right now, film on the blockchain, it’s more or less, the only purpose is for funding. It has caught backlash. Namely being Stoner Cats is one of the biggest ones so Stoner Cats was done by Mila Kunis and Ashton Kutcher and they are now getting hunted by the SEC. They’ve been given a cease and desist by the SEC and they have been called a security. So anyone who bought those and Ashton Kutcher in them now owe the SEC millions of dollars. There’s kind of things that are happening and the way that I’ve kind of explained it to some people is a lot of people are using it as more or less a glorified GoFundMe. So it’s like, “I’m trying to raise 1.5 million for my movie. I’m gonna sell 10,000 NFT’s to do so and those NFTs get you a producer slot and blah, blah, blah. The term I use is “hopium.” Something you sell people on is the hopium, you tell them they’re gonna make a bunch of money. But me being from the film industry, I look at that and I’m like, “hold on a sec, you’re saying you’re gonna make this movie for $1.5 million and the main hook line and sinker is you’re gonna give a royalty to the NFT collection?” Now you’re trying to tell somebody, “you pay me $200 and when my movie makes millions you’ll get your money back.” Whereas me then, not necessarily right this minute because the market’s terrible, but last year, the year before, I saw people doing this and they were making money and they were being able to film their stuff. But then it comes down to my expertise in the film industry where I’m like, “How do you know you’re actually going to make money on this movie?”

David Read
It’s technology, too, so you’re completely wild west.

Cameron Bright
Well it’s all timing based. So that’s the thing, that model doesn’t utilize web3 at all. All that is is me saying I’m going to raise my funds in web3 and kick back my web3 people but my movie is still gonna be in theaters, hopefully, my movie is still gonna be on Netflix, hopefully. It’s not like I’m only going to have this movie on web3 now because there’s no viewers there.

David Read
Yeah, it’s not going to exist there yet.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, exactly. Web3 or Film3, more so, it will come but you need that mass adoption first. As of right now, I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think less than 10% of the world actively deals n trades and crypto and then only a portion of that 10% are going to be looking to invest or spend money on movie based projects. So for me, one of the projects we have going is I had the original idea to do more or less kind of what other people are doing which is like a studio, then you can have DAOs. I’m a part of a Dow project. A DAO basically stands for a Decentralized Autonomous Organization so you would have a voting structure more or less. What you can do is you could have a studio that is then technically owned or operated by your investors through voting and stuff. For myself as a creator, it’s like why not? If I can have 10,000 people, a hive mind, that are now all voting on, say scripts or genre or whatever it may be as far as US producing, well that’s basically market research. Most polls never go above a few thousand people so if you have 10,000 people in a group…The good part about crypto is it’s global so you can imagine that if you have 10,000 people in a group you’re gonna have people from all over the world; different backgrounds, different loves, different hates. If all those people, majority based, can agree on something then one could possibly assume that if we make this film we have at least 70% of our 10,000 that want to see it. Will that equate to real views in real life? Who knows? It’s speculation of course but that was kind of the idea at first, was doing that studio. But again, most million dollar NFT projects don’t have communities of 10,000 people right now. You normally are selling these things on one blockchain and there’s thousands of blockchains or currencies, however you want to describe it. You’re basically only marketing to 1% of the 100% of the market but you have to only market to 1% because you don’t want to market on 40 different chains because that’s It’s not the way it works. There’s still growing pains and I think a standard that needs to be set for film. It’s a lot easier, I think, to fathom it for music; musicians, artists. They can just literally make a CD and sell that via NFTs. Whereas making a movie, specifically the first person I would say that has done it and did it successfully was Kevin Smith. From…

David Read
Jay and Silent Bob.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, Jay and Silent Bob. Comic Book Men I guess is what he’s more recently famous for. But he did his own movie called KillRoy [Was Here] and that was sold in 2000 copies. There was 2000 NFTs and each one of those NFTS was the movie itself. So in theory, there’s only 2000 copies of that movie in existence and to watch that movie you have to buy one of the NFTs. That’s cool, it’s a cool idea, but for myself, I’m a Kevin Smith fan but I guarantee this movie is not going to be worth $100 for me. It’s kind of one of those things where he did it, he had a bunch of his fans buy it, it sold out, but no one’s heard of that movie. No one in web2, we call it, or no one in the real world is like, “oh, gotta get me a KillRoy NFT so I can watch that crazy movie everyone’s been talking about. Big names are kind of using it to make money but there isn’t really any solid projects that have been born and bred out of web3 yet. I think the differentiator is how to utilize web3. For us, the one show that we’re actually trying to do right now, I’ve mentioned paranormal before, is actually a ghost show but we want to do it interactive. You would basically be buying your NFT and your NFT gains you access to our live streams. Through that live stream you can basically do a “choose your own adventure” style show. Now something like that doesn’t necessarily work for a script because you have the integrity of your script, right? It’s like we were talking earlier about the inclusivity of the world and everything right now and just the industry and being able to be creative. That’s where I think it comes down to web3. A lot of people right now are only using it for funding which is very simple whereas we aim to use web3 and blockchain and what we can do with it to enhance the project. We’re not reinventing the wheel by doing a ghost show but we hope to make it unique via what we can do with web3. It kind of leads back to the nature of crypto; it’s decentralized, anti government, the mentality of the people that are there.

