The Right Thing

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!

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, Jim here. I just wanted to take a quick second after setting up this very simple site to say thanks for checking it out, and I hope that you’ll stick around as we develop this film into an amazing short comedy.

You may be asking, what is “The Right Thing”? It’s a hilarious comedy about a man who is easily distracted, so much so that even something as simple as a trip to the store turns into an adventure of untold proportions. As his day progresses, the distractions of the morning turn into the disasters of the evening. Will it all work out? You’ll just have to wait for the big release!

We’re still in the very primordial stages of all of this, so bear with us as the site grows. In the mean time, here’s our first movie poster:

Catch ya later,

Jim