Sunday, April 27, 2008

Audition



Well, it's started. Casting for my movie! The script has four male leads, two of which are already cast. We had auditions at the Portage Park Center For The Arts on Saturday, for the two remaining roles.

We didn't get a huge turnout (we advertised the fact that the roles would be non-paying, as this is a low-budget short film), but several people came in and read.

It was really neat having actors read the lines, and interact in a few of the scenes from the script. Some lines were delivered with an inflection that I hadn't heard in my head. Some lines came out generally clunky, revealing possibilities of improvement for dialogue -- you can think a line is natural-sounding, but if someone can't say it naturally there's a distinct possibility it's the words that are the problem. In either situation, it was pretty cool, as I could see something on the written page growing into a more flesh-and-blood, breathing thing. It was like a 2-D shape suddenly becoming 3-D.

After a while, it was hard to judge the effectiveness of a performance. But I felt in the moment. I knew when there was a direction I wanted to go in a scene, and I did a reasonably good job (I think) of conveying my intent to the actors.

It's really happening. The film is really going forward. It's pretty exciting.

My next big hurdle is storyboarding, and working with my friend who is shooting the film to solve potential visual problems that arise (special effects shots, dialogue scenes in a moving car, etc.).

We have a couple more people auditioning on Thursday night. I'm looking forward to it.

7 comments:

Freida Bee said...

Oh, this is exciting. I am so looking forward to seeing how this goes.

Anonymous said...

This is very cool. I'm with Freida, can't wait to see how it goes.

And of course I read this and think yay Portage Park! I have a fond memory of eating Dunkin Donuts with MathMan in Portage Park.

Matthew Hubbard said...

Good luck with the film, buddy. I had non-speaking roles in several films shot by friends. It was a lot of fun, but I never considered asking strangers to work for no money.

dguzman said...

So cool, Splotch. Congrats on living your dream!

Some Guy said...

Awesome! I'm looking forward to many updates on the progress. Can I reserve it yet on Netflix?

Fran said...

Yay you!!!

Splotchy said...

Freida B, as am I.

DCup, MizSplotchy and I thought a lot about trying to buy a house in the Portage Park neighborhood, before we ended up moving to the 'burbs.

Matty Boy, I've worked as crew on some films for little to no pay, where the actors were also in the same boat. I don't know, I'm very grateful that people are willing to donate their time. We'll see how it goes, I guess.

D, thanks!

Some Guy, we shall see, we shall see. Would you feel gypped using a Netflix queue slot for a movie that lasted only 15 minutes?

Fran, thanks a lot.