Sunday, January 11, 2009

At Second Glance

Had a lovely evening last night. Started off with dinner at the Prime Rib with Friends Tom, Melanie, and neighbor Pete, and afterwards Cheryl Scungio (who plays the lead, Gracie) also came to my place and the five of us watched "Smalltimore," as none of them were able to make the screening of the rough cut. I hadn't seen Cheryl since we filmed the second half of a scene that had her and Orlando driving around town in my convertible with the top down, wearing flimsy clothing and pretending it was summertime, though it was actually a freezing November night. So really, I'm just glad she's still speaking to me.

Everyone seemed to enjoy it and it was fun to get together, but for me, the second time around of watching it all the way through wasn't easy, because now I am really seeing all the flaws and I wanted to constantly interrupt and tell my friends how I was going to make everything better for the next cut. But I controlled myself.

Awhile back, I promised to profile each of my actors here in my blog, and I think it is about time to do so. Cheryl and I were retelling some on-set anecdotes, and it made me think about a lot of the goofy little things that happened. I will start with Cheryl, since she plays the lead, and then I will, one by one, profile the rest of the ensemble, in no particular order, and on no particular timeline. I'll make them in individual posts so they are easy to find. Even while I watch the movie as a whole and I see all the things I can do to make it tighter, I still marvel each time at my cast. Who is the patron saint of casting agents? Whoever that may be, they must have been sitting on my shoulder when I chose each of these people for their roles.

I did really put everyone through the wringer during the audition process. During the first round of auditions, I saw over 80 people in two evenings. Eric loaned me a camera, and my friends Kellie Stevens and Jayson Fricke each filmed one evening of the trials for me, and Kellie and another friend, Jessica Hanel, took an evening each running the front of the house at Baltimore Theater Project, where the auditions were held.

After that, I spent 2 weeks watching the tapes several times over, by myself and also with Eric and Mikey B., so I could have a few opinions on the actors. For most parts I chose at least two people to come to the callbacks, the second round of auditions, even if I thought I knew who I wanted for a particular role. At the beginning of May I contacted those people and sent them "sides", scenes from the script that I felt were most important to their character so I could see how they delivered the key moments. Some of the actors had up to 10 pages of dialogue, and I gave them a month to learn it. The callbacks took place in mid-June, and took up a whole day, about 8 hours. Pretty extreme, but I needed to know who was serious about the project. Wanting the role is almost as important as how talented an actor is, when you are working on a low-to-no budget film.

In the end, with almost every role I had to make a tough choice, but I know that I made the right choice. Though some of the actors will tell you I tortured them mightily before getting around to it!

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