Hey, I’m back. It’s only been about a month and a half… things have gotten a little busier here at CLU, and I plan on going into that in future postings, but, as promised, here’s the continuation of this saga of moviemaking magic…  

Saturday October 6th, 2007 - The First Audition

Casting for the film begins. We have a deal worked out with UCLA, where we get to hold auditions at the university chapel for 2 Saturdays in a row. We put out a few ads in advance, talking briefly about the projects, basically saying "Go to this link." Obviously, I’m not going to start talking about actors specifically just yet, but I can speak in broad strokes.

We had an excellent turnout for both weekends. We had 2 movies being cast on the 6th and 3 on the 13th, and we regularly got the most people coming in (’course, we have, like, four times as many characters). It’s interesting, because we’re casting several characters, and 3 of them are supposed to be in high school, but you also want them to be able to, you know, act. A lot of people came in and read for the kids, some were high school age, some were a little older, and they had to look like they all go to high school together. Sometimes someone would come in who was 16 or so, and would read for Brian and do a great job, but just looked too young compared to the girl we were thinking for Dani. Or, sometimes the opposite. But it’s always better to have choices, as opposed to the other thing.

We also had some great actors come in and read for the adult roles. Our plan was to record all the auditions, but we didn’t have a camera the first day. So, we picked a few who we definitly wanted to see on tape, and asked if they would be able to come back in and read again the next Saturday.

Saturday, October 13th, 2007 - New Faces and Callbacks

My Drama teacher in high school said it best. "Just becasue you didn’t get a callback, doesn’t mean you’re out of the running." Now, I know that holds a little less true as you get closer to the actual industry, but it’s something that I still try to hold true to.

One thing about calling people in for a second round of auditions, even if this is their first, you’ve already scene people read the scene several times. The first day, you spend a certain amount of time figuring out which choices everyone is making and which choices are really original takes on the material. By the second day, however, you’ve started to hear the same scenes so many times, that you know them so well, and it gets a little bit hard to keep everyone straight. I mean, that’s why I take notes, but notes only do so much. So, having that camera around is pretty dang helpful, because I can go back and look at the ones I liked the best, and compare with my producers.

From left: Me, writer/director; Lauren, producer; and Kristin, producer.

NEXT TIME: The Cast Comes Together… 

So, I’m in this class at CLU called “High Definition Digital Cinema,” where, basically, we shoot a movie 1st semester, then edit it 2nd semester. It’s an awesome class. So, this year, the movie I’m making is called “Private Eye High.” Logline: “A high school freshman helps crack a crime scene, and takes it upon himself to find the person responsible for it.” We filmed a lot of the movie last semester, but kept getting the rest of it pushed back. There were quite a few issues every day, too, though I’ll go into that more in future posts. The big ones were locations that fell through, miscommunicating actors, and that pesky sun going up and down when we didn’t want it to. But, all the same, we finished shooting this semester, on Saturday and Sunday, and I am SO relieved… now all I have to do is edit 10 tapes of footage.To Be Continued… 

So, I had this blog set up for the various elements of my life I find noteworthy to blog about, and I have a bunch of things I can blog about, but none of them felt noteworthy enough to be the FIRST POST. So, I’ve been putting it off. So, I decided to stop not writing and start writing, and I thin it only makes sense for me to tell you guys just a bit about me in general.My name is Mike, and I  have a blog. I’m a filmmaker, an artist, and a musician. I’m a huge fan of comics (mostly Marvel), all sorts of films, and music (particularly the band “Fountains of Wayne”). My dad also has a blog, and you should think about checking it out here. More to come…