David Read
It’s very libertarian.

Cameron Bright
So when you start talking about like, “oh, can’t wait for a big studio to come over to web3” everyone in web3 is “we don’t want studios here.” It’s like, “then how is your movie going to end up in theaters if you’re not getting studios involved?” There’s those necessary evils almost that have to happen where somebody has to bridge the gap. But whoever does that successfully, it’s gonna get crazy. Solidly, timing wise, we’re probably a good five to ten years before anything really hardcore comes out as far as film. It’s like anything, put it into relation, you’re more or less building the industry again. You have to build that industry again and that’s going to come with failures and that’s what happens in crypto. What sucks about that is if 10 film projects have happened and not a single one of them have gone to theaters, then why would anyone want to invest in the next 10 projects? It comes down to that; we need success stories but they have to be born and bred from web3 and that just hasn’t happened yet. Because of the regulation side of things, just everything, it’s a crazy world to be a part of. I, myself, never would have considered myself to be a pioneer in film but I can be a pioneer in Film3.

David Read
Yeah. If you understand the technology, you’re ahead of the curve.

Cameron Bright
Of course AI is now becoming a huge thing as well. Yes, I have worries about it but it’s up to us to be creative, We are humans, we will value things the way we want. I think really the main thing, especially for film and AI, is it just needs to have rules set in place to showcase what is AI and what isn’t. As long as the viewer knows, transparently, this was done with real actors or this was done with AI, as long as I know that, now I’m going to value those differently. I will probably value something that’s done by real actors higher. Just like if I had a Van Gogh in front of me or a copy of a Van Gogh. It’s like, which one is more valuable? Well, I decide that in reality to myself. As long as we humans are given that option of “do I know what this is or do I not?” then we’ll judge it the way we want to judge it. It’s not going to be like all of a sudden no actors are going to work anymore because we just have AI actors. I still want to go and see a Robert De Niro film, I’m gonna go and see it because Robert De Niro is in it, not because AI Robert De Niro is. It’s going to be left up to us as the creators to then utilize those tools. What’s wrong with AI if it can help people write scripts?

David Read
We have a fear of “are we fully in or fully out?” We have to learn that there’s going to be a balance, that these technologies are not going away. They’re going to continue to help enhance our lives or potentially destroy our lives and how we choose to interact with the technology will determine how that occurs, not the technology itself.

Cameron Bright
Speaking on behalf of, not necessarily my own occupation, but it’s gonna destroy some jobs, for sure. In my industry I think of agents. You have an agent, most of their life is answering phone calls, answering emails, reading scripts and a couple of other things. Most of those things are normally done by their assistant. Well sadly, there might not be too many assistants being needed anymore because that can all probably be done with AI; answering emails and stuff like that. Then again, it comes to if these tools are accessible to everyone, then it’s up to you whether or not you want to utilize them or not. That’s the power of AI, is when put in the right hands and regulated properly… It’s like up here in Canada. I’m not political by any means or gun control or whatever but it’s something that we’ve noticed here. They got rid of handguns and we can’t really own guns but someone who is doing particularly nefarious or illegal activities don’t care about those laws. So of course, getting an illegal handgun for them, they don’t care. They’re already doing something illegal so they’ll buy an illegal handgun. That’s the same thing as AI. If we choose to ban it, that doesn’t mean that it’s going to go away. Now you’re basically saying only the bad people get to use AI, which is terrible. You don’t want only sketchy people to be able to use AI. But if we can all use AI then yeah, it’s up to you whether or not you want to use AI. That’s I guess the root of everything web3, AI. Empower yourselves with tools and technology but within reason of course.

David Read
There’s a couple of films that I think are particularly…

Cameron Bright
This is a topic that could go on forever. It could turn into Skynet, you never know.

