Last time, I talked about the frustration of the auditon, and how hard it can be to pick the best people out of a pool of great talent. This week, I fully expected to write a post about callbacks being even more difficult, and how it was impossible to pick the people who we’re committing to these rules. Imagine my surprise when the review night went fairly painlessly!

After our callbacks, I had a mini meeting of the minds. I sat down with Andrew (our lead actor in the flick) and my wife (who aside from wanting me to succeed has no ties to the film), and we watched the callbacks. I was actually quite astonished at how quickly the process took place.  We started watching the video at about 7:30, and Andrew was out the door on his way home not three hours later.  I genuinely thought we would be chewing it over for a lot longer, in the range of days. But in this unbelievably rapid process, I did have some observations.

For starters, I now in a way regret not calling back a couple people. Don’t get me wrong, I think we got a great team for this film put together. However, what surprised me most were two people that I invited to callbacks somewhat reluctantly. In both cases, I had invited them back without feeling that they were the best fits for these roles. How wrong I was! In the end, I was so glad that I brought both of these folks back, because their second performances were absolutely spot on to my vision for the film. I did cast one, and the other I was so very close to casting, and they would have been in had it not been someone else’s stellar performance.

This got me thinking: everyone who came out last week did such a great job. I really would have liked to try a few others in the callbacks. It troubles me a little that maybe, just maybe, I would have made the wrong calls. However, I trust the suggestions I got from my writers, the online panel, and my in-person team at the reviews. I just have to accept that we got the right names for this film, and remember that I can always cast the others in my next film.

Another observation I had was that it was so good to have help from an outsider in making these calls! Obviously, as the director what I say goes and I have the last word (geez, I love that power!).  Despite that, however, I really have to brag on how great my wife has been after both auditions.  In both cases she came in and gave me a perspective from someone who is in many ways outside of this production. Her input really helped me see our candidates in a new light, and while i don’t think I took every one of her suggestions, they all DID greatly affect my thought process. So if you read this honey, thanks a bunch!

Along those same lines, it’s absolutely beyond important to have others with you, both at the auditions and while you watch the tapes. By having more eyes out there, they helped me see things I wouldn’t have thought of on my own. So for all of you who helped in this capacity, thanks to you, too!

Alright, I promised I’d finish up the FFS segment, so here it is:

Free Film School: Surviving Auditions

Once everything is set up for auditions, your fun is really going to begin! The casting process is surprisingly difficult. You have a couple minutes with an actor or actress, and in that time you need to decide if they’re worthy to have a role in your film. It can be incredibly stressful, which is why many directors will delegate casting to a Casting Director. But if you’re in the hot seat, there are a few things to consider.

• Is the auditioning actor “real” in the role? That is, are they overacting or underacting? When they perform, do you see the actor as your character, or as someone trying to pretend they’re your character? If you see their performance as the least bit fake, so will everyone who watches your film!
• Don’t be afraid to ask them to re-try the lines. Make suggestions, and see how they handle them. Remember, these people may have only met this character a few seconds earlier. They’re going to need your direction to pull this off.
• Look for people who ask questions. further, avoid people who “self-direct”. A good actor is one who can follow a director’s orders. People who ask questions about the character are trying to fulfill the vision of the director. On the flip side, I’ve had people audition for a project who self-directed to the point of creating room layouts and character interactions without checking with me. It drove me crazy! Improv is one thing, self-directing is another.

Saying “no”

Saying no is the hardest part of the process. If you have to tell someone no,  here are some reminders:

• Don’t burn bridges! You’re not Simon Cowell. Just because someone isn’t a super strong actor today doesn’t mean they’ll never be one. The filmmaking world is shockingly small. The last thing you want is to beat someone into the ground today, and get blacklisted by them years later after they worked on their skills.
• Offer ideas for improvement. Sometimes if you give the person you turned down feedback, they can continue to build their skills. They may even thank you for it.
• If posible, bring them in as a minor role or extra. Give them on-set experience. Let them work with you and your team, so they have the chance to improve. Again, you never know what the future holds. By extending a hand to new or inexperienced actors, you might wind up making a powerful ally down the road.

Bottom line, look for people who fit your vision. Don’t be afraid to direct, and if you do have to say no, don’t be a jerk!

Last night was the first audition for the film, and coming away from it, I can honestly say that there’s a very legitimate reason that the big production companies hire casting directors. If Steven Spielberg had to manage the casting for his own films, I think he would have burned out somewhere between “Jaws” and ”Close Encounters of the Third Kind”, and we would have never met Indiana Jones. What a tragedy.

I’ll be honest, I set my expectations low for yesterday’s auditions. This thing is a non-union, non-paying film, and so the caliber of talent I expected was somewhere between “I drove by a film set this one time” and “I do community theater every now and then”. I was wrong. By a long shot.

By the end of the day, we had auditioned 32 people for the 7 main roles of the film that are still open, and we came back with two or three really sharp candidates for most of the roles. For the role of Vanessa alone, there were five really incredible auditions. I managed to whittle it down to three for callbacks, but it was nearly impossible.

