Actor Growth

Alright, so with the script basically there it’s time to find the replacement actors. So I guess I have to play the casting director here. I actually had to do that in school for experience and it is kind of funny as when you as an actor go audition you think that the casting director is going to tear you apart.

Really though, whenever people do auditions they are kind of rooting for you as they hope you are the one. Makes sense too when you think about it as why would they want to go through hundreds of people and expect them to be bad?

I guess the other hard thing right now is availability as due to our time crunch it doesn’t really matter if the person is better as if they can’t make it for shoot dates then we can’t really use them.

Wow, what a progression and decision this was. So, because of the nature of the competition we kept the same story theme except we revamped it and made it more character driven. The changes have definitely made the script a lot stronger.

The only thing we haven’t really fleshed out is the action sequences. As it looks now though, we have to start shooting at around the 19th considering the deadline is the 26th.

So one of the actors that I met in the acting group is enthusiastic in helping out and there is also a director who is offering to lend his time and knowledge to help us see the project through. That is great so far. So the plan is tomorrow I am going to meet up with my actor friend and we are going to modify the script a bit and take out things such as gun shots to make it easier to film and edit.

At the same time, one of the original writer is currently helping to tweak the script as well in the meantime. I might need some different actors for the older characters, so I might post an ad or something for it.

I’m really floored at the amount of potential support that is being offered as a result of the people who decided to take off on the film project. Especially too I actually emailed one of the festival coordinators about the situation and she has been so supportive in trying to find help for my team. I am very grateful for all of this.

As well, some people that I have contacted have offered to help too and so it looks like we could possibly have something going here. It’s just so amazing when I think about it. Let’s see where this goes.

Yup, I pretty much expected this. So the other producer/director has decided that he doesn’t want to do it anymore. At the same time, most of the people that he brought in specifically won’t be involved in it anymore as well.

So at this point, with the people who remain we all agree that there is no way we can do a very good job without more help as we relied on the person to follow through. We still have some crew and so fourth, but it is not enough. Therefore, what we have decided is that we all agreed that we were still interested in creating the film. If we can find help within 2 days then we will go ahead with the shoot. If not, we will simply withdraw from the festival.

What an interesting day this was. Now for this MAMM competition as you all know I entered into it pretty late with a team that was kind of formed in the last minute based on contacts. The person that we decided who was directing and also helping to produce it was very energetic initially and had all these big ideas. Of course, we are all technically amateurs when it comes to it.

Now one thing that I thought was extremely crucial in making a film is having items like a storyboard. As well, it should be important to have all shoots and locations marked down for everyone to see. Considering there is fighting in this film too, it should be even more crucial. The funny thing is, the person refuses to do it as he believes it is a waste of time and that he has it all in his head.

Apparently he has been researching about trying to get like a film permit to shoot outside and in the meantime everything from finding the right lighting and sound equipment isn’t even complete and is way behind. I then received a call today on how apparently the permit is extremely expensive and that he would need me to use my credit card for it. I was pretty blunt in saying that wasn’t important as we could technically shoot everything indoors.

Again, it seemed like he was persisting and eventually I try to get him to create the storyboards and to write a copy of the shooting schedule and send it to me. Now here is the very interesting part. He then complained that if I mention that again he is going to quit. Still, I persisted that we need to be organized.

When he said that though, that made me feel like how he was trying to find a technical reason to get out in many ways. That’s how I felt anyways. I personally hate that type of thinking as just like in any business per se you have to expect hard times and in my opinion what makes a great leader is finding solutions for problems. Again, might not be the case, but that’s how it seemed.

He still didn’t send me any schedule breakdowns and instead left me a message later saying that apparently it takes two weeks to get a permit and therefore it looks like we can’t enter the festival. Funny thing was, I talked to him on the phone explaining how we could technically shoot the whole film indoors by adjusting the script. As well, if we needed an outdoor scene one of our teammates is a film student so we can do it at his school campus.

The responses he gave me was kind of a “out of excuses” expression I thought. So, while he didn’t sound super motivated, we are still doing it. This is not a fun experience so far I must say and in many ways I’m afraid the film will turn out very bad unless I take initiative to handle more roles. So far though, I am taking initiative to have a rehearsal with the other actors and will storyboard at least the fight scene elements.