Things are coming together

My talk on Wexler went well this morning. I knew enough about him. I had a good outline to keep myself on track. I had fun clips. And I talked. I'm good at talking, at teaching people the things that I know. And I think the class found it more interested than probably most of you did. I actually had someone leaning forward in his seat. Yay me. Onward. I need to write a 10-12 page paper on the same topic (well doesn't have to be the same, but I've done all the research) by the end of the month. Should be just a matter of writing up the talk in a more scholarly way than I did here, though I'll stop by the professor's office hours next week to see if he wants me to spin it one way or another.

So that's all fine, but here's the fun part of the day:

I'm having auditions tonight for Killer. I have a room. I have a camera. I have a couple of classmates who are going to help me out with organization. And I have at least 6 people who are likely to show up. I actually hadn't expected good response from the announcement since it went out late so I hadn't had a room arranged. I got lucky there was one available since you're supposed to give them 48 hours notice. At least now I know who to ask and where the form is.

I've never held auditions before. I'm completely faking it and hoping it's not obvious to the actors. In the past I've always used people I knew or friends of people I knew. My recruitment ranged from "Hey Esther, I've got a new project. Want to play May?" to "Hi Jane, Mary says you're good. Let me buy you a coffee and pitch my idea to you." But it was always me selling my project to them, convincing them it would be worth their unpaid time and effort to join me. So this feels a little backwards to me. Though I do understand that it's the more common way of things and a good thing for me to learn. I will admit I was hoping for a little more mentoring/guidance from ... Charles I guess, or the school, before I had to just try it on my own. But I figure as long as I'm respectful of them and their time I shouldn't go too wrong with it. When actor friends whine about the audition process it's usually about directors being rude or obnoxious.

I did have coffee (funny how I say that when we were both drinking tea. Is "having coffee" a generic phrase now?) with someone last night who is up for the role of Molly. We talked. She gets what I'm trying to do with it. I felt like we clicked. She's set the bar high for anyone who comes in tonight for the part. I told her I was doing auditions tonight and admitted that I wasn't sure what to do about it. Particularly since only Greg talks so it's not so conducive to handing off a page or two of the script and having them do a read. She said, "Will you have a camera? Just have them do an improve for the camera." And I thought, oh, right, a camera is a good idea. Fortunately I didn't have any trouble reserving that today either.

I'm really excited. The Wexler presentation was fine and all, but this is what I came here for. It'll be weird not having Esther and Eric and Andy and my regulars, or Linda and Mary behind the scenes. Probably good for me to branch out though. And I did pitch the idea to John who did the music for Zach and he's on board to work with me for Killer. I told him tense and suspenseful and I'll send him a rough cut in a couple of weeks. He said great I'm in.

Oh and I did some location scouting the other evening. I was worried about the lighting situation because it's a bus stop at night. I think it's going to look good. Not bright, but it shouldn't be so that's ok. Bright enough where it counts.