For those who are following the blog and considering making your own movie, I have a few useful tips, and I”m going to present them in a little segment we do here, called

Free Film School – Auditions -setup

Casting is an insanely challenging process, and while not all of your characters are cast during auditions the audition process is essential for finding great talent.

The first step to holding an audition is to decide on a date, time, and location. This is a surprisingly tricky process. Many actors are busy with projects, and a lot of unpaid gigs try to shoot on evenings and weekends, since most of the talent work full time jobs.  In our experience, early on the week seems to work well for many.

Additionally, you want to make sure that your audition spans two or more times of day, for example afternoon and evening, or morning and afternoon. This gives your candidates more options to work around their schedules.

For location, shop around. A good first impression is important, so meeting in the basement of a ratty pool hall might not be the right place for auditions (unless you’re doing a documentary on bikers). Find a place that’s clean and bright, and has lots of space both in the audition room and in the waiting area or hallway. Talk to the managers, and see if they’ll cut you a break on price. Either way, it shouldn’t cost too much, under $100 for sure.

Next, get the word out. There are several ways to do this, but we found that the most successful way is to reach out to local agencies that pool lists of actors. There’s an agency out of the twin cities that will send audition notices to their thousands of subscribers. Most of our candidates came from this pool. Craigslist and other online listing sites are good too, as are physical notices on physical bulletin boards.

The next step is to PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE! Get your stuff together and be ready for the audition the night before. This way when audition day comes, you only have to pop into the car and go. Here’s a brief list of things you’re going to want to have at the audition:

• Sign in Sheets – they should have a place for the person’s name, email, phone, and what roles they are auditioning for, if they know in advance.
• Image consent/Nondisclosure agreement. Let’s think about this. You’re giving a portion of your script to someone who is virtually a complete stranger. The two things you don’t want are 1-someone to sue you for any reason, or 2-someone to steal your film or share parts with the public that are confidential. Cover Your Assets, and have a form.
• General information sheet. We stapled these to the consent forms. It gives them an idea of what they can expect in the production, character lists, etc…
• Sides for the parts. “Sides” is a fancy pants Hollywood way of saying “A small part of the script”. Basically, find a page in your script that defines the character. Make several copies of that page, and you’re done. Repeat for each character until you do them all, or until complete deforestation of the United States occurs for the paper usage. Whichever comes first.
• A sheet telling people to sign in and grab a copy of the consent form packet. Believe me, you need this. Tape it to the wall above the sign-in table.
• Clipboards, lots and lots of clipboards. You’ve been there, trying to fill out paperwork on your knee. It’s no fun. You can get clipboards for under $1 each. It’s worth it.
• Pens. Not just for you, but for the people in the hall waiting.
• Refreshments. These folks are nervous. This might be the first audition for a few. Give them something to snack on and wash it down with if they want it. We had great luck with a big tray of cookies and water & soda.
• Camcorder. You NEED to record these things. If nothing else, you will want to review the footage later when you do callback review. Also, bring plenty of storage media, batteries, etc…
• If you can, bring a TV to connect to the camcorder. I found that watching them on the TV helped me focus on their screen presence.
• Note paper for yourself. Again, also useful for reviewing the data.
• Small table for the sign in materials. It will come in handy.

Okay, with that info, you can set up an audition. At the next Free Film School, I’ll talk bout what to look for at auditions. Until next time, keep it real!

-Jim

Here’s an important fact that you’re going to have to learn to deal with if you’re writing something: During the writing process, whether it’s writing a book,  a movie, or the excuse note for being late to class, things are going to change. This is life. We come up with ideas, we toss them up, we shoot them down and start over. It’s sort of a literary skeet shoot.

But it is during this process when the magic happens. We find that when we throw out ideas, some stick to other ideas to form a whole new one. Other ideas might hover for a while, spawn new ideas, and then find themselves shot down while their children prosper. And some ideas are so good on their own that they just can’t be shot down at all. (Of course, these ideas are rare by the standards of most, and almost nonexistent for me.)

During the writing of this screenplay, we had a character that developed into being the leading lady’s father. I liked him. He was the ideal dad, and I really thought he would fit the bill perfectly. However, during a peer review (which is SO important in this stage!), a few plot holes were revealed that were in part due to this man being her father. So a suggestion was offered: Make this other character her father, and make the character in question a family member, such as an uncle, etc.  The solution was perfect – it closed a major plot hole, opened up potential for more great dialog, and solved virtually every problem that we found in one fell swoop. There was only one minor problem – I didn’t like this at all!

The problem is that I fell in love with my characters as we dreamed them out. To me, they had already become real people, and you can’t just go around changing the lives of real people. This man had to be her father, there was no other way I could be happy. And so I hemmed and hawed and pouted about it for a while. But eventually, I put on my directors’ cap, and reminded myself that if a director is so in love with his vision for the film that he can’t change it, that film is almost certainly going to flop. So I took a breath, thought about it rationally, and realized that indeed, the advice I was given was right. The scripting has been changed, and I am thankful for the peer input.

