Half of my cast for Take Out is union. I had some union actors in Killer as well, so I've been through the process with the office here just a few months ago. Lots of people sort of fear using SAG actors, but when you're still a student there's really no need. When I used SAG before I was a student the paperwork was really intimidating and overwhelming. I didn't have to pay anything, but I had all the same forms to fill out that any big budget studio film would have. Now that I'm a student that paperwork is drastically simplified. So it's still a bit tedious and time consuming, but it's not hard and the people at the office are very friendly and willing to talk you through it.
When I was at the office this afternoon dropping off the first stack of papers and picking up the second stack she gave me an extra form and asked if I would leave it at the Film/TV office at school. It's sort of a cheat sheet on what you need to do and what it all means. Boston is turning out to be a great town for talented actors willing to work for free on student films. I had been worried about leaving DC and all my actor friends there. And I still very much miss working with Eric and Esther and Marcus and all the gang. But I'm getting a new gang now and the more people you know the better.
Things are falling into place for Take Out. There's not much left of pre-production to do. I need to sit with Lai, who is going to be my Director of Photography, to figure out storyboards and shot lists and such. And then share the shot lists with Aaron who is my 1st AD and will make sure we check them all off. But that actually shouldn't take more than 2-3 hours of sitting in the cafe and drawing and we've got almost a week before we start shooting. It's nice to be able to be relaxed about it. The boys are mostly still working on securing locations and there's a lot of stuff that hinges on getting that done first. So I don't imagine any of them are feeling relaxed yet. Possibly they won't be relaxed until April when we've all wrapped. I got lucky that the first location I asked said yes. It's not just that I'm better at organization. Though there is a bit of that too; I've always been pathologically organized. It's why I think I'd make a really good 1st AD professionally, but that's a job that it takes a bit of clawing to work your way up to. I do sort of wish they'd get it all worked out though because I can't schedule the rest of my life until they get their shoots scheduled. And there's nothing else that I need to be doing in March, but there are things I could be doing.
And in case you haven't heard the news, Killer has gotten into 2 festivals so far. That's 2 acceptances, 3 rejections, and 10 still waiting to hear from. Good odds so far.
It occurs to me that it might not be clear. SAG is the Screen Actors Guild. It's officially SAG-AFTRA now because they merged with the American Federation of Television and Radio Actors. Equity, the stage actors union, is still separate, though SAG likes to say that if you're using Equity actors a SAG agreement will cover this too. That's probably true and useful if you have a mix of both. But if you have only Equity actors I've heard from those actors that Equity doesn't really care what they do on film.
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