Someone get the Talent their IceMochaVentiCappachino
The Actors workshop was especially enlightening for our group. CoD is a very dialogue-heavy drama, so it smashed us straight in the face how important the actors building and holding tension would be. Especially Mrs. L. She needed to be fiercely intimidating but without and outward aggression. It was a teetering See-Saw that we had to make sure we nailed. If we didn't it would just be one long boring monologue between two characters who didn't give a shit about anyone else in the scene.
I, unfortunately, wasn't there during any of the audition processes. It came down to 2 things though, Character ethnicity and Acting Performance. Those seem really quite simple but it threw us through a loop. We needed Jame's Dad, so someone that looked like Abhi. That was fucking hard to find apparently, so we settled on the closest we could get, a man that looked like it could be his brother. So after some rewrites thats exactly what Cain was cast as. Mrs. L needed to be fierce and ideally had an accent that leaves us believing that she could easily be in charge of a mob. Say what you want about Hollywood stereotypes, but it worked in this case.
Looking back it came down to our group not leaving ourselves enough time. We did try a few avenues to find actors, but simply didn't try hard enough or give it the time it deserved. It was rushed and because of that, we ended up with Actors that hurt our production in the end. Oh well, live and learn right.
When it comes to the actual production process, it was actually super smooth. Jordan already had the Bar before being picked, which is both awesome and not so much at the same time. Hop Temple is an awesome bar, but considering the script was written for the location in mind, to me, it didn't really fit. Hop Temple is hipster, green and open. It doesn't really fit the vibe Mrs. L is going for. It would make a much better biker gang. I've talked to Jordan regarding this and in hindsight now agrees.
Other than that Zach at the bar was amazing. The alley was fantastic and I think overall we made it work. I know Drei had a hard time as many aspects of the bar we couldn't change.
I have been smashing my role thus far. I worked on Shotlist after shotlist and have started researching lighting. It's my opinion that lighting can easily make or break a film so I want to really nail it on set. I have had extensive talks with Andrew and Kaleb as well as Kyal on how best to approach these things.
Communication between everyone has been strong at this point. Minus of course Zeke cause we have seen how that has gone. The minors don't show up no matter how many times we let them know but whatever, they are minors, they aren't going to help much on set anyway. Except for Liam T. He's bae. This is a hindsight commentary obviously.
Example of work I have completed.