In your filmmaking, if you find yourself getting so attached to your ideas that when other people tell you they’re not working you shut them down, take a step back and give everything a fresh new look. Maybe they’re right. Maybe you do need to change your main character. Maybe you need to cut your favorite scene so the crowd doesn’t fall asleep. That’s life. Make the changes you need to make, and if all else fails, remind yourself that there’s always the director’s cut version, or at the very least, bonus features on the DVD

Peace!

-Jim

Hey film fans! With the incredible turnout that we’ve had on facebook, along with everything that is going well for us in the production of this insanely low budget indie comedy, I’ve decided that it’s time to do something unique. I’m opening the doors for the world to see how this film is made, from start to finish. On this site, we’r going to cover everything from our initial ideas the night we dreamed up this film to the final showings. Will it become a hit that gets the attention of Hollywood? Will I lock it in a box in my attic, never to see the light of day? Who knows! That’s part of the magic of movie making – even the top stars don’t have guarantee of success. So I invite you to follow along, ask questions, and we’re along the way maybe you’ll learn what it takes to mastermind your own low budget film.

Tonight I finished typing up the outline we drew up at our writers’ meeting last night. We got a remarkable amount of work done, from developing an entire storyline to naming characters. It was great. We had a unique meeting in the sense that one of our writers lives several states south of here, and he joined us via Skype. I’ll admit that I was hesitant at first to see if it would work, but I was very pleasantly surprised. He actually provided several ideas that helped shape the film.

Free Film School – Plot

“Free Film School” is something I plan to throw into this blog from time to time. It’s basically a collection of the things we’ve learned that might help guide you, should filmmaking be in your future. And to kick it off, we’ll start with a topic that is the backbone of your story: the plot.

In “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles”, Neal (played by Steve Martin) is railing on Del (John Candy) and hits on something we can all learn from. He tells Del “And by the way, you know, when you’re telling these little stories? Here’s a good idea – have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!”. Have a point. That’s sort of the purpose of having a plot for your film. The plot is like an arrow, directing the viewer to the story’s point and following through on that point’s result. If you want to have a great film, you need to make a great point.

Beyond directing the viewer, having a point to your film also makes shooting and editing easier. Recently I was hired on as the cinematographer for a mocumentary comedy about an annual ice-fishing festival.  When I arrived, I found that the director and producer had Arranged for some of the best talent and equipment you can imagine. We had a steadycam operator who has been all over the country shooting for TV. We had top of the line video equipment and field audio gear – more than I can hope for on our film. We even had a Red One, possibly one of the best video cameras out there in the world of indie films. There was only one problem. With everything they did line up, our leaders failed to actually write a script, or develop a plot, or determine the point of their film. The end result was confusion, disorganization, and I’m fairly convinced that had I not pleaded with a few of the crew to stay, everyone would more than likely have walked off on the job. Frankly, I’m starting to think walking off was a good idea.  A month after the shoot, I still don’t have the foggiest idea what that film is supposed to be about. And if the crew doesn’t know what the film’s all about, how will a viewer ever figure it out? If your film is going to work, it needs a plot.

So what makes up a plot? Several great minds have tackled that question, and come up with differing answers. For me, I like to look at something known as Freytag’s pyramid. Gustav Freytag was a German novelist who lived during most of the 19th century. Freytag was fascinated by Shakespeare and Greek literature, and set out to devise the common  dramatic structure all of these pieces shared that made them so captivating. What he came up with was a pyramid structure you can see below. This structure consisted of five segments, the exposition, the rising action, the climax, the falling action, and the denouement. What he discovered was that just like gravity, in writing what comes up must come down. You start with a premise. Then that premise builds. Conflict sets in. The climax is reached and now the conflict starts to drop. Finally in the end stability is reached, and we have a complete resolution. And everyone said “Amen”!

When we put together the plot outline for “The Right Thing”, we based it off this concept. (Well, I’m slightly less rigid, so on our big sheet of paper I made a rounded bump instead of a pyramid, but it’s the same idea!) We establish the character in the beginning, and through a series of events, calamity follows him all the way through to the climax. But once he hits that climax, we all see the point of the story, and his roller-coaster to resolution begins.

One piece of advice: this triangle doesn’t have to be equilateral! For those of you who slept through geometry, I’m saying that the amount of time in your film that’s spent going up the rising wall of your triangle does not necessarily need to be equal to the amount of time spent on the falling side. In many films, including “The Right Thing”, the climax hits about 2/3 to 3/4 through the movie. To really drive home your point, it can really help to hold off on your resolution until near the end.

Also, don’t be afraid to slice and dice. In the film “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind”, director Michael Gondry seemingly throws the plot into a blender. The film starts with clips from the denouement and falling action, jumps to the middle, and hops all over the place. In the end however, he ties it all together, and despite seemingly throwing the plot into a blender and hitting puree, you get a great climax and resolution that completes the film.

Alright, enough of this! I’m leaving town…later today I guess. I’d better get some sleep.

Peace!

-Jim