"The Movie Is Written 3 Times" (if you're lucky)

The saying goes "the movie is written three times: once in the screenplay, once on the set, and once in the editing room."

The reason I bring up this expression is that 'Reminisce' has entered the rewriting process.

The Casting Process

 Just finished a month-long casting process.

Actually, that makes it sound like I've been casting non-stop for the whole month. Not so.

At the beginning of the month, we had 2 Saturdays of auditions. We sorted through the readings, filtered them down a little, and had a sort of callback/screen test event Saturday.

There are several characters in the film, but we focused mostly on six:

(Blue indicates they appear in the present-day storyline. Green means they appear in the flashbacks.)

Terry/Young Terry (protagonist)

Hannah/Young Hannah (ingénue [kind of])

Patrick (best friend)

James (roommate)

Ashley (drunk slut [kind of])

Liza (ex-girlfriend)

There are also several other incidental characters, but these were the six we focused on.

The First Round: AUDITIONS

One of the things that surprised me the most was how many guys we didn't get. The ratio usually slants away from the Y chromosone anyway, but it was more so than in previous years. We also got a lot fewer people reading this year than before (part of it was the amount of advertising we did, and the number of films we were producing this year). That said, all of the people we did get for each role, we really liked.

We had quite a few people for Hannah, as expected, but what really surprised me was how many girls came in to read for Ashley. I like to think I managed to keep her from coming off as two-dimensional, but that part doesn't really come across in the sides we posted online, so in the scene all the auditioners read, she's kind of a cliche character. There's two explanations as I see it; One, the level of quality of the other sides led them to infer that her scenes were just as dynamic as the others they were reading. Or, two, everybody just wants to play drunk. In any case, everyone who came in really rocked it, and I was surprised how many people could play drunk well. (It's one of my pet peeves, but I left auditions un-peeved, so kudos.)

Overall, we had some good guys and gals, and we felt comfortable narrowing it down a bit.

Interlude: THE NEXT STEP

We had some good options for our cast, but couldn't narrow it down, and were trying to decide how to proceed. One of the things that changed in between the auditions was that a mandate had come down that we should try casting the same actors as both young and adult versions of the characters. Since there's only two of them, and they're only ten years apart, it made the most sense.

But, since we hadn't been thinking about that, there were some people wanted to see again, not to mention wanting to nail down chemestry. So, when Andrew (Senior Producer) suggested we try doing a screen test, we all agreed to give it a shot. We narrowed the list to people we felt like bringing back, and set it up.

The Second Round: THE SCREEN TEST

Apart from some... technical difficulties (which I have no intention of going into, at least on THIS blog...), the screen test went pretty well. We used the on-campus TV studio, set up a little set, and used a 3-camera setup, then edited in real-time in the booth. We tried out different combinations of Hannah-Terry pairings, aged everyone up and then down, and had them read with our Patrick. We also brought in a couple Lizas and Ashleys, just so we could narrow it down some more (which, again, was difficult, as both roles were read really well by a number of fine actresses).

It also really gave me a chance to see how easy it would be to direct each actor in a scene, how well they take changes, how they amuse themselves while waiting for a shot, and, weirdly, I ended up making some discoveries about the scenes and the characters as I would explain them (which threw me off. I thought I knew it all, having, you know, created that whole world). It was a lot of fun.

One kind of funny aspect was the weather. Since we're located in Thousand Oaks, it's a bit of a drive to get to the campus, and on Saturday we were experiencing some freaky rain. It would be dry for hours, then spontaniously open up and start pouring. Then it would stop. One of our actors made it all the way down the freeway and to Olsen street before the rain caught up with him, which was particularly fortunate given the fact that he was on a motorcycle.

All right, that about somes it up, I suppose. This ended up being a long one... If I think of any more funny anticdotes from Saturday, I'll add them, otherwise we're gonna go ahead and head into pre-production. We're going into rewrites, so I'll probably post something about that shortly.

And, once again, if you wanna read the logline, synopsis, character bios or scenes from the film, this is the place.

Reminisce

So, I've started launching into production on my latest student film, and my 3rd film at CLU, called "Reminisce." (The original title was "Buried Treasures," so if you ever see me use that term instead, you know why.)

The movie is about two twentysomethings who meet up at a ten-year high school reunion, and as they reminisce (see what I did there?), they deal with the history and drama that unfolded when they were in high school, and what lead them on their respective paths.

As the year continues, I'm gonna continue giving you guys updates as we proceed. We're in the throes of casting right now, so there's gonna be a blog about that ater this week.

For more details on the story, and even a couple of script excerpts, click here.