The Roller Coaster Continues

I'm sitting on the ferry, traveling from Vancouver back to Victoria, British Columbia. Figured I'd use the free wireless to update y'all on today's emotional roller coaster ride.

I started the day without much sleep last night - I have this irrational, and completely irritating habit of not being able to sleep the night before I travel. I have no idea why this happens. I'm usually a really great sleeper (and napper too!), but in any case, this morning I was off to a bit of a rough start.

I headed over to Jen's place to pick her up, with just enough time to catch the ferry. I had an important meeting with a producer in Vancouver, and since we live on an island we have take a ferry and if we miss it, we have to wait 2 hours until the next one. So I arrived with the clock ticking, only to find out that Jen had 2 sick kids at home, and a duty day at one of the kids'pre-school. ARGH! Her hubby couldn't do the duty day as he needs a new police check, so our hands were tied. After a mild freak-out (on my end), and a few outbursts of "God Dangit! We were going to get SO much done on the ferry!" and some other swear words... I sucked it up and went on my lonesome.

side note: I should tell you here that I'm a new driver. So, driving in Vancouver isn't really my cup of tea just yet.

Anyway, I made it to the meeting after 3 hours of travel, and it rocked. Seriously, this producer was awesome at helping me learn what I need to know, and with offering free advice & contacts for me to follow up with. SCORE! He helped me to realize that there is indeed money out there for us, and all I need to do is ask for it. Double-score! Being in Canada does make it easier for indie filmmaking. Or so I'm told anyway. I'll get on his suggestions tomorrow.

I also had a conversation with a movie star's mother today. We're trying to book her daughter for our little movie, and let me tell you - talking to a star's mom is the same as talking to any mom - they all just want to know that their kids are awesome. Same as teaching in inner city schools really. I'm happy to say that she loved our script as well. Woohoo! More conversations to come I'm sure.

To finish the day, I went to meet up with our Director of Photography, at the IKEA restaurant - because sadly, we don't have an Ikea on Vancouver Island, and it was the only place I thought I knew how to get to without getting lost. And lost I got. So very lost.

It took me 2 hours to meet him, after breaking down in a parking lot (I'm not even kidding - I wailed! And boy oh boy, am I ever happy the star's mom didn't hear the f-bombs I dropped!). Our poor DP was waiting forever for me! What a great guy. I heard loads of stories about what he's working on now, particularly about directors smoking joints on set while he waits for them to get back on task.

Second side note: Seriously? Seriously?! We are so going to ROCK this movie if that's what happens out there on other indie sets. We're 2 women, one a former-innercity-school teacher, the other a mom with a masters degree, a photography background and 3 kids - we're focused, driven and on task, and ... sober on set. Um, yeah - no wonder so many people want to work with us!

And now, here we are. I'm back on the ferry. This time it's rocking back & forth, which is really rare for this journey. I can't wait to get home, get back to focusing on the kickstarter campaign, and get back to bed. Tomorrow I'll rock the new ideas, get my dress fitted for Elton John's Oscars Party (is that for real?!), meet up with a great friend and one of our most supportive investors and hang out with Jen and the kids. WOOHOO!

See how it's all up...down...up...down...and loop-di-loop?

Reflections on Holding Auditions for Locked in a Garage Band

We held auditions in Vancouver this past weekend, for our first feature film, Locked in a Garage Band.  I thought I should write down a few reflections about the process before I forget.

Here goes:

• Casting Directors rock.  Seriously, I don't know what we would have done without Kristina Agosti, our incredibly positive, happy & hilarious casting director.  Kristina knows my sister, Jen, the writer-director in our team, from Jen's Praxis screenwriting win last year.  She was one of the actors hired on as a reader for Jen's Christmas script.   When she saw our casting call, she gave us a buzz to discuss the film & we hired her on the spot.  Kristina's well connected in the Vancouver acting community, as an experienced actor herself.  Plus, she's funny & ridiculously easy to work with.  Score!

• Being organized is key.  When Yukari (our line producer) and I sat down to work out the audition schedule last week, we really focused on having room to catch up on any missed time, just in case we needed it.  This made it so we were never more than 10 minutes behind schedule, which the actors really appreciated.

• Being frugal doesn't mean being dodgey.  We managed to get our audition budget down from $850 to $440 by simply looking at all our options.  At first we looked to acting schools like Shoreline & VADA in Vancouver but their prices (while reduced) were still too high for us.  So, we then looked to community centres but they were mostly booked by the time we contacted them. Finally we looked to hotels.  In the middle of a meltdown about budgeting, I remembered that I have lots of airmiles from all my travels and credit card purchases, so I was able to use my points to book us a hotel room for free.  We then chatted up the Westin Conference booking person and convinced her to cut us a deal for the actor's waiting room. Ba-da-boom!  Instant savings.  But that's just the money stuff. The interesting point here is that we heard so many of our actors saying that it was such a relief to be in a nice hotel for a change.  A few of the women said they were used to going to dodgey back-alley type auditions.

• Being positive makes for a positive experience for all.  Quite a few actors sent us emails or gave us thanks at the audition for being so enthusiastic and positive with them.  They said that they're used to going to auditions where the producers don't even speak to them and it's all business all the time.  Our film is a comedy, so we laughed quite a bit during their auditions and I imagine that's what they were referring to.  I also made sure to say "Have fun!" when I brought them to their first auditions, and thanked them for returning to the call-backs. Some of the women even said that it was refreshing to go into an audition run by women for a change.  Weird - I'm always shocked to see how few women are in our positions, but I guess that must be true.

• Videos are essential. We used Jen's Nikon D90 to record the auditions and review them all again, some even 5 times!  Watching them audition in person is cool, but we had heard that it was really important to see them on camera as well and I'm relieved we followed that advice.  It really helped us to remember their performance a few hours later, and to see what they'd look like on the TV screen.

• Snacks rock.  'Nuff said.

• Skype auditions are always an option.  We had more than 250 submissions just from British Columbia actors alone.  I didn't count how many out-of-province submissions, because I had to just delete them all - but I think it was probably at least 500.  All the way from Ireland and England to all across the USA, we had actors that we thought would be perfect in the roles, until we saw their locations.  In the end, we gave 2 auditions via skype, but only to 2 actors - a guy from Austin who I met at AFF and a girl from London who I met in Alaska this summer.  Both are experienced actors, and fit the roles perfectly.  My sister resisted the skype auditions and felt like we were wasting their time, until she met them online.  They both nailed their auditions & were hired within a few hours.  Even though we had seen 7 actors per character in Vancouver, 2 of those characters ended up being cast by skype.

• Follow your gutt. It's always right.  I relate auditions to dating - if I go on a date with a guy and feel iffy afterwards about whether I want to see him again, then I know it's a no.  I do the same thing in my day-job where I interview teachers to work abroad.  I have to trust my gutt.  It's always right. So when we were unsure of an actor for a specific character, we ended up just not casting the role.  On the other hand, Jen is creating a character for one actor that wasn't right for the part he came in for, but showed such enthusiasm and talent that she just had to hire him.  That was a gutt-decision.

Any questions? Comments? Suggestions? Ramblings?