Diary of an independent film maker 2 /// Footage from the CASTING CHAOS of The Juju Gum Conspiracy
As I hope you know by now @vachemorte and I will be releasing our film as a series on Steemit on January 8th. This is part 2 of my blog series where I talk about the process.
After the script was all said and done (see part 1) we sat on it for a little while. We knew that filming The Juju Gum Conspiracy with little to no budget and only the two of us would be a huge undertaking. We discussed various plans but for a while actually making the movie seemed like a pipe dream.
@vachemorte tends to have a few weeks off for summer vacation every year so in the spring of 2014 we made a decision that would set everything else in motion. We would start filming at the end of summer.
The next step was... you guessed it! Casting.
Process
Now we had a few friends that dad already done some acting gigs so we wrote some of the characters with them in mind. But the script called for around 80 people. Our first hurdle was figuring out how to do this casting, we had never done one of this magnitude.
Our plan was a classic in the independent film industry.... Craigslist/Kijiji.
We put up an open casting call for actors with speaking roles and background, come one come all. We also had a browse through Model Mayhem where some actors had profiles and put up a casting there as well.
The day of the casting finally came, we had cameras all set up, lines to give people and a plan for attack. Here was our process:
We meet the actor and chat for a few minutes about their experience. We asked them if they wanted a speaking/background role, if they wanted a speaking role we quickly assessed which character we thought they would fit and gave them some lines and let them go back to the waiting area for a few minutes to practice.
If they didn't fit a character we would just improv with them a little bit. We had two games for this. The first was sell us this toothbrush. We gave them an unopened toothbrush and said give us your best sales pitch. The second game was don't touch this. We told them to imagine we were trying to steal one of their possessions and to improv on how they would react.
If they didn't want a speaking role we usually just spoke for a few minutes and got some footage of them for visuals (we have a lot of this but to keep things short I didn't include it.)
When we opened the doors quite a few people were there already and all in all that first day we saw around 100 people!
We did a few more castings over the next weeks for people who weren't able to come on the initial casting as well.
The entire experience was surreal. We got to see our characters come to life for the first time. Some of the actors took the characters to places we didn't expect and our film really started to feel tangible.
I have prepared a short film with some casting reel to give you a demonstration of what the process was like. Not everyone we saw is in here, for brevity's sake. Most of the audio is from the camera and the footage is mostly raw.
Casting Chaos
running time: 10 minutes
We will be releasing the film as a web series here on Steemit starting January 8 2018 over at @vachemorte! For more details see the announcement here and just in case you haven't seen the trailer yet:
Join me again next week for Part 3!
Yes that was definitely chaotic... That's a great selection of cuts you did. We are really lucky we managed to find so much talent for our first film.
That casting was a blast, rewatching the footage was really fun it made me remember how much we laughed that day :D
Haha YES!! I can't wait to see the whole thing :) Ya'll found some awesome performers
Ahhh I missed this comment somehow! We definitely did lots of eccentric people showed up to the casting which is exactly what we wanted :)
this footage is amazingly entertaining.... its SUCH a bizarre process.....casting. Massive respect to all these lovely people who turned up to audition for you guys. It must have been so exciting and yet such a headache getting all of this input in such a short space of time! Love it x
Yeah that day that we did 100 was definitely exhausting but we were having so much fun it went by pretty fast! It really is bizarre looking back in it 😂
haha man the casting is so funny, cant imagine doing a casting really! must be an experience. The lines you make them say are also so funny haha. Anton was a good one haha, he's not an angry person haha. The trailer looks really good as well, juju gum conspiracy! happy to have found you guys here on steemit! Looking forward to see it :)
The improv's were the most interesting part because you never know what people are going to say! It was crazy seeing people read lines from the script though, awesome and surreal, I can't wait to do it again!
This is pretty damn awesome! I'm sure the whole experience was fun and exciting. I wasn't apart of any acting or casting experience but I have been a musician and played all up and down the east coast USA. I remember my first show in front of 100s of people. The experience was surreal, kind of what yiu felt casting your actors. Awesome, keep posting updates.
Thanks for watching! I plan in doing at least one post a week until we release it. I can't imagine playing in front of 100 eople 😮
this is so great, I really liked the process of choosing actors, some of them had much realistic acts which I could feel like they really mean those words, reminds me of how great actors being chose, when I saw them in their first exam :) waiting for 8th to see this great movie :)
peace!!
Yes! When doing the casting it was so obvious who was bringing a good energy, very interesting process !
thanks for the information, its very educating
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I love that you made a role for Anton! His was another funny scene. Great casting reel, nice to see the early workings of the characters.
I'm glad people are coming back and watching this i feel it was missed by a lot of people who saw the film :)
Yes defininately! Thanks for saying that, I was worried commenting on posts from over a month ago might be considered stalking, but your film has left us all wanting more! xo