David Read
I see the film Her being very prophetic in terms of sooner or later we’re all gonna have our own Samantha. Ready Player One, sooner or later we’re going to have…

Cameron Bright
That’s still something. I haven’t watched Ready Player One yet. Every crypto friend that I have is like, “watch Ready Player One.” The crypto persons Bible is Ready Player One, pretty much. With the whole metaverse idea and all this stuff. I hate to say it but it’s stuff like the global impacts of what COVID had and stuff. In my town specifically I remember SkipTheDishes or DoorDash or whatever you may call. Uber Eats, Uber Eats was barely a thing here. They were around but there was like two or three restaurants. COVID hit and now all of a sudden everyone I know in this town orders on SkipTheDishes and DoorDash. For a two year period, that was pretty much the only way you could eat food, by delivery.

David Read
Yeah. Adoption is complete.

Cameron Bright
Some people will be like, “oh, I’d never want to sit on my couch, put some goggles on and go and hang out with my friends in the metaverse.” But what happens if one day, again, we get locked down and now you can’t go and hang out with your friends at all? Well, you’re probably gonna go into the metaverse and go and hang out with your friends. It’s kind of like what you had mentioned earlier about technology, books and films and everything. Every technology at one point is a fringe technology until it becomes reality, right? It’s like 3d printing, I have a 3d printer. Some people still can’t fathom it but it’s here and it’s not going anywhere. Every six months, it just advances, it advances and it advances.

David Read
Half the things behind me are 3d printed. It just takes a certain amount of know how.

Cameron Bright
My father works at the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories over in Ontario and what he’s working on is 3d printing nuclear fuel. They’re 3d printing thorium pellets and stuff, the idea with that is having these small modular reactors. People want to get rid of fossil fuels but if you’re in Alaska or if you’re in these crazy remote places, people don’t understand what it’s like to live there. They have to ship in fuel and stuff and that’s one of their largest costs. Well, now think of the idea of having a small nuclear reactor that fuels that whole town and all it needs for fuel is a little 3d printer right beside it. You just print your own fuel, bam. The amount of stuff that is going to be made…That’s where I think that it all ties in, again, the NFT word. When I try and explain it to people, think of it as more of like a ticket. That ticket is valid proof that you own that said item but that item doesn’t necessarily have to be produced. When you think of the world, climate change, I think of overproduction. To use one company like Nike, you think of Nike, how many pairs of shoes do they make in a year versus how many do they sell?

Cameron Bright
They probably over produce crazy amounts of products and never sell them. They get ripped off, they get fakes, blah, blah, blah, that whole industry. Now imagine that if rather than producing those shoes to sell them, in every one of your stores you have a 3d printer. You have someone that buys that shoe online but it’s an NFT. They don’t have that physical shoe made.

David Read
Hundreds of millions.

David Read
It’s printed on demand.

Cameron Bright
They have it as an NFT. But say they want that pair of shoes? They take that ticket, they burn it so to speak, they put it into the thing, they redeem their pair of shoes and then bam, within a week you have your pair of shoes. Is that not something that for those large industries, imagine how much money they could in theory save once that technology is available. I’m not saying they can 3d print Nikes by any means but in the next few years they most likely will be able to. It’s just getting the fabrics and whatever done, right? There are probably 3d printed shoes, just not Nikes.

Cameron Bright
There are printed guns, so of course.

Cameron Bright
I know they’re 3d printing houses now and stuff like that.

David Read
Can you imagine the machine that puts those out?

Cameron Bright
Yes, it’s got to be massive. That’d be an interesting thing to watch work, that’s for sure.

David Read
Cameron, this has been really, really cool. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know you better and exploring all the facets of what you’re working on. Where can people go to follow you and see what you’re doing?

Cameron Bright
Twitter is normally where I frequent the most, sequitur. I’m just @CameronBright. I am one of those guys, I have NFTs and weird things as my photos, but yeah, @CameronBright. I don’t have the blue checkmark anymore because I don’t want to pay for it. I’m probably gonna have to do that sooner or later here. I had the cool one that meant you were somebody and then Elon Musk showed up and ruined everything. @CameronBright on Twitter and that’s kind of where I frequent the most. I do stream. I’m on Kik now so you can check me out on Kik.

David Read
Yeah I watched you fish. I was like, “Man, the time has come where we’re fishing online now.” You are the great outdoors.

Cameron Bright
It’s strangely relaxing, hop on that game every once in a while. Even my regulars in my stream are like, “man, this is like ASMR. You’re hearing the waves crash…” It was like, “yeah, man.”

David Read
De Niro or someone similar to De Niro back in around 2006 on the Oscars talking about “yeah, I just came from me and my son playing a Nintendo 64 game of a father and son playing catch.” We kind of moved in that direction. You have the exact same or near enough experience digitally fishing as you would going out and casting a line. That’s amazing.

Cameron Bright
Some of the simulators are kind of funny, like Farming Simulator. I really want to Sim growing six months worth of food, no thank you. But hey, to each their own, right.

David Read
Hey, I played the Sims when it was it’s first iteration, 1.0. I loved putting those kids into little rooms that they couldn’t get out of and having them go off to military school.

Cameron Bright
Yeah I was gonna say, I love that too. Stick them in a house and get rid of all the doors and see them delve into chaos.

David Read
They pee on themselves and then they’re in a military uniform and they’re saluting.

Cameron Bright
You’re on social experiment on Sims as a crazy 10 year old.

David Read
I would have adults coming into my room and they’re like “what are you doing to those people?” I’m like, “don’t worry, they’re not real.”

Cameron Bright
But yeah, if they want to keep tabs on me kik.com/PapaCriggz, Criggz with a Z. @CameronBright on Twitter. I do have an Instagram, it’s also Papa Criggz. I lost my main one, I had like an actual Cameron Bright one years ago.

David Read
Did you get hacked?

Cameron Bright
No, it was more of a case of I had someone that was dealing with it and we had a falling out so they just kind of have it. I was always that guy growing up. That’s actually why I started streaming as well because nine times out of ten I was just gaming. That was the expectations again of being this famous actor growing up. Everyone thinks you’re jet setting around the world, eating good food, doing whatever and I’m just sitting on my ass playing video games nine times out of ten. It was more of a way for me to connect with my fans. It’s like, “hey, just come on out and chill while I’m playing some video games.”

David Read
You have to have a release.

Cameron Bright
Now I’m actually in the process of launching my own video game on web3. We’re supposed to release our alpha and our first batch of NFTs this weekend. Is it this weekend? Yeah, the 24th I think. We’re gonna be calling it Matic Mini Golf.

David Read
Is that what that is? Okay. I saw that.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, so Matic Mini Golf is my game that I’m making. It’s just something super simple, it’s just going to be a mini golf game but then we’re going to, we call it “degen’ing” it out basically in crypto. We’re gonna make it so that you can wager and have handicaps, like a buff/de-buff system, stuff like that, tournaments. That’s kind of something that web3 can allow. For a film idea, I’ve always kind of thought, think of something like Game of Thrones. Think of something like a film like that that has factions and all this stuff and this kind of never ending war going on. But what would happen if you gave your viewers the ability to vote on story arcs? As far as a project goes you’re basically creating demand because as your show launches you’re gonna have fans of different factions and you put it up to those fans to fight for their factions. Say you want faction A to win this next war, well you have to put up your stake, your NFT and whoever stakes the most NFTs, well that’s the faction that rises to the top. It kind of leads back to us to be creative and be open to allowing these cool things. That’s where I think the future of a lot of this stuff is going to end up; is that interactivity. That’s kind of the next evolution, I guess you could say, of our entertainment right now. A lot of it is like you watch the show and then you start becoming a fan. It’s not like “oh, I can be engaged in this show and help the outcome of the show all just by being a fan.” That’s kind of where I think the next evolution of everything is. Hopefully we’ll see, starting with a video game, make a bit of money off that hopefully and of course move on to the film stuff. Try and do something cool but it’s one step at a time, right?

David Read
Well that’s really cool man and I definitely want to help out any way that I can. That’s pretty legit. I really appreciate you sharing your Stargate stories with us and all the other stories as well.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, sorry. I can ramble sometime too.

David Read
No, this is good stuff. This is why we do the show. All the best to your endeavors and I would love to have you back for Stargate: Timekeepers.

Cameron Bright
Yeah, definitely. I’m free most of the time unless I get called into work. Feel free. Leave, obviously on Twitter, feel free to reach out to me. Slide into the DMs. Thanks for having me as well. It’s always nice to chat and reminisce about the good old days, even though I’m only 30.

David Read
You’ve got a long way to go, man.

Cameron Bright
That’s nice. Yeah, we’ll figure it out.

David Read
Thanks so much to Cameron Bright for joining me in this episode of Dial the Gate. I really enjoyed this discussion, all the different avenues that we went down. I’ve put links to his sites in the description below where you can follow him on Twitter and on Kik. Go fishing with Cameron! I never would have thought I’d be saying that a few years ago but this is the direction that we’re going with the technology. It was great discussing that with him and I look forward to having him back for an episode of Stargate: Timekeepers whenever that game gets off the ground. Keep an eye on dialthegate.com for all the new episodes that are going to be coming out for the rest of our extended season three. We have got a lot of things happening here, really thankful to everyone that I have coming forward. My thanks to my moderating team, Tracy, Antony, Sommer, Jeremy and Rhys. My Producer Linda “GateGabber” Fury and Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb for continuing to keep dialthegate.com up and running. My thanks once again to Cameron Bright for being so generous with his time. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate, the Stargate Oral History Project, I’ll see you on the other side.